Fundamentals of Social Work Research - Report Example

Management Contents Contents 2 Summary 3 Introduction and Motivation 3 Literature Review, Theory Development and Hypotheses Formulation 4 Method 5 Results 6 Discussion and Conclusion 7 Reference List 9 Summary The paper published by Wang and Dyball (2014) investigates the influence of organizational justice and inter-firm trust on using management controls. This research is one latest addition in the field of strategic management which focuses on the management controls on the organizational trust. The paper attempts to answer three main research questions pertaining to inter-organizational relationship. The first one relates to the perception of organization justice and its influence on the social and the formal controls. The purpose of this paper was to find the relationship between these variables and establish the correlation between them. This paper can be considered as an important addition in the existing literature regarding inter-organizational relationship because it has applied the organizational theory of justice to the concept of management control and inter-organizational relationship. Another significant contribution of this research is the clarification of the relationship between inter-firm trust and management controls. The results obtained from the research clearly indicate that the trust and control factors affect the IOR between firms. Controls are important in guiding IOR because without them the firms would behave opportunistically. Controls are also important in building trust between the business partners. The application of justice theory and trust factor in management control system to guide IOR can be considered as an innovative advancement in the IOR literature. Introduction and Motivation Business is a relationship that is essentially based on trust between the two organizational parties. The purpose that the authors had behind the research was to examine element of trust in the management control systems that provides guiding principle to the Inter Organizational relationship (IOR). The basic motivation behind the research was to clarify the exact relationship of trust in the IOR as this topic has been widely debated in academic literature and there is no common consensus reached for the relationship between trust and control. The research is definitely important as most of the business relationships are based on mutual trust and fairness and this area of research is relatively new. So any advancement made in this particular field will be particularly important for business managers to understand the ways in which their mutual relationship can be improved for enhancing the performance. As the purpose of any strategic alliance or partnership in business is to improve business performance so this research will be important in improving those relationships. I have been convinced about this research. This is because the results from the study are consistent with some of the existing literature and also builds some new areas of interest which does provide a plausible relationship between the parameters of trust, management control system, controls and IOR. Literature Review, Theory Development and Hypotheses Formulation It can definitely be said that the authors have consulted vast academic studies related to the relevant field before formulating their hypothesis and reaching the conclusions. The literature that was identified is strongly related to the topic and the researchers had studied it carefully before reaching their conclusions. After studying the literature the authors had pointed out that most of the studies either point to the fact that trust is a substitute of social control and some studies argue that it is a complement of social control. This theory had identified a new possible relationship between trust and the social and formal control factors and suggests the relationship between them is reciprocal at the best and this is what the paper aims to prove. This study identifies four facets of fairness and justice and builds its hypothesis around them. The basic point of the hypothesis regarding the fairness components was that higher the level of fairness between the business houses lower will be the level of requirement of formal controls. Under these situations social controls are more important. The element of justice is viewed through the lens of fairness and it was hypothesized that the level of justice is related to the performance of the businesses engaged in IOR. The researchers had also come up with the theory that management controls are important for smooth operating of IOR, an idea they developed from reviewing the existing literature. The final hypothesis related the components of perception of fairness through the trust. According to my personal thinking this type of an approach has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage according to me is the venturing beyond the transaction cost economics which had mainly been used as a guiding factor in the field of IOR (Williamson, 1979). The primary disadvantage according to me is the use of too many theories to build the hypothesis which makes the research complex to comprehend. People referring to the results from no knowledge pertaining to the field may find it difficult to interpret the results. Method The methodology of the research is plausible enough which could be attributed to the use of sturdy econometric models. SEM and Partial Least Squares Method have been used to model the data. Both PLS and SEM has been considered to be appropriate for the method of theory testing for a long time. However, the SEM method that has been used in the modeling of the research suffers from a number of limitations itself, the primary being that it fails to take into account the trustworthiness of the observed variables and treats them like perfect substitutes for the constructs which they are to represent (Kline, 2005). The biggest limitation of the PLS is that there is no theoretical analysis to assume that all the indicators have the same weighing. The inclusion of the control variables add to the internal validity of the research (Klein and Moosbrugger, 2000). Though the researchers have ensured that the model is free from common method bias, non-response bias and social desirability yet according to me the results obtained are not universally acceptable. This is because the effect of cross-culture was not incorporated in the results which may make the results case sensitive. This is a big hindrance in the acceptance of the research. Results The researchers have provided modest explanation for the results they had provided. It can be said from a thorough analysis of the research work that part of the results agrees with the existing literature and part of it is not consistent with it. The results from the research had shown that only informational fairness had direct relation with the social controls. The other three aspects of fairness do not bear any relationship with social controls. This result is consistent with the works of other researchers like Mahama (2006), Caker (2008). The result of the research which discusses that distributive fairness is also a major determinant in affecting the level of trust is also consistent with the study that was made by Kumar et al. (1995) and Luo (2007). So in totality it can be said that the research has been able to validate the hypothesis that informational fairness and distributional fairness are related to the management controls and are indirectly related to trust. The study has also confirmed that management controls is related to relational performance. There are studies in the literature, like that of Luo (2005) and Ariño and Ring, (2010) which have pointed that procedural justice is an important determining factor for development of IOR. However this research does not support the view as the results obtained indicated that procedural, justice and interpersonal fairness does not affect management control and IOR. These parameters have also been found to have no correlation with relational performance. This finding is also inconsistent with the findings of Luo (2005). According to me the explanations provided by the researchers for the possible deviation from the research is not entirely satisfactory. This is because procedural fairness should technically form the backbone of IOR. The researchers only say that these may be originally incorporated in procedures of IOR but more explanation can be demanded. Another major hindrance in the plausibility of the research is the mention of culture bias. This can question the validity of the results and their overall acceptance. Discussion and Conclusion The linking of the research question to the hypothesis is forced to some extent as the concept of global system has been used to relate the level of perceived justice. These factors are dynamic and may be interpreted in different ways by scholars. The researcher argues that justice factor perception indeed influence the social and formal controls. They had also answered the second research question and established that management controls like social control and formal controls are indeed important to improve the performance of IOR. The results also show that social control can be linked to relational performance. So, even though in a complex way the researcher has shown that management controls influences trust building between organizations and which indicates the reciprocal relationship between them. The authors have identified four areas of limitation in the research the major one being that data was collected only from one party in the IOR. As the research work of Vlaar, Van den Bosch and Volberda (2006) had shown that the stage of development of IOR is also important for the development of relationships between organizations (Vlaar, Van den Bosch and Volberda, 2006). In this sense it can be argued that if the researcher had collected data from some other point in time then results could have been altered. The lack of time series data in the research makes it difficult to obtain any pattern of trend in the research (Engel, 2009). The researchers have identified limitations in the research and marked the future areas of research. The implications of this research can be used by business houses for developing efficient IOR between them for guiding them. This can improve the confidence of both partners in one another and help in prospering. Reference List Engel, R. J., 2009. Fundamentals of social work research. London: Sage. Klein, A. and Moosbrugger, H., 2000. Maximum likelihood estimation of latent interaction effects with the LMS method. Psychometrika, 65(4), pp. 457-474. Kline, R. B., 2005. Principles and practice of structural equation modeling. New York: Guilford. Vlaar, P. W. L., Van den Bosch, F. A. J. and Volberda, H. W., 2006. On the evolution of trust, distrust, and formal coordination and control in interorganizational relationships: towards an integrative framework. [pdf] ERIM Report Series Research In Management. Available at: < file:///C:/Users/user/Downloads/ERS_2006_035_STR_549505%20(1).pdf> [Accessed 3 May 2014]. Williamson, O.E., 1979. Transaction Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual Relations. Journal of Law and Economics, 22(2), pp. 233-261. Read More