3.1 Analytical generalisability
The generalisability of this study should also be briefly debated before continuing with
the interpretation of the empirical data. Contributing to a discipline predominated by
functionalistic thinking, one might question the validity and therefore usefulness of
this study. If only one case is being researched, where is the statistical generalisability?
How can one know that the case explored is not just an extreme deviant case, an
atypical statistical outlier compared to the mean of buyer-supplier relationships? Here,
the reader is referred to the many debates on this topic (Halldorsson and Aastrup, 2003;
Yin, 2003), who all speak of the possibility and necessity of analytical as opposed to
statistical generalisability. Analytical generalisability aims at generating new concepts
and suggested contingencies that are worthy for further studies within a discipline or
focus of studies. Qualitative research, therefore, aims at generalising on the notions of
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theoretical representativeness, in which research should not be based on the merits of
the rules of statistical inference (Halldorsson and Aastrup, 2003).