The Impacts of Employee Involvement in the Hiring Process of Public Agencies - Assignment Example

The Impacts of Employee Involvement in the Hiring and Promotion Process of Public Agencies Opening ment The human capital base of any organization is the engine of growth for the organization and as such the selection of people to take up various positions within the organization must be guided with efficient and effective principles. It is in line with this that the use of employee involvement has been suggested as a very useful system in the hiring and promotion processes that take place within various organizations. By employee involvement, reference is being made to the direct involvement of as many employees as possible within the labor force of the organization when there is the need for hiring or promotion to take place (Toscano, 2003). Most often, hiring and promotions are necessitated when there are vacancies. Certain vacancies require that an entirely new person be brought to the labor force of the organization and this is where the whole process of recruitment and placement starts. In some cases, a vacancy requires that another person within the organization be promoted to take up that position. But whatever the case is, it is always important for human resource personnel who mostly undertake the hiring and promotion processes to appreciate and understand the importance of including the expertise of the existing employee in the process. Background of the study There have been several literatures that have been conducted earlier on the subject of employee involvement and recruitment. To sum up the literature framing of these works of literature, it can be pointed that authors of as many as ten (10) articles, whose information has been included in the reference list have touched on various aspects of the research topic including how employee involvement in recruitment and placement started, why the concept started, how the concept was used in its earlier stages, how the concept is being used now, the future prospects of the concept, as well as the impact of employee involvement on hiring and promotion (Buch, 1992; Carney, 1998; Cotton, 2003; Crocker et al, 2004; and Dachler and Wilpert,2008). On the whole, it has been said that employee involvement actually started in the era when there was massive shortage of human resource in the 1940s (Thorley, 2002). The shortage made it almost impossible to find any hiring and promotion agencies to undertake the duties of recruitment and placement for various organizations and companies. Subsequently, the human resource personnel of various organizations and companies started depending on the internal expertise of their employees. With time, this became a whole system or style of leadership when it became clear that employee involvement comes with so many advantages (Lodahl and Kejner, 2005). Today, employee involvement in hiring and promotion is almost a necessity that most companies and organizations would not want to do without for any reason (Vandenberg, Richardson and Eastman, 2009). This is because it generally promotes and ensures effectiveness and efficiency in the hiring and promotion process (The Newbury House Dictionary of American English, 1996). Even though the previous literature works most of which were undertaken as forms of research have contributed immensely to the discussions on employee involvement, recruitment and promotion, and leadership style in general, there is no denying the fact that most of these had major lapses in the way and manner in which they were conducted. For example on the issue of setting and sampling, most of the previous researches were conducted with a limited organizational base. That is, most of these researches looked only at small scale and medium scale organizations and companies without taking time to look at the impact of employee involvement in hiring and promotion on larger multinational companies. In this regard, it becomes difficult to generalize the findings from these research works and conclude on them as being empirical. What is more, most of the research works that were conducted earlier were conducted using the purposive method of sampling, whereby most of the respondents were intentionally targeted by the researchers. The deficiency that this particular practice brought to those researches is that it took away much of the subject of validity of results (Cumming et al, 2007). This is so because it is the random sampling technique that has been identified as the most reliable sampling technique guaranteed to ensure validity (Denton and White, 2000). With the lapses and deficiencies discussed above, the importance of the present study can easily be outlined as including both academic research importance and practical professional practice importance. As far as the academics are concerned, it would be said that this research is going to be a qualitative research that shall employ the use of structured interview as its major data collection method. Subsequently, the random sampling technique shall be employed in the selection of participants. In the long term therefore, this is going to be a research that shall guarantee and ensure much credibility as far as validity is concerned. The findings and conclusions of the research shall therefore become highly reliable for further research studies. On the practical professional importance, this research is going to target an all round organizational base including both small and large companies and corporations. The impact of employee involvement in hiring and promotion is therefore going to be felt by not just a limited number of companies or organization but by as many organizations and companies as possible. As the companies learn of the advantages involved in practicing employee involvement, they will also be educated on the basic challenges that are likely to be faced in the implementation of employee involvement so that they will be in a position to developing highly robust strategies that are aimed at solving the challenges at the very early stages. Problem statement For years, public agencies and a number of multinational companies have looked for ways of attaining effective and efficient hiring and promotion processes. But in most cases, these outfits are not able to get the needed results as far as the hiring and promotion of the right human resources are concerned (Walton, 2003). Sadly enough, the situation continues to persist despite various attempts to correct it. What this means is that there is still the need for further work to be done in attempting to reduce incidence of poor hiring and promotion. Judging from the fact that the degree of inefficiency continues to persist not because of the absence of a recruitment strategy but the failure of existing strategies, the simple indication that it sends is that it is important to change the processes and methods involved in tackling the situation. The major problem therefore has to do with the failed attempt to identify the right approach or method in tackling recruitment in various organizations (Wilson and Peel, 2001). This research work therefore comes in with the research topic of “The Impacts of Employee Involvement in the Hiring and Promotion Process of Public Agencies”. From the topic, we realize that the approach to achieving effective and efficient hiring and promotion should aim at the direct setting where the hiring and promotion takes place and this is the public agency. Secondly, we realize that the approach or method ought to involve the affected person who in this case is the existing human resource base or employee. Purpose of the study This is a qualitative research that is purposed to be conducted using a case study research design. It would be noted that a case study is a highly suitable research design for qualitative research that permits the researcher to identify a specified setting and critically understudies an issue within the setting that demands professional or in this case, academic research (Dewar, 2000). In the present dissertation, the case to be studied is the issue of hiring and promotion that takes place in public agencies. Within this case shall the issue of employee involve be diagnosed as a modern strategy that shifts the paradigm of recruitment and placement. Because of the use of a case study research design, the researcher is going to be confined within a very small setting. This is supposed to be one major difference between a case study and a survey, where very large setting is used (Mali, 2002). Because of the small size of the setting, it is expected that the population to be used in the case study shall be relatively small. This is expected to be advantageous to the researcher because of the use of qualitative method, which shall involve the use of interview instead of a questionnaire. Once an interview shall be used, it means that the researcher is going to have direct interaction with each of the respondents and so would be more comfortable handling a smaller population size than a larger one. Even though the topic of the dissertation is stated as the ‘impact’ of employee involvement in hiring and promotion, the major intent of the study shall be to explore all aspects of employee involvement in hiring and promotion including the advantages, challenges, ways of dealing with the challenges and the adaptation of employee involvement as an entire new system of leadership style. By exploration, reference is being made to the fact that the researcher shall not only be concerned with the need to know about concepts or issues about employee involvement and recruitment but would be concerned about analyzing deeply into the concepts to come to terms with how they apply to and affect everyday processes of living. To explore also means that the researcher shall not be the only or sole authority to man the ideas behind the concept. Rather the inputs and ideas of other external authorities and sources shall be incorporated into the entire study (Drucker, 2004). This particular process shall be achieved by undertaking both primary and secondary data collection. The primary data collection shall give the researcher the opportunity of collecting first hand data from respondents who shall be selected for the research. Secondary data collection shall on the other hand open the researcher up to the use of existing literature that have been produced as completed research findings and conclusions of other researchers. There are two major central phenomena of the study. These are employee involvement and recruitment. Employee involvement has generally been defined as the act of giving employees maximum room to operate in the decision making process of an organization (Marvin, 1994). Recruitment is on the other hand the processes involved in selecting and placing people in vacant positions in organizations. In the present study, employee hiring shall be viewed as a collective component of the democratic style of leadership whereby decision making takes place with the total consent of followers. As far as the purpose of the present study is concerned, what may be different is the fact that employee involvement shall be expanded to represent the specific assignment of roles to employees, which otherwise would have been identified as the traditional role of the human resource personnel alone. In some cases, these roles are even left in the hands of specially resourced persons who undertake them for a fee (Modernising Public Service Group, 1999). The purpose of the research therefore looks at how employees can be utilized for skills and knowledge that they either possessed already or that could easily be incorporated into their way of doing things. Recruitment in this study shall also be viewed as the occupation of vacant positions that are created and requires new employees to come from outside the various organizations to take up. Research questions The need to have a set of research questions that will guide in the collection of data for the present research is very necessary. This is because the research question will serve as a scope and delimitation in defining the areas from and within which the researcher is going to collect data (Munchus, 2003). Without these research questions, the study is going to be haphazard and disorganized. The research questions to guide the study are thus given as below. 1 What are the commonest forms hiring and promotion strategy undertaken by companies in recruiting employees? 2 Who are the major stakeholders in the hiring and promotion process of identified companies? 3 How can employee involvement be used as an integrated approach in avoiding ill-resourced hiring and promotion procedures? 4 What are the major advantages associated with the use of employee involvement as an integrated process in hiring and promotion in public agencies? 5 What challenges come with the use of employee involvement as a human resource strategy in hiring and promotion? 6 What immediate interventions present them selves for use in overcoming the various challenges identified with employee involvement in hiring and promotion? 7 How significant will an action research based on the use employee involvement in hiring and promotion over other forms of research types? Theoretical or conceptual framework The theoretical or conceptual basis for the present research touches on the concept of competency training or empowerment. It is in fact admitted that each person within the organization has special ability to perform and undertake extra roles and responsibilities that are not their traditional roles (Munchus, 2003). All that such people need is competency training and empowerment. The basis or source of this theoretical framework is therefore emanates from the principle or understanding that all people have function beyond their current limits once all needed structures are put in place for this to happen. Theoretically, it is very important to appreciate the fact that employee involvement should not be a basis for putting round pegs in square holds but that it should be accompanied with a comprehensive training and education program to ensure that the skill and knowledge of all employees available are enhanced to effectively undertake the roles of hiring and promotion that are assigned to them (Rhodes and Steers, 2001). Availability of time, staff training, logistical constraints, and bureaucracy have commonly been pointed out by human resource managers as a major challenge in undertaking employee involvement (Robbins, 2009). But if this challenge will continue to overtake the need to undertake practical education and training programs for employees, then the generalized output of results will be minimal (Spiers, 2002; Hian and Einstein, W2010). As indicated earlier, the theoretical framework of competency training is examined in this research. As a matter of fact, the theory of competency training is not something that is happening for the first time. There exists evidence in previous research works and studies where this has been successfully applied. In their research, (Nadler and Lawler, 2003) used competency training to improve the level of satisfaction that customers receive from a catering company. The research actually concluded that once the customer relations executives received extra competency training on how to offer specialized and customized service to customers, patronage increased by almost 35% for the company even though the use of customized service was initially not part of the original duties and roles of the employees. It is with this inspiration that the present researcher hopes to achieve positive results with employee involvement in hiring and promotion preceding the training and empowerment of the employees to be involved. Once employee involvement is selected as an approach by a company, it will be necessary for the human resource managers involved to appreciate the fact that these employees become a full time part of the recruitment team and so they deserve to be equipped with every needed training and education that will ensure that they gain the competency levels required of them. With the present theory of competency training, it is hypothesized that employees can be empowered to give off more in the hiring and promotion processes in public agencies if they are given more room for training and competency building through involvement. Generally, a company that is practicing employee involvement is one that is practicing the democratic style of leadership. In this form of leadership practice, the ideas, inputs, resources, skill and competence of the entire workforce is considered in any major decision making process. As far as benefits are concerned, companies who have practiced employee involvement have enjoyed from diversity in the whole process of hiring and promotion because the human resource personnel and managers had the luxury of involving as many employees as possible, all of whom had some unique and different ideas to bring on board. But even as a couple of challenges may be faced with employee involvement such as the process being time consuming and cost involving, these do not in anyway represent demerits of the process and reasons why they should be ignored. The theoretical basis is relevant to the present study and provides a lens for it because it does not only look at the positive impacts of employee involvement but various forms of challenges associated with it and how these challenges can be corrected to make the process more consolidating. Nature of the study Design The paradigm for the present research is the qualitative method. It has already been explained that the qualitative method is very unique in the way it presents the researcher with subjective authority over the collection and analysis of data. This does not however suggest that the researcher has any right to massage the data in a way that suits personal discretion instead of looking at the collective interest of the aim of the research (Dumaine, 2009). As a qualitative research, the researcher shall make use of primary data collection as well as secondary data collection in an extensive manner. By this, the inputs of as many academic authorities as possible in the field of labor and human resource shall be brought on board. The major idea behind the selection of a qualitative research stein from the aim and background of the research, which is more directed towards a qualitative social phenomenon that cannot be quantified so easily. This social phenomenon being referred to is the impact of employee involvement on hiring and promotion process. Following the many types or forms of research design available to the researcher in the use of a qualitative method of research, the researcher deems it appropriate to select case study research design. Generally, the case study is going to focus public agencies who undertake hiring and promotion on regular basis. Though the case study follows the primary data collection principle whereby data shall be collected from respondents (Eastman et al, 1999), the researcher is not going to abandon the use of secondary data collection. The qualitative method is going to open its self up to the use of secondary data where data are going to be gathered from various literature sources that have some major relation to the current research topic. The secondary data are however not going to be the major sources from which findings and conclusions shall be drawn. However, they are going to serve as a guide for analyzing the primary data so that the data analysis shall achieve some credibility as being empirical. There are a number of reasons that influenced the selection of a case study research design for the current dissertation. The most significant of these rationales is the fact that a case study makes it possible for the researcher to undertake a mixed data collection process by combining primary data with secondary data. There are therefore going to be two major possible types and sources of data, which are secondary and primary data. With a combined source of data, the reliability as well as the validity of the data is going to be greatly enhanced. This is because whiles the secondary data ensures that the researcher is going to have the opportunity to gather as many empirical data that support the research questions, the primary data are going to ensure that the researcher has access to first hand data that can be justified and guaranteed on the grounds of authenticity. Methodology Site As far as primary data are concerned, the researcher is going to use an identified public agency as the setting of the research where data on employee involvement and the impact it has on recruitment are going to be examined. The site of public agency is selected due to the lapses that were identified with existing research works on employee involvement in hiring and promotion, where it was stated that most of the researches focused only on small scale and medium scale companies and organizations. Meanwhile, the current researcher posits that there are a whole lot of large companies and organizations that also need the benefits that come with employee involvement especially when it comes to the way and manner in which the process helps in cutting down recruitment costs and ensures effectiveness and efficiency. The site is therefore going to define the population size of the study but once the research design is a case study and not a survey, it is expected that the population shall be relatively small. Participants As indicated earlier, the setting is going to define the participants that are going to be included in the study. In the current circumstance, the participants are identified as the population of the study. By population, reference is being made to all people within the setting of the study, who have some level of probability of being selected to be respondents in the actual data collection process. As part of the case study, five major public agencies shall be targeted whereby data shall be collected from each of these organizations. It is estimated that each of the companies will have a workforce of fifty (50). This means that there shall be about two hundred and fifty (250) participants. The participants shall be made up of all categories of workers including senior and junior ranked workers. There shall however be a 2-way categorization of participants whereby the human resource managers in each of the companies shall be separated from the other employees. This shall be done because different forms of data are expected to be collected from each of the groups. Sampling There is evidence that the targeted population of two hundred and fifty (250) is very large and may compromise on the reliability of the study if the researcher wants to proceed to collect data from each of the participants through the use of interview. This is because interviewing is highly manual and involves the researcher interacting with each of the respondents. To this end, a sampling procedure shall be used. The researcher shall use a combination of purposive sampling procedure and random sampling procedure to reduce the estimated number of two hundred and fifty drastically to fifty (50). This means that an estimated ten (10) respondents shall be selected from each of the five companies. The purposive sampling procedure shall be used to categorize the workers into human resource managers and other employees. Then within each organization, two human resource managers shall purposely be selected based on their rank in the company. The random sampling procedure shall then be used on the other employees to ensure that eight (8) employees are selected by using the fish bowl method. Data collection procedures Based on the secondary data collection, data such as governmental database and facts on hand to mouth infections are going to be collected. With the primary data collection, data will be collected through three major forms of data collection instruments namely observation, interview and institutional tests. The observation will lead to collection of data on the style of leadership of human resource managers towards involving employees while the interview will examine major challenges that human resource managers face in implementing employee involvement. It will also collect data on history of hiring and promotion practices in the agency. Finally the institutional test will give a vivid picture of the rate of efficiency before and after the interventions. Based on the preliminary data collected, a corresponding intervention shall be designed, after which a post-intervention data collection exercise shall take place to examine the impact of the intervention. Researcher’s role in data collection procedures The major role of the researcher in the present study and for that matter data collection procedure shall be to be a facilitator of the whole process. Even though a qualitative research of this nature gives the researcher much room to use personal discretion in the data collection process (Etzioni, 2005), the researcher shall practice this discretion with so much caution to ensure that the reliability and validity of the data collection process are not affected in any way. As a facilitator, the researcher shall only be ensuring that all resources and materials that need to be provided to ensure that data are collected are made available. The researcher shall however not directly involve himself in what should be part of the data to be collected and what not to be suggested. It is for this reason that as many as three forms of data collection instruments are suggested. Data analysis and interpretation plan Data analysis remains one of the most important aspects and components of any research. Particularly for a qualitative research, it is ethically mandatory that the researcher puts in place so many measures to ensure that the data analysis process is credible and reliable (Festinger, Schachter and Back, 2000). In order to fall within the confines of these provisions, the researcher shall ensure that the data analysis and interpretation plan is based on the use of an electronic and technology based software rather than on manual subjective judgment of the researcher. This is because software will make the analysis more empirical than subjective. It would also ensure that certain basic human errors that emanate from fatigue, inaccuracies in calculations and bias are avoided. The proposed software to use is the NVivo software, which has been highly credited as reliable software for undertaking qualitative research of this kind (Ryan and Bernard, 2003). Limitations A major research of this nature is very much likely to face one form limitation or the other when it comes to research design, methodology and general conduct of the study. But these limitations are not in any way suggestions that the study will lack credibility and validity. What the limitations actually indicate are red flags that the researcher has to be weary of if he does not want the authenticity of the research to be compromised (Gaynor, 2001). The first limitation has to do with the research design, which is currently a qualitative method of research. With this qualitative research, the researcher is going to be denied the opportunity of using any forms of numerical indices in the data collection and analysis processes even though it has generally been admitted that the use of numeric indices in quantitative researches make the research presentation more empirical and subject to independent assessment (Creswell, 2013). This weakness shall however be overcome by ensuring that the entire process of data collection and analysis does not rest with the researcher alone. What this means is that the researcher shall have a dissertation team who would critically vet the study’s findings and analysis to ensure that the content of the study are credible. Another weakness with the qualitative research design of using interview is that unlike a questionnaire, the implementation of interview as a research instrument is highly stressful and time consuming. Once this is not controlled, the researcher may be tempted to overlook some critical areas of the study as a way of conserving energy and beating time. This weakness shall be tackled by ensuring that the data collection process is assigned the largest time frame so that the researcher can be systematic with the data collection and analysis processes. Ethical Concerns The current study or research is an academic dissertation and comes with so much need to adhere to stipulated ethical issues. Most of these ethical concerns and provisions are directed at ensuring that the respondent or participant who takes part in the research is protected as far as his or her identity is concerned (Greer, 2010). The ethical concerns also deal with the right and correct way of handling or using literature sources. On the part of the present researcher, a number of measures are put in place to ensure that all of these ethical concerns are covered. In the first place, the researcher shall ensure that all organizations and companies to be used are contacted ahead of the data collection process so that all necessary permission shall be sought from authorities. The individual respondents within these organizations shall also be involved only after they give their approval to be part of the research work. Their identities shall be anonymous and responses they give shall be treated as confidential. On the part of literature to be included in the study, ethical concerns are going to be observed by ensuring that all forms of plagiarisms are avoided. By this, the researcher shall ensure that all sources that are included in either the primary or secondary data collection process are adequately referenced using the American Psychology Association outline for in-text and end of text references (Rudestam and Newton, 2007). Significance of the study The core practical contribution of this study is directly linked to the overall significance of employee involvement in hiring and promotion. Indeed, employee involvement improves a company’s strategic plan revolves round the human personnel who are hired and promoted to various positions (Thorley, 2002). Meanwhile, employee involvement is a process, which gets employees, who are always the major focus in hiring and promotion included in the processes. Subsequently, it is possible to get the most vital information from the very people who are concerned. A scenario can be cited as a company that needs to hire a chief finance officer, involving existing employees at the finance department in the process. What happens is that because the employees at the finance section have had some working experience with the company, they will be the best person to know the kind of qualities that need to be possessed by a person who wants to take up such a sensitive and important position. This may be a single case with the finance but when replicated across the company, brings out the need of facilitating employment involvement in hiring and promotion (Toscano, 2003; Hom and Griffeth, 2005). Finally, the product of the present research is going to be a basis for future research in the selected area of study. In effect, the study will be important to human resource managers and researchers alike. The significance of the study discussed above comes with so many implications for social changes that can be outlined. First, there is literature to actually support the fact that employees who are engaged or involved in organizational decision making processes such as hiring and promotion become well adapted for social life because they get the opportunity of acquiring extra skills and knowledge for social application including organizational skills, communication skills, inter-personal relationship, among others (Hudson and Chapman, 2002). Such employees therefore become more and more useful to the social setting in which they find themselves. What is more, because the new employee who comes on board the organization is taken through a well resourced and a well coordinated process of recruitment and selection, that employee becomes assured that he or she would be placed in a position that rightly meets his or her adequacy. Subsequently, such an employee becomes more confident at post and is able to undertake roles assigned more effectively. In the nutshell, the syndrome of putting round pegs in square holes becomes catered for. Finally, the subject of employee involvement looked at in the study presents a new paradigm of organizational leadership whereby organizational leaders who practice the democratic style of leadership are going to be introduced to a new system of making better use of freedoms they give to their employees to be part of the decision making process (QSR International, 2012). REFERENCE LIST Buch, K. (1992). Quality Circle and employee withdrawal behaviors: A cross-organizational study. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 28 (1), 62-74. Carney, K. (1998). How to keep staff in a boom economy, Inc., 20, (16), p110. Cotton, J. (2003). Employee involvement: Method for improving performance and work attitudes. California: SAGE Publications, Inc. Creswell, J. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications Inc. Patton, M. (2002). Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc. Crocker, O.L., Chiu, J. S., & Charney, C. (2004). Quality Circles: A guide to participation and productivity. New York: Methuen Publications. Cumming, T. G., Molloy, E. S., & Glen, R. (2007). A methodological critique of fifty-eight selected works experiments. Human Relations, 30, 675-708. Dachler, H. P., & Wilpert, B. (2008). Conceptual dimensions and boundaries of participations in organizations: A critical evaluation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 1-39. Denton, G., & White, B. (2000). Implementing a balanced-scorecard approach to managing hotel operations. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 41 (1), 94-101. Dewar, D. L. (2000). The quality circle guide to participation management. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Drucker, P. (2004). The practices of management. New York: Harper & Brothers. Dumaine, B. (2009). How managers can succeed through speed. Fortune, 54-59. Eastman, L. J., Richardson, H. A., & Vanderberg R. J. (1999). The impact of high involvement work processes on organizational effectiveness: A second-order latent variable approach. Group & Organization Management, 24 (3), 300-339. Etzioni, A. (2005). An evaluation of complex organizations: On power, involvement, and their correlates. (Rev. ed.). New York: Free Press. Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Back, K. (2000). Social pressures in informal groups. New York: Harper. Gaynor, G. H. (2001). Achieving the competitive edge through integrated technology management. USA: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Greer, T. M. (2010). A Structural Validation of the Schedule of Racist Events.Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling Development, 91-107.doi:10.1177/0272989X10373455 Hudson, L., & Chapman, C. (2002).Measuring Social Capital.International Conference on the measurement of Social Captial. London. Lodahl, T. M., & Kejner, M. (2005). The definitions and measurement of job involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 49, 24-33. Mali, P. (2002). Managing by objectives. New York: Wiley. Marvin, W. R. (1994). From turnover to teamwork. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Modernising Public Service Group (1999). Strategies for Inventing. Retrieved March 31st, 2001 from the World Wide Web: http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/servicefirst/2000/learninglabs/strategiesforinventing.htm#top Munchus, G. (2003). Employer-employee based quality circles in Japan: Human resource policy implications for American firms. Academy of Management Review, 8, 255-261. Nadler, D. A., & Lawler E. E. (2003). Quality of work life: Perspective and directions. Organizational Dynamics, 11 (3), 20-30. QSR International, (2012). Qualitative Research. Accessed January 21, 2013 from http://www.qsrinternational.com/what-is-qualitative-research.aspx Rudestam, K. E., & Newton, R. R. (2007).Surviving your dissertation: A comprehensive guide to content and process (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ryan, G.W. and Bernard, H.R. (2003) Techniques to Identify Themes, Field Methods, 15(1): 85-109. The Newbury House Dictionary of American English (1996). Boston: Heinle & Heinle Publishers. Thorley, L. (2002). Develop your personal skills. Hatfield: University of Hertfordshire. Toscano, D. J. (2003). Toward a typology of employee ownership. Human Relations, 36, 581-602. Vandenberg, R. J., Richardson, H. A., & Eastman, L. J. (2009). The impact of high involvement work processes on organizational effectiveness: A second-order latent variable approach. Group & Organization Management, (24), 3, 300-339. Read More