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The term 'Research' is not an exclusively academic word. We employ it in everyday situations, to refer to the collection of information. If we are planning a visit overseas, we might say that we are 'going to research the cheapest flights', for example
Used in this way, the word carries not only the implication of collecting information, but also of collecting that information in a particular way. The term 'research' can also be applied to a wide range of contexts and subjects. Thus, in an everyday sense, research is about collecting information in a systematic manner, on a range of topics.
‘Research’ is used in exactly the same sense in academic or scientific enquiry, although it does have one or two additional connotations. In its most basic sense, research involves collecting information on something, and thus adding to our overall knowledge. However, research goes beyond providing information in order to produce an accurate description of a place or social situation. It takes the key features of that description, and tries to understand why these exist. For example, many people would say that stress is a common feature of the workplace today. However, the causes of that stress may be diverse and complex, and may very well be interlinked themselves with many other factors. A researcher would try to take the initial description of the workplace, and then attempt to understand the mechanisms by which stress is produced in some members of the workforce. In other words, the researcher would try to produce an explanation. Such explanations may not be perfect, and they may not fit all comparable situations, but they can help us to understand something of the way in which situations arise in communities. In a recent study, Tonnelat (2008) investigated the lives of homeless people in a small community on the outskirts of Paris. On one level, he produced a description of their lives, and the makeshift accommodation which they had created for themselves. However, he went further than that, in trying to analyze their relationships with the permanent residents of the area, the police, and the city housing department. He interviewed the people themselves, and got to know them as individuals. In so doing he started to develop an understanding of their lives, and an explanation of the factors which affected them. In other words, he began to create a theory related to the lives of homeless people living on the margins of a large city.
Categorizing research
Much research is concerned with trying to develop a better understanding of the functioning of the world. In such cases the research is less concerned with particular contexts or situations, and more with trying to understand the basic principles which are operating and which will apply in many different situations. This kind of research is often termed pure or basic research. It usually takes place within a specific subject discipline, and uses a clearly-defined range of concepts. Sometimes pure research is concerned with testing or validating previously-established theories, while on other occasions it will try itself to develop new theories. This type of research is beyond the scope of a term project or an MRE.
On the other hand, some research sets out from the first instance to address a specific issue or problem rather than to add to our knowledge in a general way. Research which is related to a practical situation, perhaps to try to resolve a practical real-life issue, is termed applied research. A great deal of business and community research is actually applied research, since there is often a great need to resolve pragmatic issues in business and economic development. Managers will want to know how best to allocate their resources, how to innovate in product development, and how to expand their markets. Developers will want to know how to work in difficult and challenging communities, and how to enhance their career potential. The list could go on and on. One could survey CEOs and executive directors in their community and explore their experience in financing their companies, the obstacles they encountered, the tactics they found useful, the effect of financing on their growth, etc. One could also survey CEOs and executive directors and determine if they follow a transactional or transformational style of leadership and any relationship of the style to the nature of the organization, its size, or its maturity. These are examples of applied research. Term projects and MREs typically fall in the applied research category. We are in process of changing the course title of MBAC6801 (MBAD625) from “MRE” to “Applied Research Project” to describe its nature more accurately.
A very broad term which is used a great deal in the human sciences is social research. This wide-ranging term is used to include all areas of research on how human beings behave and interact with each other. Social research can encompass a wide variety of different subject areas and contexts, including business, community organizations, and public service. For example, it might involve researching the way human beings interact in industrial companies, in community organizations, in schools or universities, or government departments. Moreover, social research ranges across a number of different academic disciplines besides sociology. Methods of social research are employed in psychology, management studies, business studies, community studies, etc.
Business research is systematic research to generate accurate information for use in decision making in business and management. Business research has a couple distinct characteristics: it draws on knowledge developed by other disciplines and has practical consequences. It either needs to contain the potential for taking some form of action or needs to take account of the practical consequences of the findings. Considering the MBA in CED is a Business program, you can pursue a topic in management, marketing, finance, or leadership for your MRE. In addition, the trans-disciplinary nature of Business research makes this type of research approach a good fit for community economic development situations.
Business research needs to provide findings that advance knowledge and understanding, and it also needs to address practical managerial problems. Within these boundaries of advancing knowledge, addressing business issues and solving managerial or organizational problems, the purpose and the context of your research project can differ considerably. For some research projects your purpose may be to understand and explain the impact of something, such as a particular policy. You may undertake this research within an individual organisation. For other research projects you may wish to explore the ways in which various organisations do things differently. In such projects your purpose may be to discover and understand better the underlying processes in a wider context, thereby providing greater understanding for people working in the sector or for policy makers. For yet other research projects you may wish to place an in-depth investigation of an organisation within the context of a wider understanding of the processes in place. However, it should be noted that the MRE is not a plan: marketing plans, business plan, and strategic plans are deliverables of other MBA courses. The emphasis of the MRE is on research: the MRE results may help in formulating a plan later, but the MRE is not meant to be a plan.
After a program has been implemented, business research may be conducted to measure the extent to which the program is meeting its objectives. This is known as evaluation research and it is used extensively by community organizations, NGOs, and government agencies to measure the socio-economic impact of different actions, programs, or events.
The procedures and techniques utilized by basic and applied research, and by social and business research do not differ substantially. They all employ the scientific method to answer the questions at hand. The scientific method requires systematic analysis and logical interpretation of empirical evidence (facts and data) to confirm or disprove prior conceptions (hypotheses).
Choosing a Research Topic
Before you start your research for your MRE you need to have at least some idea of what you want to do. This isprobably the most difficult, and yet the most important, part of your research project. Up until now most of your studies have been concerned with answering questions that other people have set. In this project you need to set your own questions: need to formulate and clarify your research topic and your research question. Without being clear about what you are going to research it is difficult to plan how you are going to research it. It is to your advantage to have a topic for your MRE in mind before you start the MBAC 6121 – Applied Research
Methods course, since the course can function as a workshop for you to clarify your research question and develop your research proposal.
The purpose of the research-component of the MBA in CED program is to ensure that you will understand the research process and that you gain experience in carrying out a research project; a desirable set of skills for managers in government, business, or the Third sector. A few learners also understand that the MRE can play a strategic role in advancing their career, their organization, and their community. We are flexible on topic selection and researchable topics in community economic development or business are acceptable.
Here are some potential sources of research topics:
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Your current job environment: Are there hot issues in the organization, or emerging trends in the sector, that are not well understood ? Your supervisor or board may have a pet topic that would enhance your future opportunities. This would work, provided that the topic is also one in which you also have a strong interest
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Your own professional interests: What excites and energizes you ?
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Professors and professional colleagues
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Professional journals in your field/sector
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Conferences and seminars
Here is a partial list of major topic areas for your research project:
General Business and Economics
Forecasting practices
Business and industry trends
Effect of financial crisis on market demand/donations
Acquisition dynamics
Innovation
Export and international expansion
International ranking indices
Uneven development
Impact analysis
Corporate Responsibility
Ecological impact
Legal constraints on advertising and promotion studies
Social values and ethics studies
Sustainability Reporting
CSR Reporting
Voluntary &. Mandatory Sustainability Reporting
Community Development
Community Analysis: location quotients, shift share .. Geographic and economic relationships to region and the world Endogenous and exogenous development Role of the social in the economic Equity gaps Social capital
Finance and Accounting
Climate Change: effect on Business and Accounting Profession
Effect of financial crisis on access to capital
Forecasts of financial interest-rate trends
Stock, bond, and commodity value relationships
Capital formation alternatives
Mergers and acquisitions
Risk-return trade-off studies
Impact of taxes
Portfolio analysis
Financial institutions
Development finance
Microcredit
Expected-rate-of-return studies
Capital asset pricing models
Credit risk
Cost analysis
Management and Organizational Behavior
Total quality management
Morale and job satisfaction
Leadership style
Employee productivity
Organizational effectiveness
Structural studies
Absenteeism and turnover
Organizational climate
Organizational communication
Physical environment studies
Labor union trends
Sales and Marketing
Measurement of market potentials
Market segmentation studies
Determination of market characteristics
Distribution-channel studies
New-product concept tests
Advertising research
Buyer-behavior/consumer satisfaction
Social marketing
Macro-marketing
It is often a useful starting point in the writing of research questions to begin with one general focus research question that flows from your research idea. This may lead to several more detailed questions or the definition of research objectives. Objectives are more generally acceptable to the research community as evidence of the researcher's clear sense of purpose and direction. Research objectives are likely to lead to greater specificity than research questions, as per example below: Research Question
Research Objectives
1 To identify organizational objectives for team briefing schemes.
2 To establish suitable effectiveness criteria for team briefing schemes.
3 To describe the extent to which the effectiveness criteria for team briefing have been met.
4a To determine the factors associated with the effectiveness criteria for team briefing being met.
b To estimate whether some of those factors are more influential than other factors.
5 To develop an explanatory theory that associates certain factors with the effectiveness of team briefing schemes.
1 Why have organizations introduced team briefing?
2 How can the effectiveness of team briefing schemes be measured?
3 Has team briefing been effective?
4 How can the effectiveness of team briefing be explained?
5 Can the explanation be generalized?
Deciding on a Research Strategy
Your research strategy will be a general plan of how you will go about answering the research question(s) you have set (the importance of clearly defining the research question cannot be overemphasised). It will contain clear objectives, derived from your research question(s), specify the sources from which you intend to collect data, and consider the constraints that you will inevitably have (for example access to data, time, location and money, ethical issues). Crucially, it should reflect the fact that you have thought carefully about why you are employing your particular strategy. It would be perfectly legitimate for your assessor to ask you why you chose to conduct your research in a particular organisation,
What matters is not the label that is attached to a particular strategy, but whether it is appropriate for your particular research question(s) and objectives. We must also emphasise that these strategies should not be thought of as being mutually exclusive. The strategies that we consider for the MRE are:
• survey
• case study
• ethnography
• action research
• cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
• explanatory studies
Survey
The survey strategy is a popular and common in business, management, and community research. Surveys are popular for a few reasons: They allow the collection of a large amount of data from a sizeable population in a highly economical way. Often obtained by using a questionnaire, these data are easily standardised, allowing convenient comparison. In addition, the survey strategy is perceived as authoritative by people in general, because it is easily understood. Every day a news bulletin or a newspaper reports the results of a new survey that indicates, for example, that a certain percentage of the population thinks or behaves in a particular way.
Case study
Many different types of research designs could count as a case study. A case study implies the idea of a single example as the object of a study. For example, a single organization, or perhaps even a division of an organization, such as a department could be considered as the object of a case study. A case study could also involve a larger unit, such as a community or region. However, whether the case study is an individual person, a group of people such as a team, or an institution, or a geographical area, there are some general features of a case study which more or less apply to all situations.
A case study should first of all have some distinctive features which will render it significant to study. However, besides having distinctive or particularly interesting features, a case study should also provide data which in some way reflect the situation in other analogous cases. In other words, the case study should also ideally reflect some typical features which mean that a degree of generalizability can be undertaken. The ideal case study should thus have both some distinctive and unique features, but also some characteristics which are typical of other situations.
Ethnography
Ethnography is a popular research perspective, perhaps because it offers researchers a degree of flexibility, and the possibility of using a range of data types. Its broad approach is derived from social anthropology. The early anthropologists often travelled to distant cultures and countries, and lived within societies, usually for a sufficient length of time to learn the local customs and language. They attempted to look at the world through the eyes of the members of that society, and to understand the world as they did. They tried to make sense of the relationships within the community, of the way power and authority were distributed, and of the interaction between the genders. In short, they attempted to understand all aspects of the community they were studying.
Ethnographers have adopted this methodology but applied it to communities closer to home. They have typically studied within their own country different social groups, including groups of different ethnicity or religion, organizations or settings such as schools, colleges, housing estates and businesses, and occupational groupings or people living on the margins of society in some way. In other words, ethnographers will select their subject matter from a very wide range of contexts. The word 'ethnography' is used, on the one hand, to describe the broad methodology, while on the other hand, an ethnography is the written account derived from an ethnographic research study.
An ethnographic account tries to achieve a number of different objectives. One feature common to most ethnographic research, is that the researcher will try to adopt the viewpoint of those people who make up the social setting. The researcher does not pre-determine the nature of the research, but tries as far as possible to let the participants or social actors (as they are sometimes known in ethnographic studies) determine the key issues in the research. This can be contrasted with survey research within a positivist tradition, where the researcher designing a questionnaire normally determines the nature of the questions to be asked. In examining the social world as viewed by the participants or actors themselves, the ethnographer tries to understand the meanings which they attribute to events. One of the assumptions of ethnographic research is that people may look at the same social event in different ways depending upon their own perspective. The ethnographer is interested in the functioning and evolution of the way in which meanings are attached to events, and in particular is interested in differences in perception between different communities and societies.
We often notice that institutions of the same type can differ enormously in their 'atmosphere' and 'tone' when we enter them. Think of the differences between high schools for example, or those between hospitals. They may receive approximately comparable resources and be located in comparable areas, yet be very different in nature and character. Ethnographers are interested in exploring the reasons for these differences. In constructing an ethnography of a school for example, the ethnographer would try perhaps to describe the nature of the relationships between the staff, and between the teaching staff and the school management. Having attempted to describe the nature of those relationships, the ethnographer would seek evidence and explanations for these relationships. Explanations might lie in the management style of the principal, or in the behavior of the students, or in the structure of the school. In achieving these explanations, the ethnographer will utilize any kind of data available, from interviews and observational data, to collecting documents and keeping notes in a diary.
The research literature on ethnography is extensive, including both research studies which employ ethnography and also more theoretical discussions of the perspective. Savage (2006), for example, has explored the use of ethnographic data in research in health studies, a context in which it has often been particularlyrelevant.
One of the initial issues for ethnographers is that of gaining access to the setting in which they will conduct their research. Almost inevitably this involves obtaining permission from people in authority and this may sometimes be withheld. An organization may simply not want someone collecting data on every aspect of its structure and function. Ethnographers will sometimes choose to collect data within an organization to which they already have access, for example the community organization they work in.
Action research
Action research differs from other forms of applied research because of explicit focus on action, in particular promoting change within the organisation. In addition the person undertaking the research is involved in this action for change and the subsequent application of the knowledge gained elsewhere. There are many examples of action research projects in community development and they would be suitable for an MRE. However, they typically take a long time as they are real-life projects and your participation in an action research project should be planned long in advance.
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies
An important question to be asked in planning your research is 'Do I want my research to be a "snapshot" taken at a particular time or do I want it to be more akin to a "diary" and be a representation of events over a given period? As always, the answer should be 'It depends on the research question'. The 'snapshot' approach is what we call here cross-sectional while the 'diary' perspective we call longitudinal.
We should emphasise here that these time perspectives to research design are independent of which research strategy you are pursuing. So, for example, you may be studying the change in manufacturing processes in one company over a period of a year. This would be a longitudinal case study. Even with time constraints it is possible to introduce a longitudinal element to research. There is a massive amount of published data collected over time, by academic researchers, government departments, and Stats Canada, just waiting to be analysed.
Explanatory studies
Studies that establish causal relationships between variables may be termed explanatory studies. The emphasis here is on studying a situation or a problem in order to explain the relationships between variables. You may find, for example, that a analysis of community statistical data shows a relationship between income rates and amount donated in a year. You could go and subject the data to statistical tests such as correlation in order to get a clearer view of the relationship. You can use SPSS or Excel to perform this test.
In correlation or correlational studies an evaluation is made of the extent to which one variable varies with another. If as one variable increases the other increases approximately in proportion, then the correlation is termed a positive one. On the other hand, if one variable diminishes in value when the other increases, then the correlation is regarded as negative. A correlation between two variables indicates the presence of a 'relationship' or that the variables are connected in some way.
Correlational studies are fairly powerful and not difficult to carry out; primary and secondary data can be used. A few MREs have used them, but many more learners should consider this type of research approach.
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