Individual Term Paper
Individual Term Paper
Abstract
Purpose: The paper evaluates the organization research methods. It gives its properties together with their implications. Five factors are provided in regard to organizational research methods.
Methodology: A model with five factors is provided. These factors comprises of political properties, personal properties, ethical properties, historical properties, and organizational properties.
Findings: It wasestablished that political, ethical, personal, historical, and organizational factors, combined comprise of an interconnected system of unavoidable influences on choice of research methods.
Research limitations: The research was limited in the view that there was no certain organization that was evaluated to determine the applicability of these claims. The study mostly relied on past literature rather than coming up with a novel criteria through which to evaluate the factors.
Practical implications: Researchers in an organization can use the findings from this study to make decisions on the research methods to use in a research. In addition, they can use the findings to determine the data collection methods to follow.
Originality: The model the study uses is original and adds value to this area of study as many other researchers have also been researched on this area.
Key words: Personal properties, ethical properties, historical properties, organizational properties, and political properties.
Introduction
The organizational research field exhibits three trends: methodological inventiveness, a multipradigmatic profile and widening boundaries. The choice of methods is shaped by norms of practice, epistemological concerns and objectives. It is also influenced by personal evidential, ethical, political historical and organizational factors. This paper notes that those factors comprise of a system of inevitable influences and the contextualization of the choice of methods contains three implications. First, it is not easy to argue that the choice of methods is depended solely on links to aims of the research. The choice of methods entails a wider and convoluted mutually dependent set of considerations. Second, it is not easy to view method as merely a method for breaking reality into focus. The choice of methods acts as framers for the data window for observing phenomena, and they influence the interpretative schemas together with theoretical development. Third, therefore, the competency of a research entails coherent addressing of personal, evidential, ethical, political, historical and organizational factors relating to an investigation (Colvin, and Charm, 1999).
Research Method
Recently combining research methods for example, (Akker, 2002) became increasingly essential in particular when pursuing the goal of gaining “rich theoretical insights (Dyer & Wilkins, 1991) p. 613.” One form for “developing new theoretical insights” (Herman, and Egri. 2000)) is the review centric research approach in which a researcher evaluates “existing theory and research” (LePine& Wilcox-King, 2010) p. 506, however, the argument may be stated including case study research findings that are based on the real world observation of practitioners and organizations e.g. (Eisenhardt, 1989), (Herman, and Egri. 2000). In the research presented here, the focus is n combining the most imperative “previously established studies and concepts”noted in thescholarly text the foundation on which a synthesis is provided “advance the knowledge we have on the matter” (LePine& Wilcox-King, 2010) p. 507”. In this study, the most significant success factors helping in the present business or organizational situation to build goals to achieve a competitive advantage are identified.
This research approach integrates the “interpretive paradigm” in which a rich description of each factor in this organization context is established (Dyer & Wilkins, 1991) p. 615.The significance of an organizational action is articulated in a causal model. This research comprises an in-depth assessment and elucidation of the goal and each factor and the organizational action that can be derived. The paper argues that there is a need for investing in certain business areas for expansion of the organizational effectiveness. Over one hundred articles were reviewed. Five to ten articles for each of the factors were identified and reviewed. More than thirty articles on competitive advantage and how to build and maintain it were also examined.
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Widening boundaries An unbounded research field, embracing a wide range of topics and aims |
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Multiple paradigms Postmodern, critical, interpretative, and positivist |
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Methodological inventiveness Combination of traditional with creative new data collection and methods of analysis |
Research model
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Research topic Conventional concern with objectives, questions practice norms |
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Historical properties Experiences and evidence base Benchmarks and traditions Terminology |
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Organizational properties Location, size and sites Professional bureaucracy Role and structure Stability and instability |
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Organizational research methods choice |
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Political properties Stakeholder demands Partisan conclusions Negotiated objectives Layered objectives Publishing politics |
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Ethical properties Committee positions Codes of practice Scrutiny heightening |
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Personal properties Relationships Networks Competencies Preferences |
Factor 1: Organizational properties
The fieldwork logistics will be extensively influenced by the properties of the focal organization like location, size, and whether it is a professional bureaucracy or a commercial organization (Boser, 2007). The choice of a method may as well be profoundly subject to the research site’s stability. Methods that are inflexible or predetermined are less apposite with a changing organizational context. Nonetheless, one significant modern aspect of the majority of large size and medium organizations concerns the scale and frequency of the role and structure change. For instance, a tracking research of large British firms established that they were experiencing considerable transformations on average, every three years a third were engaged in large scale reengineering yearly (Herman, and Egri. 2000). Though these studies were focusing on the organizational repercussions, they have effect on the method of research. For instance, a question like in relation to someone’s title is faced with mystified smile since a majority of managers has varied responsibilities changing recurrently (Buchanan, 2003). It can be problematic to establish a frame for sampling or a list of foremost informants or construct an organization chart.
On various incidences and diverse settings, re-interviewing has had to be done to establish whether they assumed a different role and substantiated the line of questioning. Increase in outsourcing of chief services, and the development of forms of networks in collaboration of inter-organizations imply that partner organization members may not be sure which organizations or project is being questioned. Taking of static measurements for establishing co-variation has less relevance. This renders process theoretical perspectives, based on contextualized event sequence analysis extremely appropriate (Lincoln, 1995).In line with the research topic, the patterns and flux of change become substantive data observations, and the researcher’s role may be like catching reality in flight (Lincoln, 1995). In this speedily changing organizational setting, Buchanan, (2000), notes that research methods ought to be reviewed regularly and regulated in a flexible manner. This is as the preliminary plans turn into been unsuitable and as new inquiry lines become evident. As argued next, this flexibility is problematic when ethical guidelines call for researchers to specify methods in advance and rigidly adhere to the said plans.
Factor 2: Historical properties
A research field history condition modern-day method decisions by offering experience, evidence base, departure points, benchmarks and traditions. As a result, the Hawthorne studies’ ghosts persists haunting researchers in the 21st century, after making long lasting contributions to terminology, methodology and research agendas. In biomedical and natural science, new research is building on earlier work rendering it outdated. Organizational research is not cumulative in this respect and researchers have been ignoring it at their own peril. For instance, although research into traits of leadership was discarded in the 1950s, considering inconclusive and contradictory findings, analogous studies come up in popular, professional, and academic literature (Lomas, & Denis, 2003). Therefore, organizational research may be advised to permit historical experiences, findings, conceptualizations and frameworks to influence modern day research focus choices and suitable methods.
Factor 3: Ethical properties
Organizational research has attracted an increased level of ethical inquiry. A majority of bodies has long-standing research ethics codes, although there is limited evidence or no evidence for suggesting that the codes are even regularly disregarded. Nonetheless, in Britain, the health department (2005) Research Government Framework applies the biomedical research standard to organizational research in social care and health, even where clients or patients are not been implicated. This comprises of an expanded process of application policed by local and multisite research ethics committees, concerned with informed consent issues, respond confidentiality and right of withdrawal.
Factor 4: Personal properties
Researchers regularly study topics which they have vested interest, using methods in which they have training or competent, and with which they are contented. Other researchers take pleasure in an in-depth face to face encounters and the challenge of identifying pattern and order in qualitative data. Other researchers get satisfied in finding out at computer screen associations in quantitative data sets. The training and skills of a researcher can henceforth influence research topic choice as well as how it is investigated. Neophyte researchers are instructed to avoid allowing personal preference along with a bias to interfere on technical decisions regarding methods of research. Researchers should be encouraged to experience guilt with respect to personal passions and beliefs, in relation to the acquired, practiced and honed skills. Desertion from the principle that relationships with research participants taint data, Dukerich and Dutton (2006), argued that the social networks of a researcher together with the personal skills are crucial for design and sustenance of attractive organizational research. Though friends and acquaintances’ contributions in relation to accessing organizations as research sites and gathering relevant inside information may be extensively valued, these concerns are rarely recognized in published accounts as factors that influence the design of a research (McCalman, Boddy, and Bachanan, 1988).
Factor 5: Political properties
Since organizations are political systems, (Schultz, and Hatch, 2002), it is not easy for a researcher to revere conservative norms on neutrality of the observer by avoiding power and political issues entanglement. Researchers customarily engage in political actions, in at least four ways. These are when negotiating the objective of the researcher, acquiring consent to access participants, aligning with stakeholders groups and when trying to publish findings.
Objective negotiation
Often researchers find themselves negotiating their objectives with the gatekeepers with the capability of authorizing or obstructing their work. Gatekeepers here imply all people who can make a decision on whether or not to research can take place in an area. This can be problematic, in at least two respects, from the perspective of methods. First, in the majority of organizational setting, the field researcher may come across many people with the capability to permit or disallow access to research. Second, the researcher may often have a choice in relation to the approach of gatekeepers. For instance, the most senior or the most or those they are closely related, it may not be politically advisable to approach more than one gatekeeper concurrently (Colvin, and Charm, 1999). Nonetheless, gatekeepers may make their consent reliant and the free enquiry spirit is endangered in the event that certain topics and themes are downcast, and others encouraged. One solution entails the overt description of a study in bland terms while wording instruments of data collection for incorporation of interrelated themes. There is tailoring of observation and document collecting as required.
This approach raises ethical issues associated with suitable degrees of honesty and openness on the researcher’s part, as well as the levels to which respondents and gatekeepers and respondents may be misled in relation to the intentions of the researcher. This implies that entirely informed consent may not have been administered. For instance, Bhattachaya, (2007) in his study on perceptions of management on organization politics, clam that topic is too sensitive to be used for direct investigations. Therefore, researchers ought to conceal the term politics with a suitable euphemism. Funding can be linked to the willingness of the researcher to address certain questions, themes and problems in a given manner. Failing to comply with these expectations has predictable implications for the research grant submissions that may be amplified when funding bodies maintain that organizational research access secured prior to release of financial support (Bishop, 2005).
Layered permissions
Organizational researchers can rarely approach respondents directly requesting them to participate in their researches. Permission need to be obtained from a senior management gatekeeper. These requests may be referred to other senior colleagues some cases a board or a management committee. Managers of a unit or department may then have to be approached with further requests for accessing their staff in a certain manner, after getting the general warrant for proceeding. Individual respondents may snub collaboration despite the surge of the concessions from the management. This permissions’ layering contains at least two consequences. First, this may hinder the commencement of collection of data, and second, it can compromise the objectives and methods of research. Permission may be constrained regarding the topics to be examined, the question to ask, the materials to be assembled, and the timing and the way in which collection of data unfolds (Boje, 1991).
Partisan conclusion
Among the organizational research, dilemmas entail the extent to which researchers align their agendas with the stakeholder group interests. Support for managerial agendas, explicit or implicit draws partisanship accusations captured by the phrase on servants of power. Since the permission by management is characteristically a prerequisite for organizational access, it is often not easy to avoid relating research objectives overtly to managerial interests in a manner that could potentially dent other stakeholder groups’ interests. For instance, assess process redesign options that would lessen staffing, skills, and levels of payment (Colvin, and Charm, 1999). Researchers are expected to report what they find out to those granting them access for offering documentation and letting staff to take part in the interview, completing questions, or attending focus groups, for instance. This reporting means a tacit acceptance of themes and problems that are defined managerially. The consequences of failing to meet the expectations of gatekeeper may be damaging to the local reputation of the researcher, it hampers findings publications; it occasionally results to reports censorship and close the research to other investigators (Elmes, and Barry, 1997).
Explanation/Discussion of Model
Goal
While the attributes of organizational research have been extensively accepted, they are depicted as problems or difficulties; they interfere with choosing of methods to be evaded via a keen planning. Nonetheless, as illustrated in figure 1.1, these factors, combined instead comprise an interconnected system of unavoidable influences on choice of research methods. Contextualization of the choice of methods in this web of influence has about three suggestions. First, it is not easy to sustain a model of the researcher as an impartial spectator. In addition, the selection of a supporting archetype is a politically instigated act (Stanley, and Campbell, 1966). It is not just a rationally informed preference since it can involve an implicit alignment with interests of stakeholders, neglecting concerns, which might be crucial to other individuals. There is further comprise of neutrality in feeding back to reports of gatekeepers regarding research findings, practical recommendations and conclusions as being politically wrong conclusions may be mislaid. Researchers who claim neutral status are mostly in pursuit of agendas that are implicitly in line with partisan interests. The perception of researcher as separated and fragmented had already been extensively dishonored (Stanley, and Campbell, 1966).
Second, it is not easy to maintain a model of the process of research in which the method is reliant on links to objectives, the restrictions and advantages of the approach objectively weighed against others. The paper shows that the choice of methods is a multi-criterion decision, which involves convoluted, interconnected and iterative considerations series. In this perspective, method is part of a package deal, an integral component of a comprehensive research system whereby in the quest for certain aims in a certain context, various factors are combined in an articulate way. These factors include evidential, personal, ethical, political, organizational, epistemological, theoretical factors. A method choice is not a stand-alone decision arrived at an early stage in the process of research, but advances with the unfolding of the project. At this point, the researcher has understood the main concerns as well as the organizational research setting. The extensively advocated perception emphasized in methods texts and a different place, and the process of the research flows inexorably and logically from research questions, in an oversimplification when these influences are considered on an investigation (Bryman & Bell, 2007).
It is not a surprise that when Towler and Currall (2003), undertook a content analysis of organization studies articles, he established that just 21% was discussing the relationship between the research topic or problem and methods the investigation used.Third, it is not easy to maintain a concept of method as neutral technique for focusing on reality. Formed by a wide-ranging method frame, the data windows via which organizational events are observed. The choice of methods establishes the concealed together with the documented hence connecting personal, evidential, ethical, political, historical and organizational factors with the development of both practical and theoretical conclusions. As a result, these factors can be considered as data instead of as features of the research setting of problematical concern. Reflexivity advocates (Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2000) insist on honesty and openness in relation to the researcher’s identity and position, together with crucial self evaluation. This argument suggests that reflexive appraisal ought to be extended to integrate discussion of the factors which influence the choice of methods for a certain project. This is because, these manipulate and contribute to towards evidence base for construction of conclusions.
Therefore, it is essential to understand comprehensively and candidly articulate what informed choice of research methods. The factors, which affect those choices, may be broadly described as training support methods by offering a widely informed overview of the nature of the craft. Promoting prolific conversation across the research community that appears to be increasingly disjointed by orientation differences. Irrespective of many restraint s and influences, the organizational research work design and the choice of the methods of data collection have partly remained a creative process. This convoluted package of issues may be pooled and constructed in varied ways. Therefore, it is imperative to distinguish not only the technical skills and researcher’s knowledge, but as well the role of personal biases, preferences, interests, prejudices and creativeness (Wray, and Collins, 2005).
New Insight
This paper started by arguing that the organizational research field displays three noteworthy trends. The first entails a widening scope of the agenda, embracing a growing range of settings, problems, issues and themes. A second theme which is common across the social sciences, is about the diverse, multi-paradigmatic approach that resulted to declining of the traditional dominance but not mainly the influence of positivist orientations. Though having blurred margins, the competing orientations have led to increased debate. As a result, the field is split with limited or without consent around concepts, theories, frameworks or practical prepositions. A third trend entails the creative approach to methods now deploying a extensive array of data collection methods, with newer methods standing alongside and often matching conventional approaches. This paper aims at demonstrating that the choice of a research method is determined by not only technical and theoretical considerations related to the objectives, research topic and practice norms, but also by a number of other organizational field research characteristics (Wray, & Brewis, 2009).
Conclusion
In a research method, competency has traditionally and narrowly been expressed in terms of selecting methods that are in line with the topic and objectives of the research while avoiding or resolving the annoying practical fieldwork concerns. It can be concluded that a method’s competency in a method ought to encompass the ability of coherently and systematically addressing, the organizational, personal, evidential, ethical, political, and historical influences. The attributes of the organizational research setting or context should be considered. In the study, a research convention or history relevant to a certain study should be followed. The unavoidable politicization of the organizational researcher’s role should be put into consideration. All researches are faced with ethical issues and the constraints imposed by a growing concern with these ethics ought to be controlled. Audience related and theoretical issues in translation of evidence into practice are also critical. Lastly, personal preferences and biases in regard to method choice play a noteworthy role in the research procedures (Yanow, and Hatch, 2008).
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