Team Work in an Organisation - Research Proposal Example

Part one: Introduction: The issue of interest in this paper is team work in an organisation. Many scholars have stated that teamwork in an organisation increases productivity in the organisation, team work encourages the existence of motivation among workers and according to previous studies undertaken team work should be encouraged by the management of an organisation in order to encourage increased motivation. According to Nason and Smith (1999) teamwork encourages increased competition, rapid responses, expertise, encourage adaptability and skill diversity. For this reason therefore an organisation that encourages teamwork will have advantages over those that only consider individual tasks accomplishment. A study undertaken by McGrath and Berdahl showed that there has been highly adopted by organisation across the world and that this is an adaptive entity that organisations embed in all levels of production. According to the above mentioned studies therefore we can summarise their study by stating that team work will increase productivity, give the organisation competitive advantage over its rivals, increased motivation, and that teamwork is what organisations are adopting to gain advantages associated with team work adoption. Research question: In order to analyse the significance of team work in an organisation, a study must be done in order to check the significance of teamwork, our research question in this case will be “when are you more likely to perform your tasks more effectively and efficiently” the answers to this question will be “as an individual” and the second answer will be “ as a team or group”. This will require presenting these questions to workers of an organisation and data collected will help us analyse the significance of teamwork in an organisation. Method: There are various methods by which data can be collected for the purpose of statistical analysis for hypothesis test and statistical significance, there exist many methods by which data can be collected and they include face to face interview, telephone interviews, mailed questionnaires, questionnaires that are presented and collected where the respondent is present. Face to face interviews and telephone interviews: This is a method by which data can be collected. Data collected in this method can be used for statistical analysis, this methods are costly and time consuming, this is because they require one to travel if the method is a face to face interview, however it is a reliable method and also the research agent can be in a position to clarify answers given by the respondent by ease, also in this method it is easy to check for any biased responses. Mailed questionnaire: This is also another method of data collected, this method requires that one prepare questionnaires and send them via mail to respondents, this method is both time consuming and also costly because it requires one to purchase postage stamps to mail to respondents and also from the respondents to the research agent. However this is an appropriate method and acceptable to undertake data collection, the other problem that may occur is that respondents may not return questionnaires or may fail to complete them, this method has an advantage in that one can collect data from a large sample simultaneously. Questionnaires: When we prepare questionnaires, they can be handed physically to the respondents; the cost of this type of data collection is minimal, however this type of method could be time consuming in that one will have to be physically present when the questionnaire is completed by respondents. Secondary sources: Secondary sources of data require that one retrieves data from already published work, in this method of collection the problem is that one may fail to find data on the specified area of study, also there may exist data but it will be hard to trace the required data or data retrieved may be outdated. After considering the various advantages and disadvantages associated with the various sources of data it is clear that the best method for this research is the use of questionnaires that will be filled by the respondents in the presence of a research agent. This will be les costly and also less time consuming. Data collected will be first hand data and therefore the research findings will be a new finding in the field of social sciences. This therefore will require the preparation of a questionnaire with the question stated above, also this will also have such questions as the age of respondent, gender and number of years at work, these questions will allow further comparison using statistical analysis. Population and sample: Our population will be the entire workforce in the country, the sample will be first clustered into regions and then a random sample of 50 respondents will be selected, after the sample is selected from the population the questionnaires will be presented to the workers in the selected organisation and before the study is undertaken the respondents will be briefed on the importance and what the study is aimed at finding out. Findings: When data is collected there will be the transformation of the qualitative data collected in the study into quantitive data, this will help give data into quantitive data which will enable easy statistical measures analysis of means, variance, standard deviation and hypothesis test and statistical significance. All complete questionnaires will be considered and any uncompleted questionnaire will be discarded. After data is collected and analysed there is need to verify our findings using a new sample which will be the same size or larger or even from another region, this will enable us to verify whether the sample is a representative of the entire population. Expected results: We expect that from our findings we will show the significance of team work in an organisation, there will be a large mean of workers who will state that they effectively and efficiently accomplish tasks when there is team work than when they accomplish the tasks as individuals. This will mean that team work improves the efficiency an effectiveness of an organisation. When there is effectiveness and efficiency in an organisation then the organisation experiences increased productivity through reduced costs of production and increased production. This will also show that team work increases labour productivity. Importance of this study: This study will be beneficial to many in the society, from the results of the study the organisations will benefit where they will be aware of the importance of teamwork, workers will also benefit from the study when such strategies are initiated and working conditions improved. This study will also be a breakthrough into academics where the importance of teamwork will be emphasised and new discovery added to the social science field of study. Problems expected: There are various problems that are expected in this study, the first problem is financing, this study requires financing in order for the research to be undertaken, despite the fact that the respondents won’t be compensated for participating there are other miscellaneous costs that will be incurred such as transport cost. This study also requires a lot of time and the hiring of research agents who will undertake the process of data collection. The study also will face problems where respondents may not give the correct answers to questions, this will lead to biasness of responses and data collected, however this may be solved through the introduction of check questions in the questionnaires that will aid in checking the accuracy of the answers given. The other problem is that the sample selected is significantly very small as compared to the population, a very small sample will lead to biasness and may not represent the entire population, for this reason therefore there is need to consider a larger sample size to avoid biasness. However a larger sample size will also mean an increase in costs of the research. Another problem that may arise will be the lack of respondents, respondents may not volunteer to the study because they might consider it as time consuming and due to the lack of compensation, however this problem may be solved by communicating with employers about the importance of this study and also by briefing to the workers on the importance of the study. Finally a problem may arise where questions contained in the questionnaire may be biased and may not give the required information. This problem will be solved by pre-testing the questionnaire using a small sample and the results will be discussed with respondents regarding any biasness or clarity of questions. Conclusion: Statistical data analysis requires the collection of data either by interviews or questionnaires, this are statistically approved methods of data collection, this paper analysis the importance of teamwork in an organisation, we expect that data collected from the study will show the importance of teamwork in an organisation Data will be collected through a questionnaire which will be first pre-tested to check for any biasness in the questions contained. Data will then be collected and statistical inferences undertaken to check the significance of the various measures and hypothesis test undertaken. The study will be a breakthrough into the field of scientific enquiry with the introduction of new findings into the fild of teamwork and organisation. Part two: Confidence interval: We construct our confidence interval using the mean, the standard deviation and the critical value at 95% level, the confidence interval is constructed as follows: ( b - sd(T critical) ≤ X ≤ b + sd(T critical) = 95% Where b is the mean and sd is the standard deviation, t critical is the value of T in the t table at 5% level of test. To get the T critical value then we will consider the level of test, in our case the level of test is 95% , we will also consider the sample size which is 10 in our case and therefore the level of the dergree of freedom will be 10-1 = 9, our value from the t table is therefore 2.26216. Our confidence interval therefore will be as follows: (62.4 - 7.45 (2.26216) ≤ X ≤ 62.4 + 7.45 (2.26216) = 95% And after calculation our confidence interval is 45.546908 ≤ X ≤ 79.253092 = 95% Null and alternative hypotheses Null hypothesis: H0: B1- B2 = 0 Alternative hypothesis; Ha: B1 – B2 ≠ 0 We state the above hypothesis as B1- B2 = 0 because we are testing whether the mean 62.4 is greater than 55 minutes. We test the null hypothesis using the t table, if our calculated value T is greater than our critical value of T at 95% test level then we reject the null hypothesis, when we reject the null hypothesis then this means that we accept the alternative hypothesis that B which is the mean is greater than 55, therefore b1 –b2 = 62.4 – 55 = 7.4 We get our T calculated value by dividing B by the variance, the variance is derived from the square root of the standard deviation; our variance in this case is 2.729469 T calculated = B/ (sd)½ T calculated = 7.4/ 2.729469 T calculated = 2.71115 Our t critical value at 95% is 2.26216 Decision rule: Because our T calculated is greater than our T critical we therefore reject the null hypothesis as demonstrated by our diagram above, we reject the null hypothesis that the difference between the two given means is equal to zero, for this case therefore we conclude that the mean is greater than 55. References: Alderfer P. (1997) Group and inter group relation, Wiley and Sons publishers, New York Burbidge Suits (1963) Statistics: An Introduction to Quantitative Economic Research, Rand McNally publishers, UK David Kroenke (1997) Database Processing: Fundamentals, Design and Implementation, Prentice Hall publishers, New York McGrath and Argote (1993) Group processes in organizations, McGraw Hill, New York Norman Blaikie (2003) Analyzing Quantitative Data: From Description to Explanation, sage publishers, US Read More