Global Management Concepts - Example

Researching Work, Employment and Employee Relations Introduction The study is focused towards the understanding of different approaches of research methods. There are mainly two major research methods, such as quantitative and qualitative. This study will describe various theoretical and practical differences of these research aspects. It will also evaluate two different articles regarding the contribution of qualitative as well as quantitative research approaches to analyse employment relationship and human resources management in different industry sectors across the globe. Description of both the articles Article 1: Global management concepts and local adaptations In this article, the organizational consequences and the diffusion process of the management theories that spread internationally through the industry are examined. Taking the instance of the concept of working group, the business of ultimate assembly of sample of German and French car manufacturers has been studied. It becomes obvious from the investigation that the plants are conducting experiment with the working groups or employees and have attuned them to their appropriate requirements; a process which is called local adaptation. The result shows that the home/local adaptation of employees has been brought about towards a great extent through the institutional dissimilarities between countries. The analysis also shows that the working groups or employees are prevalent in German and French car manufacturing units. Due to the adaptation and diffusion processes, idiosyncratic as well as isomorphic tendencies in the organizational structures is observes at similar times. It was analysed that industry growth in the mature industries such as the car manufacturing company is mainly driven by the internal organizational transformation processes. As an alternative, in not so mature industries, growth is driven by entry as well as exit of firm. The concept of working group influences the employment relations and enhances the group activities in any organisation to achieve a common goal (Woywode, 2002). Article 2: The role of the senior Human Resources executive in Japan and the United States During the period of 1990, the Soviet Union has been crumpled and the capitalism was rising. Japan differentiated itself for encompassing an approach of the corporate governance, which balanced dissimilar stakeholders, such as customers, employees, shareholders, and banks. On the other hand, the organisations in United States give superiority only to the shareholders. The role of workers-as-stakeholders is derived from the Japanese traditions as long term service or employment and intensive training; the enthusiasm to protect workers from downturns; as well as ubiquitous company unions, which cooperated with the management. Japanese system of management gives importance to the labour relations and the employment. Human Resource authorities in the organisations of Japan have demonstrated very active role in rotating managers across various departments of the organisation. This procedure ensures to enhance the efficiency of the managers. The managers of this organisation view the Human Resources position as a challenging and beneficial posting as it possess a strong hold on the overall operations of the organisation. In contrast, US system of management of human resources is not as good as Japan. The Human Resources managers in the US corporate houses have been seen to maintain a lower profile in the overall hierarchy of the organisation. It involves high ratio of women in the Human Resource role and also provides low compensation to the Human Resources executives. It was analysed that in spite of the shift towards the marketplace in the current period, central tendency in the Japan stays at some distance or aloofness from central tendency in the United States because of the national differentiation in social norms and corporate organization. The organisations of United States are not following the proper resource allocation procedure within the human resources departments (Jacoby et. al, 2005). Differences between quantitative and qualitative research Market research is a method to gather valuable information from the targeted markets or consumers (Creswell, 2013). Relationship between theory and research Qualitative research This procedure is generally utilized to understand underlying opinion and reasons of research activities (Newman, 1998). It assists researchers to generate hypothesis about different subjects which further utilized in various quantitative researches. It is also focused on conducting in-depth researches to understand the changing trends in opinion and thought process of organisations. This research process consist a long execution phase in comparison to its planning phase (Taylor and Bogdan, 1998). Quantitative research This procedure generally quantifies different research variables. It depends on a large volume of sample to gather the required data. It also involves in-depth analyse of the problems of different sectors. The planning phase of this research procedure is much longer than its analysis phase. It also prohibits respondents to provide descriptive answers by designing the questionnaire with predetermined sets of answers (Campbell, 1955). Epistemology Epistemology generally describes different knowledge which is considered to be acceptable during research procedure. Qualitative aspect The reality of the matter is generally constructed and the subject matter involves primacy. The personal information of respondents is not exposed in front of anyone (Phiri, 2015). Interpretivism approach allows the researchers to adopt perspective that assist them to understand the proper meaning of research result (Phiri, 2015). Quantitative aspect The facts encompass an objective realism and it included the primacy of method not the subject matter. The variables could be recognized and relationships can be measured (Phiri, 2015). Positivism influences the observation of different subject matter of the world from an objective point of view (Phiri, 2015). It follows scientific method that is focused on various experimental designs. Ontology Ontology in research process mainly deals with queries regarding the existence and reality of different research entity. Qualitative aspect The Interpretivism or qualitative approach of ontology describes that different entity in the world have multiple realities due to differences of experiences of researchers. This approach focuses on constructing a flexible research structure (Phiri, 2015). Quantitative aspect The ontological aspect of the quantitative paradigm begins with theories and hypothesis. Positivism approach of ontology describes that there is only a single objective reality to any research situation regardless of the researcher’s belief. Therefore, this process follows a structural approach to conduct research (Phiri, 2015). Reflection of quantitative and qualitative research Article by Michael Woywode (2002): The article of Michael Woywode (2002) has demonstrated both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Primarily the researchers have followed a structured and controlled data collection procedure which encouraged them to select 20 distinct samples. This procedure utilized semi-structured questionnaire to pose some valuable open-ended questions to the respondents which are concentrated on the effectiveness of working groups within these organisations. The structured portion allows the researchers to focus on the positivism approach while the unstructured part of data collection encourages the interpretivism approach. This discussion has shown that working groups are very much available within the leading automobile manufacturing organisations. Almost all the organisations that are being researched have adopted the concept of working group (Woywode, 2002). Article by Jacoby et al., (2005) The research procedure used in this article is mostly dependent on quantitative approach. The positivism approach of ontology has been assisted the researchers to take a structural and controlled approach in the research process. It assists them to identify clear research topic and constructing appropriate hypothesis. The research methodology is also following deductive approach as the data collection procedure mainly starts with constructing a hypothesis. This hypothesis has conveyed that the HR department of the US organisations are more focusing towards hiring female employees in their senior positions while the Japanese organisations still prefer male employees in their leading positions. The major question of the quantitative study of the research procedure is based on that particular hypothesis. According to this research approach, the HR personnel in the branch offices of the US organisations have minimum authorities to take decisions about the management of labour and employer relationship. On the other hand, the Japanese organisations have transformed the resource allocation procedure over a period of time by actively adding one HR executives per five employees (Jacoby et. al, 2005). Research design and data collection Different approaches of research design and data collection Research design procedure can follow quantitative approach or qualitative approach. Quantitative approach of research design generally utilizes formal and systematic approach to obtain quantifiable information. This research design is generally presented in a numerical form. On the other hand, the qualitative research design is based on social constructivism perspective. The data collection procedure of researches also follows qualitative as well as quantitative approaches. Quantitative data collection uses statistical numbers to access information. Qualitative data collection procedure is more focused towards the elaborated opinions of respondents. Research design and data collection methods in both the articles The research design method in the article by Michael Woywode (2002) follows the qualitative research design procedure which describes the idea of applying working group concept within the workforce of French and German can manufacturing companies. Therefore, it has concentrated in the study of the behaviour and preferences of specified sample. The article of Jacoby et al. (2005) has demonstrated the quantitative research design. This design assisted the researchers to analyse the subjects in a numerical format. Most of the study has quantified the results of HRM and employment relationship in the basis of the statistic of performance and productivity. The data collection method in both the article utilizes the quantitative as well as qualitative data collection procedure. In the article of Michael Woywode (2002), one part of the questionnaire has allowed the respondents to communicate their personal opinions through focused group discussion, observation and ethnography while the other part involves structured questions which assisted the researchers to quantify the similarities and differences of these organisations (Ehigie and Ehigie, 2005). In the second article of Jacoby et al. (2005), data collected by the HR through quantitative research method is based on the numeric results and statistics. This process is beneficial to rank employees and operational units according to their performances. It has demonstrated that the HR professionals of organisations in the US are specialized in the field of human resources while HR executives of Japanese companies are a blend of specialist and generalists (Jacoby et. al, 2005). The qualitative data collection methodology has demonstrated that in comparison to Japanese organisations, the US organisations are more inclined towards outsourcing their HR services to other organisations which have caused lower profile and job dissatisfaction within the HR employees in the US organisations. (Jacoby et. al, 2005). Contribution of article Replication: The discussed research methodologies can be replicated by management of different organisations as these standard procedures will assist them to gather quantitative as well as in-depth information about overall employee relationship and performance. Various HR departments utilize ethnography, focus group and face-to-face research techniques to observe the performance of different groups and their interaction procedure over a period of time (Ehigie and Ehigie, 2005; Malterud, 2001). Reliability: The quantitative research of German and French car manufacturing company cannot be considered as a reliable source due to the small sample size. These results may provide a limited view about the employee adaptability procedure and their importance in the working group. On the other hand, the result gathered by qualitative procedure can be considered reliable for different organisations as it has covered different aspects of research methodology. In the article of Jacoby et al. (2005), the quantitative approach can be considered more reliable than the qualitative approach as the human resources managers have considered a wide range of data base of the numeric results and statistics to calculate the employee performance. Validity: The research results of both the articles can be considered valid internally as well as externally. Both the methods in article of Michael Woywode (2002) have efficiently evaluated the opinion of the workforce. Semi-structured questionnaire has assisted the researchers to gather the valid information regarding the local adaptability of the organisations. It has provided assistance to analyse the utilization of working group concept in organisations. The article of Jacoby et al. (2005) has also demonstrated a proper execution of research methodology. Therefore, it has accrued valid results which have assisted the researchers of both the countries to analyse the workforce management procedure by HR departments. The study has evaluated different approaches of both research methodologies. The qualitative researches have shown that working groups are largely available within the leading automobile manufacturing organisations. Almost all the researched organisations have adopted the working group concept. On the contrary, the qualitative research has depicted that labour-employer relationship decisions in the organisations of both the countries are only handled by the authorities in the headquarters. Both the articles reflected the employment and employee relation in the organization. By analysing these research procedures I can say that all these studies are helpful for the human resources executives to understand the employment relationship as it provides them a broad view about the work relationship between the team members and team leaders or managers. Conclusion The study has described the different approaches of qualitative and quantitative methods which follow different analysis procedures for organisational operations. Various examples of the qualitative and quantitative researches in different industry sectors have been discussed here. According to the details of this study it can be said that an in-depth discussion of the qualitative research and statistical data of quantitative approaches have played a vital role on the analysis of the HRM and employment-relationship practices. Reference List Campbell, D. T., 1955. The informant in quantitative research. American Journal of sociology, 60(4), pp. 339-342. Creswell, J. W., 2013. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. New York: Sage publications. Ehigie, B. O. and Ehigie, R. I., 2005. Applying qualitative methods in organizations: a note for industrial/organizational psychologists. The Qualitative Report, 10(3), pp. 621-638. Guest, D. E., 1987. Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations [1]. Journal of management Studies, 24(5), pp. 503-521. Jacoby, S. M., Nason, E. M. and Saguchi, K., 2005. The role of the senior HR executive in Japan and the United States: Employment relations, corporate governance, and values. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, 44(2), pp. 207-241. Malterud, K., 2001. Qualitative research: standards, challenges, and guidelines. The lancet, 358(9280), pp. 483-488. Newman, I., 1998. Qualitative-quantitative research methodology: Exploring the interactive continuum. Illinois: SIU Press. Phiri, P.M., 2015. Methods and Methodology: Which approach? Qualitative or Quantitative Technical, epistemological and ontological considerations? Implications for the conduct of a research project. [online] Available at: < http://www.academia.edu/760617/Methods_and_Methodology_Which_approach_Qualitative_or_Quantitative_Technical_epistemological_and_ontological_considerations_Implications_for_the_conduct_of_a_research_project> [Accessed 20 February 2015]. Taylor, S. J. and Bogdan, R., 1998. Introduction to qualitative research methods: A guidebook and resource . New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Woywode, M., 2002. Global management concepts and local adaptations: Working groups in the French and German car manufacturing industry. Organization Studies, 23(4), pp. 497-524. Read More