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Samenvatting Doing Research in the Business World, ISBN: 9781529706727 Business Research - Business Research 3
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summary of Business research 3, year 2 of International Business.
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Business Research 3Lecture 1. Introduction and problem definition
The systematic and objective process of collecting, recording, analyzing, and
interpreting data for aid in solving managerial problems.
Basic research:
Expand knowledge of social or organizational processes.
Develop universal principles.
Produce findings of significance and value to society.
(Trying to solve the problem of one specific situation)
à Research may also be concerned with clarifying, validating, or building a theory.
Its importance to society or to organizations may be determined by the extent to
which this theory is translatable into a specific context.
Applied research:
Improve understanding of specific social or organizational problems.
Create solutions to social or organizational problems.
Develop findings of practical relevance to public and organizational stakeholders.
à Research may have a very practical focus (applied research), with an emphasis
on achieving measurable outputs that are specific to a particular business or
organization. The results of such research may be of significance to a specific
context, but difficult to generalize elsewhere.
Research topics:
Increasing the number of women in CEO positions.
Disability awareness training – does it change attitudes in the workplace?
How can call center response times and the quality of feedback to customer queries
be improved?
Do workplace conciliation processes work?
The typical research process:
,Problem definition:
- Problem background
- Problem statement
We see the problem definition as a two-step process: the problem background
describes what the ‘problem’ is and why it is a problem.
The problem statement states the main question that the research needs to answer.
The problem statement is a question (that ends with a question mark) that indicates
what the problem is.
Problem background:
- The HR manager of ASOS.com has observed an increase in the sick leave
rate of her office personnel since the lockdown.
- This increase has significant negative financial consequences, both short and
long term
- She believes that the work-life balance of her employees has deteriorated as
some of them hinted in recent calls that they find it hard to work from home
with their spouse and children present.
- She also thinks that increasing stress levels among her employees negatively
affect their mental and physical health and results in them calling in sick in
ever great numbers.
The problem statement:
How can the sick leave rate among the employees of ASOS.com be reduced?
! It is important here to stress that even though the manager has some ideas about
what may have caused the increased sick leave rate, but that these are mere
assumptions.
The problem statement addresses only the ‘problem’ and should not include potential
causes of this problem.
Research methodologies:
How is the subject going to be researched?
- Experimental research
- Quasi-experimental research
- Phenomenological research
- Analytical research
In experimental and quasi-experimental research there is also the tendency to make
use of hypotheses which the experiment seeks either to support or to refute. In other
words, experimental research is usually deductive. Experimental and quasi-
experimental research, then, places an emphasis on:
• Reproducing the techniques of the laboratory experiment with highly structured
methods.
• The generation of initial hypotheses.
• The control of variables.
• Accurate (quantitative) measurement of outcomes.
• Generalization from samples to similar populations.
,In an inductive approach to research, a researcher begins by collecting data that is
relevant to her topic of interest. Once a amount of data have been collected, the
researcher will then take a breather from data collection, stepping back to get a bird’s
eye view of their data. At this stage, the researcher looks for patterns in the data,
working to develop a theory that could explain those patterns.
When researchers take an inductive approach, they start with a set of observations
and then they move from those experiences to a more general set of propositions
about those experiences. In other words, they move from data to theory, or from the
specific to the general.
Researchers taking a deductive approach take the steps described earlier for
inductive research and reverse their order. They start with a social theory that they
find compelling and then test its implications with data. That is, they move from a
more general level to a more specific one. A deductive approach to research is the
one that people typically associate with scientific investigation. The researcher
studies what others have done, reads existing theories of whatever phenomenon she
is studying, and then tests hypotheses that emerge from those theories.
Experimental research:
§ Experimental and control group.
§ Subjects randomly assigned.
§ Manipulation of independent variable.
Problem background:
- Increasing prevalence of burnout among workers at Mercedes-Benz’s E-Class
production plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, in the last year.
- Management is afraid that this may lead to production mistakes resulting in
overall poorer quality, long-term absenteeism of employees and, therefore,
higher production costs.
Problem statement:
How can the prevalence of burnout among workers at Mercedes-Benz’s E-Class
production plant in Sindelfingen, Germany, be reduced?
The problem statement only includes the problem (dependent variable) and not the
potential causes of the problem (independent variables).
Literature review:
Stress management is an important predictor of prevalence of burnout.
In a literature review, stress management ability has been found to have a strong
significant effect on prevalence of burnout. Therefore, the researcher wants to do
experimental research in which he randomly assigns Mercedes’ E-Class production
plant workers into two groups: the treatment group will receive a stress management
training. The control group does not. A year after the training, the prevalence of
burnout is measured in both groups.
, Experimental research:
Experimental research design:
The effect of stress management training on the prevalence of burnout among
workers at Mercedes-Benz’s E-Class production plant in Sindelfingen, Germany.
Therefore, the researcher wants to do experimental research in which he randomly
assigns Mercedes’ E-Class production plant workers into two groups: the treatment
group will receive a stress management training. The control group does not. A year
after the training, the prevalence of burnout is measured in both groups.
Quasi-Experimental research:
In the real world, however, it is often not possible to conduct truly experimental
research because it is difficult to find experimental and control groups that are closely
matched in terms of key variables (such as age, gender, income, work grade, etc.) or
because it is not possible to assign subjects randomly (could be unethical).
§ Subjects are not randomly assigned.
§ The independent variable is not manipulated but rather differences in the
levels of the independent variable are observed.
§ Does not eliminate problem of confounding variables.
A quasi-experimental design is used where the researcher, for example, has to take
existing groups rather than drawing on random samples. Instead of trying to
manipulate an independent variable the researcher will often attempt to find groups
of people who have experienced it in their own natural setting. An attempt is then
made to compare the behaviour of this group with that of a similar group that has not
experienced the event or phenomenon. In experimental and quasi-experimental
research there is also the tendency to make use of hypotheses which the experiment
seeks either to support or to refute. In other words, experimental research is usually
deductive.
The researcher’s literature review has shown another predictor of burnout
prevalence:
Physical activity levels.
The researcher could test the effect of physical activity levels on burnout prevalence
with both an experimental and quasi-experimental research design.
Experimental research design:
Workers are randomly assigned to a HIIT programme twice a week for a year or not.
Quasi-experimental research design:
Physical activity levels of workers are measured, and workers are placed into two
groups on the basis of their physical activity levels accordingly.
à The experimental research design may be too expensive, difficult to execute,
unethical etc. In a quasi-experimental design we would not randomly assign subjects
to one of the two groups, but rather observe physical activity in our workers (with a
survey perhaps) and divide them into two groups on the basis of their physical activity
levels. We then measure burnout prevalence in both groups after a year.
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