Management research is an organized,
systematic, data-based, critical, objective, scientific investigation, carried
out for the purpose of finding a solution to the managerial problem. Managers
need to know the paradigms of research in order to make proper decisions to
carry out the tasks. Making a decision consists of the following phases:
- Recognition of the managerial problem
- Information gathering about the problem
- Analyzing the problem
- Generating and perusal of alternatives
- Finally the decision
The main difference between a manager
and a non manager is the manager’s prerogative to make decisions. As mentioned
before it is a crucial factor that the manager needs to know the research
process.
In research there are main two
paradigms, the positivist and phenomenological philosophies. Positivist
researcher is quantitative, objectivist, scientific, and experimentalist. The
phenomenological researcher is mainly qualitative, subjectivist, humanistic, interpretive
and traditionalist.
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| Figure 01 Phases of research |
Mainly a
research is conducted in three phases, the conceptual phase, empirical phase
and interpretive phase. The figure above shows these phases in brief.
Types of research are: Pure
fundamental, Exploratory, Technical, Historical, Applied, Scholarly, Marketing,
Analytic, Descriptive, Action, Causal, Cross-sectional, Comparative, and
Longitudinal.
Among these the applied research is
mostly carried out in the management fields. All of the above types of research
can be divided in to two research methods, the field research methods and the
survey research methods.
Field Research Methods These
researches are qualitative in nature, typically involves fieldwork in which the
researcher observes and records behavior and events in their natural setting.
The researcher physically goes to the people, setting, or site in order to
observe the subject as it normally and naturally occurs or behaves.
Strengths
- Conducted in a realistic environment.
- Have a degree of flexibility.
- Forced to work within a small budget (be in the field with a notebook and pencil).
- Weaknesses
- Results in qualitative which limits its ability to produce descriptive statements about large population.
- Regarded as suggestive of possible interrelationships.
Survey Research Methods These researches are quantitative in
nature, and are non-experimental, descriptive. Surveys can be useful
when a researcher wants to collect data on phenomena that cannot be directly
observed (such as opinions on library services)
The two main types of survey are:
1. Cross-sectional surveys are used to gather information on a
population at a single point in time.
2. Longitudinal Surveys which gather data over a period of
time.
Strengths
- Useful in describing the characteristics of a large population.
- With a large sample generate results of high accuracy
Weaknesses
- Useful in describing the characteristics of a large population.
- With a large sample generate results of high accuracy
