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Summary of the Lectures for Advances Research Methods
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Summary of the contents of the lectures for Advances Research Methods (ARM) at RSM bachelor Business Administration / Bedrijfskunde.
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ARM lecturesLecture 1:
Why talk about research?
Managers need to make decisions all the time. Some can be made based on experience,
intuition, or advice from others. Other decisions need thoughtful contemplation of
alternatives. If new knowledge is required to make a decision, research may be needed.
Understanding the principles of (good) research helps:
I. To execute (or commission) your own research
II. To critically understand the research done by others
When we use the term “managers”, this is meant as shorthand for any type of decision maker
(also with other job titles) in any type of organization (including for-profit, not-for-profit,
voluntary, non-governmental and government organizations).
Basic steps:
1. Formulate a knowledge question
2. Collect relevant knowledge that’s already out there
3. Collect new, additional data
4. Analyse and interpret
5. Formulate the answer to the question
Business problems versus research questions:
Business problems:
- Sales are declining
- Employee turnover seems to be very high
- We are criticized for polluting the environment
- We have too much obsolete stock
Research questions:
- Which customer groups are buying less? Or what product features are valued the
most?
- Which factors drive employee loyalty? Or are millennials more prone to leave my
company than others?
- What is the CO2 footprint of our operations? Or how should we measure and report
our impact?
- What is the optimal ordering policy? Or how do employees treat refrigerated goods?
1
,Basis steps with an example:
Basic step Example
Formulate a knowledge question What product features are valued the most?
Collect relevant data Knowledge on how to study this question;
Existing lists of product features
Collect new/additional data Develop a strategy to sample the respondents;
Respondents rate designs in (for instance) a
survey
Analyse and interpret Preform conjoint analysis; Measure the utility
of different product features
Formulate the answer to the question Rank product features and product designs
based on relative utility
Some principles of scientific data:
- Science progresses on the basis of testable hypotheses and evidence.
- Research does not take place in a vacuum.
- Do not trust other people’s science without your own critical analysis.
- Confidence in a theory grows as more and more studies support (and perhaps refine)
the theory.
Evidence-Based management:
Evidence-based management (EBMgt) finds its origin in “Evidence-based medicine”;
Definitions of EBMgt:
I. “The systematic use of the best available evidence to improve management
practice” (Reay et al., 2009).
II. "The conscientious use of multiple sources of evidence in organizational
decisions" (Rousseau, 2020).
Before following best practice or evidence, investigate:
I. The logic (or mechanism) explaining why the practice works
II. The context in which the practice has proven to work
III. How your situation/context is different or the same
In essence, ask yourself: “How generalizable is the evidence/knowledge/theory?”
Three levels of theory:
1. Local theories
2. Mid-range theories
3. Grande theories
What else can inform managerial practice, but are not the strongest:
• Obsolete knowledge
• Personal experience
• Specialist skills
• Hype
• Dogma
• Mindless mimicry (copying) (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006)
Examples:
• The ‘first-mover advantage’ myth
• The ‘employee stock options’ myth
2
,Different types of evidence to inform management practice: (least strong to strongest)
I. Own research and experimentation
II. One-off scientific studies (by others)
III. Replicated scientific studies (stronger since more people have shown the
result)
IV. Systematic review or Meta-analysis (this has calculations in it) of scientific
studies (very nice evidence to have when someone already did an analysis on
all the research on this hypothesis)
Example: Reay et al. (2009) provide a systematic review of evidence on evidence-based
management.
Important aspect: critically assess the quality of the evidence you are reading, on:
I. Strength of research design
II. Quality of outlet (reviewed content or not, reputation of the outlet)
III. Your own assessment
Research as a force of positive change:
• Reaching out with the results of research through publications, conferences,
podcasts, seminars, webinars, alumni meetings
• Collaboration with businesses
• Through RSM research Centres
• By doing research and consulting on business and government request
• Student research counts as well – for instance, master theses, consulting
projects or internship projects
Recap of scientific terminology:
Constructs and variables
• Constructs are theoretical concepts that may or may not be observable and
measurable (so they are often abstract): trust, customer loyalty, job satisfaction,
organizational interdependence.
• Variables are also theoretical concepts, but they must be observable and
measurable (essentially, they are operationalized constructs).
Example: operationalization of ‘organizational interdependence’ in a study of alliances:
• They make the construct divided in different variables so that they can
measure the organizational interdependence.
3
, Propositions and hypotheses
• Proposition: a researcher’s statement about relationship between two or more
theoretical constructs. It can be about abstract and non-measurable constructs. It
can be developed conceptually or based on empirical data. It does not have to be
measurable or directly testable.
• Hypothesis: a statement about relationship between two ore more variables
(thus, operationalized constructs). A hypothesis is typically informed by any
underlying proposition(s). It should be testable and show the direction of the
relationship/effect between the variables.
What is theory?
• Theory is a statement of relationships between units (constructs) observed or
approximated in the empirical world (Bacharach, 1989)
• A theory answers questions as How? When? Why?
• Every theory has boundaries
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