Moral Leadership in Medicine: How the research was done

This research began as an inquiry into the moral quandaries that medical leaders confronted, and the ways that medical leaders reasoned about them. It certainly remained a study of moral quandaries; but the focus of inquiry shifted towards moral narrative and behavioural propriety, rather than moral reasoning. How did this happen? The complexities of designing worthwhile social research reflect a world that the poet Louis MacNiece described as ‘crazier and more of it than we think/Incorrigibly plural’. In this appendix, I explain how the arguments and conclusions of previous chapters have been shaped by the decisions I made in the course of planning and conducting the research. I endeavour to justify the research design, discuss its method and explain its conduct. I then clarify the methodological framework for the study, and the status of the conclusions that may be drawn from it.