chapter 3

Chapter 3 The research process: the broad problem area and defining the problem statement

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Broad problem area A "problem" is not only related to a serious wrong with a current situation that needs to be rectified immediately. immediately. It is also related to find the right answers to improve the existed situation. A problem is the difference between the actual and the desired ideal states. Examples of broad problem areas: The reputation of a company in the marketplace is decreased. The power of distribution channels not as effective as anticipated. The sales volume of a product is not picking-up.

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Broad problem area A "problem" is not only related to a serious wrong with a current situation that needs to be rectified immediately. immediately. It is also related to find the right answers to improve the existed situation. A problem is the difference between the actual and the desired ideal states. Examples of broad problem areas: The reputation of a company in the marketplace is decreased. The power of distribution channels not as effective as anticipated. The sales volume of a product is not picking-up.

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Minority group members in organizations are not advancing in their careers. The newly installed information system is not being used by the managers for whom it was primarily designed. The introduction of flexible work hours has created more problems than it has solved in many companies. There is an escalation for the strike.

Preliminary information gathering The broad problem area needs to be narrowed down to a specific problem statement through preliminary gathering information. Narrowing down the problem depends on the type of problem. Narrowing down can be carried out through: a) Unstructured interviews b) Structured interviews c) Literature review: a review of existing sources of information. d) (a or b) + c •

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In general there are two types of data: 1) Secondary data: It refers to data that already existed either in the organization or outside of an organization. It helps the researcher to focus further interviews more meaningfully on relevant aspects found to be important in the literature. It can be easily collected by the researcher from a) internal organization records and b) external organization sources. MIS helps the organization in this case. Internal organization’s records: published records, previous research, case studies, library records, archives, company policies, procedures, and rules that can be obtained from the organization's records and documents. •

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External organization’s records: online data, company websites, and the internet in general, statistical bulletins and government publications that can be obtained from the outside sources. 2) Primary data It refers to data that are not existed in the organization's records and documents and can not be easily collected by the researcher. It can be obtained through observing events, people, and objects, or by administering questionnaires to individuals. The interviews may help to search for relevant topics in secondary sources.

It is often beneficial to simultaneously gather primary and secondary data!!!. Literature review may be broadly classified under two headings: Firstly: B a c k g r o u n d i n f o r m a t io n o n t h e o r g a n izat i o n It may include the origin and history of the companywhen it came into being, business it is in, rate of growth, ownership and control, and so on.  Understanding of the following factors is helpful to arrive at a precise problem formulation. It depends on the situation, the type of problem investigated, and the nature of some initial responses received, certain aspects may have to be explored in greater depth than others. •

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Size in terms of employees, assets, or both. Charter - purpose and ideology. Location - regional, national, or other. Resources - human and others. Interdependent relationships with other institutions and the external environment. Financial position during the previous five to ten years, and relevant financial data. Information on structural factors (for instance roles and positions in the organization and number of employees at each job level, communication channels, control systems, workflow systems). Information on the management philosophy

Secondly: P r ev a il i n g k n o w l ed g e o n t h e t o p i c   

The researcher should examine all data relating to the particular problem area. Literature review

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A literature review is a step-by-step process that involves the identification of published and unpublished work from secondary data sources on the topic of interest, the evaluation of this work in relation to the problem, and the documentation of this work.

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The purpose of the literature review is to:

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Help the researcher to introduce the subject of study,

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Develop and identify the problem statement,

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Build on previous research to offer the basis from which to get to the next steps of the theoretical framework and hypotheses development.

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A good literature review ensures that:  –

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Important variables that are likely to influence the problem situation are not left out of the study. A clearer idea emerges as to what variables will be most important to consider (parsimony), why they are considered important, and how they should be investigated to solve the problem. The literature survey helps the development of the theoretical framework and hypotheses for testing. The problem statement can be made with precision and clarity.

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Testability and replicability of the findings of the current research are enhanced. One does not run the risk of "reinventing the wheel"; wasting effort on trying to rediscover something that is already known. The problem investigated is perceived by the scientific community as relevant and significant.

Conducting the literature review Firstly: The first step of the literature review involves the identification of the various published and unpublished materials that are available on the topic of interest, and gaining access to these.

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The types of data sources of literature review The quality of a literature review depends on a cautious selection and reading of books, academic and professional journals, reports, theses, conference proceedings, unpublished manuscripts, newspapers and the Internet. The precise combination of resources depends on the nature and the objectives of your research project. 1) Textbooks It is a useful source of theory in a specific area. An advantage of textbooks is that they can cover a broad range of topics. It covers a topic much more thoroughly than articles does. A downside of textbooks is that they tend to be less up to date than journals.

2) Journals a) An academic and professional journals are important sources of up-to-date information. b) Articles in academic journals have generally been peer-reviewed (the scrutiny of experts in the same field before being accepted for publication). There are two types of articles published in journals: 1) Review articles:  A type of data analysis in which the results of several studies are combined and analyzed as if they were the results of one large study. It summarizes previous research findings to inform the reader of the state of existing research. •

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It provides an overview of all the important research in a specific area. 2) Research articles: It is an empirical research, describing one or a few related studies. The conceptual background section of a research article provides a compact overview of relevant literature. Research articles provide a detailed description of the purpose of the study, the method (s) used, and the results of the study. Articles in professional journals are a valuable source of recent developments in the field and of facts and figures. •

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They may provide you with a feel for the practical relevance of a problem. 3) Theses PhD theses contains an exhaustive review of the literature in a specific area. Most PhD theses include several empirical chapters. The chapters have the same structure and characteristics as academic journal articles. 4) Conference proceedings Conference proceedings can be useful in providing the latest research, or research that has not (yet) been published.

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Conference proceedings are very up to date, and for this reason this information source is quite valuable if you are working in a relatively new area or domain. Not every manuscript presented at a conference is eventually published in an academic journal; hence you must critically assess the quality of this information source. 5) Unpublished manuscripts The APA (American Psychological Association) defines an unpublished manuscript as any information source that is not "officially" released by an individual, publishing house, or other company. Unpublished manuscripts are often very up to date.

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Government departments and corporations commission provide a useful source of specific market, industry, or company information. 7) Newspapers

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Newspapers provide up-to-date business information. They are a useful source of specific market, industry, or company information. Opinions in newspapers are not always unbiased.

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8) The Internet The number of newspapers, magazines, and journals that is available electronically is growing rapidly. The Internet is unregulated and unmonitored. Several universities have developed useful guidelines to assess the quality of information found on the Internet (check, for instance, http://www.lib. berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Evaluation.html).

Secondly: Searching for literature •

Databases include journal articles, books in print, census data, dissertation abstracts, conference papers, and newspaper abstracts that are useful for business research.

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Computerized databases provide a number of advantages: They save enormous amounts of time. They are comprehensive in their listing and review of references. Gaining access to them is relatively inexpensive. Most libraries have the following electronic resources at their disposal: Electronic journals. Full-text databases. Full-text databases provide the full text of the article.

3. Bibliographic databases. Bibliographic databases display only the bibliographic citations; that is, the name of the author, the title of the article (or book), source of publication, year, volume, and page numbers. 4. Abstract databases. Abstract databases also provide an abstract or summary of articles. They do not provide the full text of an article or manuscript. Thirdly: Evaluating the literature  The abstract of an article usually provides an overview of the study purpose, general research strategy, findings, and conclusions.  An article's introduction also provides an overview of the problem addressed by the research and specific research objectives.

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A good literature review needs to include references to the key studies in the field. The quality of the journal that published an article can also be used as an indicator of the quality of an article; what is the impact factor of the journal?" The impact factor of a journal can be viewed as the average number of citations in a year given to those papers in the journal that were published during a given period (usually the two preceding years). The value of articles or books are: the relevance of the issues that are addressed in the article or book, the importance of a book or article in terms of citations, the year of publication of the article or book, and the overall quality of the article or book.

All the articles considered relevant to your study can be listed as references, using the appropriate referencing format, which is discussed in the appendix to this chapter. To assess the quality of recent research you could ask the following questions: Is the main research question or problem statement presented in a clear and analytical way? Is the relevance of the research question made transparent? Does this study build directly upon previous research? Will the study make a contribution to the field?

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Is there a theory that guides the research? Is the theory described relevant and is it explained in an understandable, structured, and convincing manner? Are the methods used in the study explained in a clear manner (description of methods)? Is the choice of certain methods motivated in a convincing way (justification of methods)? Is the sample appropriate? Are the research design and /or the questionnaire appropriate for this study?

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Are the measures of the variables valid and reliable? Has the author used the appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques? Do the conclusions result from the findings of the study? Do the conclusions give a clear answer to the main research question? Has the author considered the limitations of the study? Has the author presented the limitations in the article?

Fourthly: Documenting the literature review •

Documenting the literature review is important to convince the reader that:

(1) The researcher is knowledgeable about the problem area and has done the preliminary homework that is necessary to conduct the research, (2) The theoretical framework will be structured on work already done and will add to the solid foundation of existing knowledge.

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Example: Organizational effectiveness Organization theorists have defined organizational effectiveness (OE) in various ways. OE has been described in terms of objectives (Georgopolous and Tannenbaum, 1957), goals (Etzioni, 1960), efficiency (Katz and Kahn, 1966), resources acquisition (Yuchtman and Seashore, 1967), employee satisfaction (Cummings, 1977), interdependence (Pfeffer, 1977), and organizational vitality (Colt, 1995). As Coulter (2002) remarked, there is little consensus on how to conceptualize, measure, or explain OE. This should, however, not come as a surprise to us since OE models are essentially valuebased classifications of the construct (the values being those of the researchers) and the potential number of models that can be generated by researchers is virtually limitless. Researchers are now moving away from a single model and are taking contingency approaches to conceptualizing OE (Cameron, 1996; Wernerfelt, 1998; Yetley, 2001). However, they are still limiting themselves to examining the impact of the dominant constituencies served and the organization's life cycle on OE instead of taking a broader, more dynamic approach (Dahl, 2001, p. 25).

Fifthly: Defining the problem statement After the interviews and the literature review, the researcher is in a position to narrow down the problem from its original broad base and define the issues of concern more clearly. There are three key criteria to assess the quality of the problem statement (what are the characteristics of a good problem statement): 1) Relevant: a problem statement is relevant if it is meaningful from a managerial perspective, an academic perspective, or both. •

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What is the problem statement in the following situation? Employee loyalty Companies benefit through employee loyalty. Crude downsizing in organizations during the recession crushed the loyalty of millions. The economic benefits of loyalty embrace lower recruitment and training costs, higher productivity of workers, customer satisfaction, and the boost to morale of fresh recruits. In order that these benefits are not lost, some companies, while downsizing, try various gimmicks. Flex leave, for instance, is one. This helps employees receive 20% of their salary, plus employer-provided benefits, while they take a 6- to 12month sabbatical, with a call option on their services. Others try alternatives like more communication, hand holding, and the like.

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From a managerial perspective, research is relevant if it relates to (a) a problem that currently exists in an organizational setting or (b) an area that a manager believes needs to be improved in the organization.

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From an academic perspective, research is relevant if: (1) nothing is known about a topic, (2) much is known about the topic, but the knowledge is scattered and not integrated, (3) much research on the topic is available, but the results are (partly) contradictory, or (4) established relationships do not hold in certain situations.

2) Feasible: a problem statement is feasible if you are able to answer the problem statement within the restrictions of the research project (time and money, the availability of respondents, the expertise of the researcher). Not too broad in scope. For example "How do consumers behave?" is far too general to investigate. 3) Interesting: the researcher should genuinely interest in the problem statement he tries to answer, so that he can stay motivated throughout the entire research process.

Examples of well-defined problem statements 

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To what extent has the new advertising campaign been successful in creating the high-quality, customer-centered corporate image that it was intended to produce? How has the new packaging affected the sales of the product? Has the new advertising message resulted in enhanced recall? Does expansion of international operations result in an enhancement of the firm's image and value? When you have defined the problem statement you are ready to start your research. First, however, you need to communicate the problem statement and a number of other important aspects of the study - such as the scope of the study, the procedures to be followed, the time frame, and the budget - to all the parties involved.

Sixth: The research proposal The research proposal drawn up by the investigator is the result of a planned, organized, and careful effort, and basically contains the following: 1. The purpose of the study. 2. The specific problem to be investigated. 3. The scope of the study. 4. The relevance of the study. 5. The research design offering details on: 6. The sampling design. 7. Data collection methods. 8. Data analysis. 9. Time frame of the study, including information on when the written report will be handed over to the sponsors. 10.The budget, detailing the costs with reference to specific items of expenditure. 11.Selected bibliography. •

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Example: Research proposal to study retention of new employees Purpose of the study To find a solution to the recurring problem of 40% employee turnover within the first three years of their recruitment, and more specifically to: • • •

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Draw up a profile of the employees who quit;  Assess if there are any special needs of the new recruits that require to be met; and Determine the reasons for employees leaving the organization in the first three years.

Problem statement How can small to medium-sized firms increase the organizational commitment of their employees? Scope of the study This research analyzes the problem of high turnover of employees within  small to medium-sized firms. Relevance of the study The cost of employee turnover to firms has been estimated to be up to 150% of the employees' remuneration package (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991). There are both direct and indirect costs involved. Direct costs relate to leaving costs, replacement costs, and transition costs, while indirect costs relate to the loss of production, reduced performance levels, unnecessary overtime, and low morale. The results of this study provide managers with the means to decrease the costs of employee turnover.

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The research design (i.e., details of the study) . First, we will interview a small number of employees Sur vey i nstr uments  who have joined the company in the last three years. Based on these exploratory findings, we will administer a questionnaire to the employees who have joined the company in the last three years. . The interviews will be conducted during office hours in Data coll ection  the Conference Hall of the organization at a prearranged time convenient to the interviewees. The questionnaire will be given to the employees to be completed by them in their homes and returned anonymously to the box set up for the purpose by the specified date. They will all be reminded two days before the due date to return their questionnaires, if not already done. Time frame The time frame necessary for completion of this research project is approximately five months. During these five months, periodic reports will  be provided on the progress being made. Budget

The budget for this project is in Appendix A. Selected

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bibliography Bateman, T.S. and Strasser, S. (1984). A Longitudinal Analysis of the Antecedents of Organizational Commitment.  The Academy of Management Journal, 27, (1), 95-112. Lachman, L. and Aranya, N. (1986). Evaluation of alternative models of commitments and job attitudes of professionals,  Journal of Occupational Behavior, 7, 227-243. Meyer, J. and Allen, N. (1997). Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, research and application. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Meyer, J., Stanley, D., Herscovitch, L. and Topolnytsky, L. (2002).  Affective, continuance and normative commitment: a meta-analysis of antecedents, correlates and consequences.  Journal of Vocational Behavior, 63, 20-52. Schlesinger, L., & Heskett, J. (1991). The Service-Driven Service Company. Harvard Business Review, 69, 71-81.

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Managerial implications Understanding the antecedents-problemconsequences sequence and gathering the relevant information to get a real grasp of the problem go a long way towards pinpointing it. Information exchange between the manager and the researcher during all the important stages of the research process will definitely enhance the managerial relevance and the quality of the research effort.

Ethical issues in the preliminary stages of investigation If the researcher does not have the skills or resources to carry out the project, he/she should decline the project. If the researcher decides to carry out the project, it is necessary to inform all the employees - particularly those who will be interviewed for preliminary data gathering through structured and unstructured interviews - of the proposed study It is necessary to assure employees that their responses will be kept confidential by the interviewer/s and that individual responses will not be divulged to anyone in the organization.

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Employees should not be forced to participate in the study. Checklist for dealing with ethical considerations and dilemmas during the first stages of the research process: Why is this research project worth doing? How does the organization benefit from this project? What impact, if any, does your research have on the organization? Do you have the skills and resources to carry out this research project? Have you informed all the employees of the research project? Why not?