Research Questions and Hypothesis

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Submit three draft research questions and hypotheses (if appropriate) developed from your problem statements. The questions should be sufficiently complex and original so that the findings could contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field.

Problem Statement
The purpose of this mixed methods study will be to explore and use participant views to develop and test an instrument with a sample from a population. The first phase will be a qualitative exploration of the management, retention and sharing of knowledge. Knowledge Management (KM) has gained emphasis in many organizations, and specifically in companies in the aerospace industry (APQC Study, 2002). The U.S. aerospace industry, in 2008, is faced with a 26% declining workforce (Brain Drain, 2008). The problem is five of the most difficult areas to fill are engineering, avionics, electro-optics, propulsion, and power systems (Brain Drain, 2008). While faced with the global market environment, technological advances, and increased competitiveness, many of these subject matter experts are retiring. The study will be performed by collecting leaders' and Human Resources' insight and data from 10 major companies across Southern California.
The second phase will use a quantitative research method. Themes from this qualitative data will be developed into an instrument to compare 1) retention rate of the subject matter experts, 2) incentives for retiring SMEs to postpone their retirement to share their tacit knowledge with their mentees, and 3) survey feedback from newly hired employees with a robust mentoring program (Murdock, 2006). The result will be a common approach for managing organizational knowledge for a given sample population representing the majority of the organizations in the Southern California region.

Purpose Statement No. 2
The purpose of quantitative research study is (a) to describe the retention rate of engineering, avionics, electro-optics, propulsion, and power systems experts in 10 different aerospace companies in Southern California, and (b) to describe the relationships and degrees to which incentives will induce them to postpone their retirement and share their tacit knowledge with those whom they mentor (Murdock, 2006). The U.S. aerospace industry, in 2008, is faced with a 26% declining workforce resulting in a loss of intellectual capital for the industry (Brain Drain, 2008). The companies chosen are Boeing, Northrop, General Electric, Raytheon, Lockheed, Ball Aerospace, L3 Communication, BAE International, and AlphaStar.
Research Method will be Survey of HR managers of the companies selected. The necessity to survey the HR managers is to determine the existing retention rate for each type of expert. An e-mail survey will be conducted among the population of HR managers of all 10 companies. Geographical Location will be the sites, or at least the e-mail sites, of the 10 aerospace companies, in Southern California.

I have taken the issue of employee turnover and retaining employees.

Defining the problem

Movement of individuals into, through, and out of an organization is termed as turnover. Turnover can be statistically defined as the total number (or percentage) of separations that occurs over a given time period. The turnover rate is an important indicator of the morale and health of an organization.

http://www.indiainfoline.com/bisc/jmht.html

A severe problem facing aerospace industry today is the issue of retaining and attracting human resources. These resources that were stable in the past are the most mobile and fickle today. Thus managing employee turnover is critical to any and every organization. According to the fratfiles "Conservative estimates put the cost of replacing a lost employee at 25 percent of the annual compensation amount. For the typical full time employee who earns $38,481 and receives $50,025 in total compensation, the total cost of turnover would amount to $12,506 per employee."
Thus the employee turnover can significantly affect the profits. According to the about.com, Total employee turnover cost = Costs of hiring new employees + Costs of training new employees. We will research this issue intensively for our organization and our problem statement is:

"Quantum and Impact of employee turnover on our organization'

Data collection
We will use both primary and secondary sources of collecting data. Both exploratory and conclusive research exemplifies primary research. We will do primary research by survey and interview to know the causes of reduction.
We will do employee Survey to collect the data. It is used to:
? To Capture a Wide Variety of Information
? Measuring the relationship between actions & needs, desires, preferences, employee turnover ...