Applied Management & Quantitative Research Plan Guideline
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Sample research proposal (Quantitative)
Please help me develop an abbreviated quantitative research plan. Here is the research problem:
Applied Management and Decision Sciences
Organizations are human systems. As such, each member of the system brings to bear the full range of psychological and emotional behavior while also applying themselves to their work which is highly prescriptive and ostensibly rational. Because of this, human systems experience high levels of inefficiency as emotions, personality, and unconscious impulses interfere with the objectivity and logical processes at work.
The question is, to what extent do individuals' idiosyncrasies interfere with the expectations of their performance? A secondary question is, are there managerial tools to mitigate these forces among employees while they are in the workplace?
I, then, need to complete the following:
Create a problem/purpose statement.
Draft an introduction for your abbreviated research plan.
Provide viable research questions and hypotheses.
Generate a written research plan that addresses the following questions:
* What are your research questions? To what extent can you test them? How would you justify the viability of your questions?
* What are your hypotheses? How would you test them?
* Why would this design be the most appropriate for answering the research questions? Conversely, why would qualitative and mixed methods designs not be appropriate?
* What quantitative approach would you select for this study? Why is that approach the most appropriate one for answering the research questions?
* What theoretical framework or perspective would you use?
* What is your target population? How would you identify and recruit participants? What factors would contribute to determining appropriate sample size? You will not need to calculate sample size for this assignment.
* What are the independent and dependent variables?
* If appropriate for your plan, what instruments might you need?
* What data collection procedures might you use? Why would those be the most appropriate methods to use? How would that data help to answer your research question(s)/hypotheses?
* What are threats to validity? How might you mitigate them?
* How might you analyze the data?
* What are the ethical considerations related to the plan?
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Solution Summary
This solution will assist the student in discussing applied management and mitigation in organizations or in the workplace. This solution will also provide the student with a comprehensive outline in order to prepare and conduct a quantitative research plan.
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To what extent do individuals' idiosyncrasies interfere with the expectations of their performance?
From the structure of your assignment, it would appear as though it would be beneficial to plan a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis of a particular organization. This can be accomplished by choosing a sample size of different levels of employees.
One challenge is that employees have to examine their organization from an objective point of view in this case. From my own experience, the idiosyncrasies are revealed when you informally speak with them.
The following resource reveals the results of research from the effects of organizational environment on workers' quality of life and performance:
http://media.gallup.com/documents/whitePaper--Well-BeingInTheWorkplace.pdf
(Please copy and paste the link into a new browser window and press enter or return)
It is a helpful guide in that it examines "well-being" in the workplace and how well-being should be promoted. On page 4, the statements that were asked to those employees are listed. These 12 statements are overarching statements which can be broken down to find more detailed information.
From my own experience, the manager of each department needs to have a psychological or sociological base of knowledge in dealing with people. When managing a team of individual professionals, as I do, the manager will be "liked" and "disliked" by the team members at the same time especially if communication is not relayed and received objectively and appropriately.
Although a manager provides guidance and may have to "trump" certain situations based on environment developments, the individual professional may feel as though the manager is intruding on his/her territory. This can cause strain in healthy group dynamics; however, it does not mean that mediation cannot fix the situation especially if both parties are willing to understand their boundaries.
This brings me to the concept of "boundaries." There are unwritten, contextual boundaries that exist in the socio-cultural make up of any society. In smaller countries, these can be very obvious and transfers into organizational behaviour very easily and recognizably. In metropolitan areas (larger cities or countries), the socio-cultural make up can be much diverse. These boundaries are written (actual), as in job descriptions, and they are also unwritten (inherent) based on the culture. If an employee "feels" as though someone else is crossing into their territory, feelings of mistrust, disdain, and just plain dislike for the other person will surface. In many cases, these feelings take a very long time to heal or they never do unless one of the persons involved leaves the ...
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