Management Research 01

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.

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