Exploring General Types of Research Design and Approaches - Essay Example

Hence, the concern for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is rising. Businesses are concentrating towards the progress of a sense of CSR as well as focusing on their basic values to promote their products and sustain their consumers (Enquist, Johnson and Skalen, 2005). Despite the extensive development of the CSR concept, there is an ongoing debate since long that the basic goal of a business is to maximize the profit for its stakeholders while the promotion of CSR increases stockholder’s investment (Friedman, 1962).

Nevertheless, numerous past studies have established that CSR really augments the businesses’ financial performance in the long run. The topic has a lot of scope of research and development since the association between the CSR and the firm’s financial performance has been very controversial and had been argued by many scholars, for instance Pava and Krausz (1996) related CSR to company’s performance while Ullmann (1985) does not relate these two together. Since any of the company’s actions some how or the other influences its performance thus it can be said that the performance of a company does depend over its CSR actions.

Primary Research Question The primary research question formulated for the above mentioned research problem is: How does the financial performance of a business relates to it CSR activities? Secondary Research Question In order to investigate the above mentioned primary research question, I have formulated the following secondary research questions that will be helpful for a quantitative investigation of the study. How CSR activities of a business influence the perceptions of its customers for its brand?

How the identified customer perceptions influence the business’s performance? Methodology I intend to use a quantitative research method, which basically focuses on the facts and practicalities of the subject under consideration. The basic objective of selecting this design approach is the nature of this study that leads towards the evaluation or quantification of the company’s performance on the basis of its customers’ perceptions about the brand that is, in turn, influenced by its CSR activities.

It is necessary to acquire the on-ground knowledge of businesses’ performances and their strategies so as to determine the impact of Corporate Social Responsibility over the financial performance of a business. Keeping in view the objective of the study, I thought it to be the best to acquire the data related to the CSR and the turn-over of various businesses and then assess the collected information to reach to the conclusion of the study. The post-positivistic principle is the philosophical research approach that underpins this investigation.

The post-positivistic research philosophy will help us to find out the Do s and Don’ts of a business. This approach is dependent over different philosophies such like social contract theory, virtue ethics, post modernism and Habermasian critical theory. I intend to adopt the post positivistic philosophical design in this study since it will provide the contextual dimension of reality to the investigation that will lead us to challenge and re-invent scientific theories through empirical research. I will