Considering the numerous studies in the local literature, identifying the potential limitations in Nigerian engineering practice, the researcher has adopted Love et al. (2012) latent pathogen theory, and the ‘Vicious Cycle of Short-funding and Delays' Narrative by Morris (1990), as the theoretical framework for this study. It is thus hypothesized that: Geotechnical pathogens will often lay dormant within the linear process configuration of design and cost estimating in highway organizations, but will be unintentionally triggered, culminating in significant cost overruns during the post-contract phase, as the project team deal with their delay effect and funding requirement. Geotechnically induced latent pathogens, as plausible explanations for cost overruns are thus specifically investigated in this study. Therefore, although other triggers to cost overruns are acknowledged as present in highway projects, the study primarily sets off to investigate geologic/geotechnical factors that explains cost overruns. The researcher thus seeks to explore explanatory perspectives that are reflective of poor geotechnical input in pre-contract preparation, and how these account for increased cost overruns, using a technical narrative more applicable to highway projects, and contextualised within the geologic setting of the Niger Delta region.
3.10 Chapter Summary
Cost overruns in highway projects have been shown to be a topical issue, which has attracted a lot of negative public and media attention. A wide array of studies, have thus dwelt on, and analysed why cost overruns, seem to be an ever present feature of construction projects, particularly in those executed by public agencies. This chapter, has taken a comprehensive and critical outlook at the various approaches that have been used to explain the phenomena of cost overruns in public projects, with a view to establish the theoretical and methodical lenses through which past studies have been conducted. The outcome of the critical analysis, has revealed that several gaps in the literature exist in terms of: the lack of robust evidence to support the assertions that geotechnical risks impact on cost overrun levels in highway projects; the limited contextual specificity of studies; the paucity of methodologically robust explanatory approaches; and the exclusivity and cluster in the geographical spread of qualitative narratives, to the developed world, which is mostly not reflective of developing nations such as those on the African continent. In response to these identified gaps, this study is structured, as a distinctive and significant departure from previous studies on cost overruns. Chapter four provides a detailed outline of the research methodology, adopted in this study, necessary to provide explanations to the unusually high level of cost overruns recorded by highway agencies in the peculiar wetland terrain of the Niger Delta. This is against the backdrop of the techno-economic and Institutional setting of Nigeria as a developing country.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Research Methodology
4.0 Introduction
This chapter sets out the research methodology, which is the overall framework that served as a guide on all aspects of conducting this study. A distinction is however made between the terms Method and Methodology, which are often used interchangeably. Research method refers to “a more or less consistent and coherent way of thinking about and making [collecting] data, way of interpreting and analysing data, and way of judging the resulting theoretical outcome” (Morse and Richards, 2002:10). Whereas Creswell (2003: 5), defines research methodology as: “A strategy or plan of action that links methods to outcomes and governs our choice and use of methods. A proposition reinforced by Farrell (2011), who described methodology as the design of research at a strategic level.
Others, such as Saunders et al. (2009:34) definition of research methodology, however, emphasises less on the practicalities of conducting a research, and more on its underlying theoretical underpinning, referring to it as: “The theory of how research should be undertaken”. With Holden and Lynch, (2004:397) contending that that: “Research should not be methodologically led, rather that methodological choice should be consequential to the researcher’s philosophical stance”.
This implies that the logic and philosophical underpinnings of a study should be encompassed in the research methodology, and should therefore inform the specification of the research methods that are practically deployed in the investigation of a problem (Dainty, 2008). Creswell (2003) thus recommends that the research methodology should serve as a basic guide on all aspects of a study, from shaping the broader philosophical ideas that are brought to a study, down to the specifics of data collection and analysis.
Conceptualisation of the research methodology of this study, therefore, was projected in multiple and interactive layers, as an interwoven synthesis, of informed decisions made at the philosophical, strategic and practical levels. (Gajendran, 2011). As Farrell (2011:23) underscores, “there is need for a detailed description of each step of the research process”, the components of the research methodology adopted in this study, are presented and explicitly defined exhaustively, in a hierarchical order, visualised in Figure 4.1.
Figure 4.1: Research Methodology of this Study
It therefore followed that in the discussion of the research methodology of this study, these multi- layered interactive constituents had to be clarified, and a logical justification provided, to support the choices made at each layer. The elements of the research methodology adopted in the conduct of this study, are thus presented in a coherent flow of well-articulated philosophical arguments and theoretical positioning, grounded in an existing and widely recognised body of knowledge, covering all aspects of academic enquiry at doctoral level.