NewBoston Networks Company Human Resource Management - Essay Example

Research Proposal: Organizational Culture Research Proposal: Organizational Culture Background Michael Millward established new Boston Networks. The company’s created data and voice-networking products using voice switching and software engineering expertise. The company expanded in a small scale of time from the year 2000-2010 but the CEO, Michael Millward felt that the company risk taking ability declined and the corporate and organizational culture showed adverse effects that had a huge impact on the performances of the employees. Thus, in this regard, in order to generate an understanding on the issues within the company, it would be necessary to examine the organizational structure, strategic choices made by the management and company culture that had an impact on the performances of the employees. These issues need to be addressed because the company is not able to achieve its assigned goals and objectives, which are because apparently, the working environment of the company is in conducive. Hence, in order to improve the working conditions for the employees, a profound research will be conducted based on the quantitative method. The survey questionnaire as a means to take feedback from employees regarding the role of the managers and supervisors in aligning the duties of the subordinates, the extent to which they are being supportive of their individual tasks, providing good compensation packages, ability to delegate tasks and to have the role of making strategic decisions. The company operates in Ottawa, Canada, United States, EMEA and Asia Pacific, which shows that the company size is extensive and can expand globally. The total workforce consists of 2,165 individuals working in major departments of the company including Administration (including HR and Finance), Research & Development, Engineering, and Manufacturing, Sales, Marketing, Customer Services and Logistics. The organization form of the company is Sole proprietorship as Michael Millard founded it. The company consists of diverse workforce and employee distribution is uneven in all the countries. For instance, there is no Research Department in Canada, United States and Asia Pacific. In the same way, there is no engineering, sales or customer services present in Ottawa. Besides this, it is seen that their immediate supervisors affect most of the performances of the workforce. Some employees are happy with the management whereas others have issues with the organizational set up and blame Michael Millward for the communication gap with the management. Literature Review According to Alvesson (2012), good organizational or corporate culture constitutes a very important part of the organizational set-up as it explains the relationship between the employer and the subordinates and also focuses on ethics, determines working conditions and promotes profit making capacity for the employer. In other words, it can be said that every organization requires having a conducive work culture in order to promote employee engagement and well-being which would help them in performance enhancement, employee retention and the long run, generate more sales and profitability for the company. Furthermore, Schein (2010) state that there are basically three levels of organizational culture, firstly, the visible features that show a person’s inclination towards culture like his dress code or religious ritual. Secondly, organizational culture comes from an individual’s spoken beliefs, perceptions, traditions and his own perceptions. Thirdly, it comes from an individual’s behaviors and unspoken words. Many scholars like Schein (2010) and Dennison (1990) have this view that a leader determines an organizational culture as they provide implementation processes and support performance improvement programs to generate more productivity (Schein, 1985, Dennison 1990). Likewise, McKee (2010) has similar views. According to him, leaders have a role in building and maintaining relationships through shared knowledge that is communicated to the subordinates in to give direction and focus on their individual tasks (Kee, 2010). David E. McNabb (2013) discussed the same issues of organizational cultures in his book, “Research Methods in Public Administration and Non Profit Organizations.” The main features and approaches that are discussed are quantitative approaches to understand the effect of organizational culture on employees. Hypothesis “The organizational culture reflects the capability of the employer to share knowledge with the subordinate through effective leadership traits that are required to make the employees motivated to achieve their tasks independently.” Research Questions 1. What leadership traits are required by the organizational management to focus on making the work environment conducive for the employees? 2. How is communication and employee engagement related to the concept of “shared knowledge”? 3. How is work environment correlated with productivity and higher sales? These research questions can be answered easily because there have been a lot of the latest research conducted on organizational culture, its significance and its impact on work processes. Moreover, leadership traits are closely linked with organizational culture. In an autocratic organizational set-up, there is no concept of employee engagement and it makes the employees feel de-motivated which eventually have a negative impact on the organizational culture. In short, it can be said that in organizations where management builds more relationships with its employees have better work culture and employees feel valued. However, other factors like compensation packages and other facilities or benefits given to employees also need to be taken into consideration. Research Design The research design provides an outline for researchers to carry out their study in order to answer the research questions, thus in this regard it is vital to choose the appropriate research design to conduct the study in order to get effective results (Polit & Beck, 2010). In order to conduct research on organizational structure of New Boston, primary research would be conducted that would focus on the getting feedback from the employees of the company. The quantitative approach is most feasible because this method studies the variables in human behavior. As the case study involves behaviors of people with respect to poor work environment, so it can be said that quantitative research would be the appropriate methods as it requires fixed design, and there is a detailed analysis carried out about data collection and profound analysis of the situation (Robson, 2007). Research Method Empirical method of research would be applicable in this company with the quantitative approach. This empirical business research method involves interpretation of data, which is subjected to investigation through certain tools and techniques. It can be said that this research method involves different instruments to measure results, which maybe in the form of a questionnaire or content analysis. However, this case study would be examined through the quantitative approach, which evaluates the data through a numerical scale and quantity. These quantitative measurements are providing accurate and precise figures that can determine the true picture of the research, which is being conducted in a given time with clear-cut valuations. In order to conduct qualitative research, there are few options that can be opted, for instance, through in-depth interviewing, or through focus groups, participant’s observations or Ethno Studies. In this case, there is descriptive design followed, which would involve a survey (Lobiondo-Wood & Haber, 2010). In this regard, a questionnaire would be formed, and answers from the employees would be generated in order to have an understanding to the issues they faced in their corporate environment. Through this survey questionnaire, details of the behaviors and perceptions of the employees about the management and the corporate culture would be identified along with respect to the leadership traits, communication, motivational attributes that have an influence on their performances. Sample Selection Sample selection is the population identified that undergoes through the empirical research. In other words, it can be said that this sample is selected as “the total number of units from which data can be collected (Parahoo, 2006, p.258)”. This sample selection is carried out in all the countries where the company is operating. It has been stated by many scholars like Procter (2010) that during sample selection, it is appropriate to make use of probability sampling. Probability sampling reduces the chances of bias when the study is being conducted as the numbers of people selected for study are randomly chosen, and it is also simpler to carry out the research through samples than to target huge populations for research. It is also more practical and reduces the costs of associated with the research (Polit & Beck, 2010). Thus, it can be concluded that the sample size would be obtained from the Human Resource Department by random selection of employees and selecting the name of the employee by picking his name from a hat (Proctor et al., 2010). The total amount of employees working in the company are 2165 with about 70 people in the Logistics Department, 145 in the Customer Services, 170 people are in Marketing Department, 310 employees in Sales, 200 people in Manufacturing, 175 in Engineering, 750 in Research and development, 245 in Administration, HR and Finance. However, it is seen that there is an uneven number of employees in different countries thus; the sample size interviewed would be different for each country. There are 875 employees in Ottawa so it would be appropriate to target 100 employees from there, in Canada, there are 130 employees and about 25 people would be assigned for this project. In USA the total numbers of employees are 340 so about 50 employees, in EMEA, there are 760 employees so 75 individuals, in Asia Pacific there are 60 employees so 10 employees would be targeted. The total sample size targeted would be 210 employees. Data Collection Just like, it is mentioned by Parahoo (2006), quantitative data provides classification and behaviors of populations so data collection method need to be accurate, objective and should have the ability to repeat itself. In this case, data is being collected through a questionnaire to generate answers to the research questions put forward. A questionnaire is a data collection tool in which the participants of the study would be asked to give written answers to a set of questions developed for this purpose. It is considered to be easy and cost effective methods to generate information, providing an understanding on the attitudes of people or how they undergo different situations in changing organizational culture. A structured form of the questionnaire will be used that provides a kind of “self-report” to collect the relevant data (Polit & Beck, 2010). The questionnaire would be using the Likert Scale gathering information from the people. A Likert Scale in the questionnaire consists of statements that have five options from “strongly agree “to strongly disagree for positive and negative responses of the questions posed. The In the quantitative research, data is collected through statistical figures. In this case study, data will be collected from all the places from where the company operates. The employees or the sample sizes would be required to give answers through the written survey questionnaire in order to generate a quantitative data which will then undergo statistical computer programs to give the underlying results. Advantages and disadvantages of the chosen design The chosen research design for this particular case study is quantitative research design, and it has the advantage of providing a systematic and scientific analysis of cultures of the organization, which is easy and simpler to formulate. Besides this kind of research design gives detail analysis of data, which are retrieved in written form showing how the social contexts have impact on individuals. However, there are few disadvantages of this kind of research for instance the researcher would be totally relying on the processes involved to gather ideas from sample populations. Moreover, the data interpreted by the researcher undergoes bias and the time frame for such research method are more; it is a time consuming meaning and may take a lot of time to generate reliable results. Questionnaire with the Likert scale would give quantifiable results that can easily be retrieved by the participants and coded, making it less expensive than other scales. However, the only disadvantage is that people’s answers can be biased, or they can base their answers on response of the previous questions. Most importantly, most of the people refrain using extreme options like strong agree or strong disagree because they feel it could give negative implications to the study. List of References Alvesson, M., 2012. Understanding Organizational Culture. London: SAGE. Dennison, D., 1990. Corporate culture and organisational effectiveness. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons. Kee, M., 2010. Understanding the dynamics of organisational culture change: creating safe places for patients and staff. Queen Printer & Controller. Lobiondo-Wood, G. & Haber, J., 2010. (2010b) Reliability & Validity. In Nursing Research:Methods and Critical Appraisal for Evidence-Based Practice 7. New York: Mosby Elsevier St. Louis. McNabb, D.E., 2013. Research Methods in Public Administration and Nonprofit Management: Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches. New York: M.E. Sharpe. Parahoo, K., 2006. Nursing Research: Principles, Process and Issues. Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan. Polit, D.F. & Beck, C.T., 2010. Essentials of Nursing Research: Appraising. Philidelphia: Wolters Kluwer Health / Lippincott Williams. Proctor, S., T, A. & Lacey, A., 2010. Sampling. In The Research Process in Nursing. Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford. Schein, E., 2010. Organisational culture and leadership. San Francisco: Jossey- Bass. Robson, C., 2007. How to do a Research Project: a guide for undergraduate students. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Read More