An examination of the topic on an applied business research project background (ABB)
Abstract: Developing a well-thought-out introduction
section for an applied business research project could initially appear
straightforward for postgraduate business
students to carry out. This article argues otherwise. To do well in
exploring and presenting a well expressed account on an applied research
project background (ABB), i.e., a proper research proposal introduction
section, a researcher needs to strengthen his/her intellectual competence on
problem-situation exploration, notably by learning some pertinent ideas in the
systems thinking field. With such intellectual knowledge, a researcher is more
able to identify and formulate useful management concern and topic statements
covered in the research proposal section on the ABB. Mastering this ABB
investigation skill is (i) valuable for doing applied business research and (ii)
vital for the effective employment of the
agile literature review approach I (ALRA I), which has recently been proposed
by the writer (Ho, 2017a, 2017b). How to conduct the ABB exploration is elaborated
on in this article.
Key words: An applied research project background (ABB), contemporary systems
thinking, the ABB topics, the agile literature review approach I (ALRA I)
Introduction
When writing up an applied business research proposal, many part-time
MBA students of this writer have expressed difficulties to figure out what is
required, even though the written proposal length can be relative short at
about 1,500 words. More often than not, the university module guide of applied
business research offers very brief information on this topic. With the
students having attended some workshop on applied research methods, it should
be a straightforward task to them, is it not? This article argues otherwise.
Here, the writer primarily focuses on intellectual ideas from both the research
methods and systems thinking fields in order to inform the preparation of the
introduction section of the proposal; it will not discuss all the issues
involved in the whole research proposal preparation. This article has
pedagogical value to applied business research teachers, like this writer, and
students doing applied business research. It also contributes to the newly
launched research theme of this writer on the agile literature review approach
(ALRA I) I (Ho, 2017a, 2017b). Specifically, an intellectual review on the
topic of "introduction section of research proposal", which works out
an account of an applied business research project background (ABB), is taken
up in this article. This article recognizes that producing a well-thought-out ABB
account offers a researcher a stronger sense of direction to conduct his/her
research project. At the same time, the discussion on the ABB topic has
academic value by contributing conceptually to the newly developed research
theme of the agile literature review approach (ALRA I) from the writer. It is
for this latter objective that the writer chooses to primarily examine the
introduction section concern of an applied business research proposal work, and
not on the preparation of other sections
of a research proposal, such as that of literature review and research methods.
The content coverage of the introduction section in an
applied business research proposal
The university requirement to students on the writing of an introduction
section of a research proposal could appear uncomplicated. For example, the
proposal form of a university that the writer has been teaching for has only
one sentence as an instruction for writing a proposal's introduction[1]:
"Project Background: Rationale for selection –
importance and potential impact of the strategic project for an organisation or
business sector. Word Guide approximately 500". Further clarification, still
brief, of the content considered relevant to the introduction section can be
found from the university module guide on the introduction chapter of the
dissertation report: ".... a
Strategic Project overview developing and enhancing the first section of the
proposal covering the rationale for the project and its importance to an
organisation or business sector. This may be expressed in terms of sustaining
competitive position or improving that position. This section might usefully
consider the subject from the threats, opportunities, and business contextual
factors. It should avoid too broad a scope. This might discuss improvement to
internal business processes........ (Approximately 500 words)". Regarding
this guidance, phrases such as "sustaining competitive position" and "improvement
to internal business processes" could be developed to become more
specific management concerns or
management topics (i.e., management themes) but they are not further discussed
with more intellectual reasoning there. To be fair, students are expected to
learn research skills by studying the relevant academic readings e.g., Gill et al. (2010: chapter 2) and Saunders et al. (2016: chapter 2) and, and not
chiefly by reading universities' module guides. Thus, some research methods
knowledge, including on how to choose a research topic and formulate research
objectives, etc., are explicit research knowledge requirement for doing an
applied business research project. All the same, module guide instruction does point
to the importance of identifying specific management concerns and topics to be
clarified, albeit briefly, in the research proposal and, subsequently, in the final
dissertation report in more elaborated form. These matters on management concerns,
management topics and organizational settings together make up an applied
business research project background (ABB). With them in mind, the main ABB topics
proposed by the writer are three: (i) the
site setting of the client organization chosen to study, (ii) the main
perceived management concern statement(s) chosen to study with regard to the
site setting, and (iii) the main management topic statement(s) considered
relevant for evaluating and making recommendations on the management
concern(s). For topics (ii) and (iii), instead of talking about management
concerns and topics, which are too broad for our review exercise, the writer
puts forward that our attention be directed toward formulation of management concern
and topic statements as it offers a much clearer way to express management
concerns and topics for research purpose. In brief, to make a well-thought-out account
on the ABB, we need to take a closer look at several pertinent ABB topics that
enable a researcher to conduct ABB exploration with more intellectual depth. Nonetheless, a higher level of intellectual
complexity is involved in this ABB
exercise and an intellectually serious learning is required on thinking about
the ABB in order to write up a well-reasoned introduction section of a research
proposal.
An exposition of the identified topics in an ABB
exploration
To conduct an ABB exploration with more intellectual depth, the writer specifically
suggests three ABB topics to study. They are: (i) the site setting of the client
organization chosen to study, (ii) the main perceived management concern
statement(s) chosen to study with regard to the site setting, and (iii) the
main academic management topic statement(s) formulated to study the management
concern(s) under investigation. These ABB topics need to be reflected on with
intellectual competence so as to obtain a clear sense of direction for a
researcher to formulate the main applied research approaches and the associated
research objectives of a research project. The prevailing proposal requirement
by the universities is that the academic management topic statements and the
research project objectives/ research approaches chosen need some additional
elaboration in the sections of literature review and research methods in a
research proposal. An exposition of the ABB topics are as follows:
(i) The site setting of the client
organization chosen to study [ABB topic 1]: This topic comprises a brief
description of the client organization unit and its specific site setting under
investigation. For instance, the client organization unit could be a business
enterprise, or a department of an enterprise. The site setting includes a
specific site boundary, a particular time period covered, as well as an
intangible organizational cultural, political and climate condition. In an
ethnographic sense, a site setting is “the stage on
which the social processes under study take place” (Burrell, 2009: p. 182). It is
possible that a research project might cover multiple sites and/or a virtual
site. However, "the practical work of defining a field site remains understudied" (Tunçalp and Lê, 2014) so there
is as yet not a well established way to describe it.
(ii) The main perceived management
concern statement(s) chosen to study with regard to the site setting [ABB topic
2]: For applied business research, management concerns mainly arise from
the managerial consideration of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and
threats of a company. Thus, they can be strategic issues that managers are
worried or exited about. Nevertheless, different stakeholder groups, including
managers at various hierarchical levels, might focus on different concerns or
perceive a management concern in diverse ways in a particular site setting. For
the applied business research purpose, those perceived management concerns chosen
to address should be operationalized as management concern statement(s). Examples
of management concern chosen for investigation could be: (i) high staff
turnover, (ii) low staff morale, (iii) the company's product range too narrow,
(iv) exposure to very high business risk due to existing IT outsourcing
arrangement, and (v) inability of the company in innovating its business model
to adapt to the increasingly competitive business environment. To inform a
researcher on management concern selection, there needs to be a reasonable grasp by the researcher of the
underlying problematic problem-situation facing the organization, from which
the perceived management concern arises.
(iii) The main management topic
statements that can be formulated to study the management concern under
investigation [ABB topic 3]: Management topic statements are formulated by
drawing on ideas from the academic realm. These statements are conceived as involving
a theory-driven evaluative exercise to generate knowledge of actionable value,
thus constructively responding to the chosen management concern(s). Examples of
academic ideas, from which more specific management topic statements can be
made, are: innovation capability, empowerment, team leadership, servicescape
and managerial role theory. Sometimes,
management topic statements share the same key words with that of
management concerns, e.g., staff turnover, employee morale, and teamwork,
although the meanings of these words from the academic source and the
real-world stakeholders of a particular organization can be dissimilar. Academic
readings on management topics are mainly gathered via the literature search on
Google Scholar and university e-libraries. Very often, a researcher may
formulate a management topic statement that covers more than 2 academic management
topics, e.g., "how to strengthen teamwork
in our organization so as to improve customer
satisfaction". The two terms covered in this management topic statement
are (i) teamwork and (ii) customer satisfaction. Finally, there are
recommended criteria for evaluating the
quality of management topic statements from the research methods filed. For
example, Gill et al. (2010) has
identified a number of them, i.e., access, achievable in the time available,
symmetry of potential outcomes, student capabilities and interest, financial
support, and value and scope of the research.
(iv) The main applied research
approach(es) and the associated research objectives of the proposed applied
business research project [a topic related to the ABB topics]: Research
approaches and objectives are not the prime topics for the discussion of the ABB.
They are certainly required topics to be covered in other sections of a research proposal. However,
a well-thought-out account of the ABB, covering the three ABB topics of (i) to
(iii), offers an unambiguous indication to a researcher on dealing with this
topic (iv). Thus, it is labeled as "a topic related to the ABB
topics".
The relatedness of the ABB topics is also stressed in the following two
illustrative teaching scenarios on the applied business research subject:
Scenario
1:-
Student A: I intend to
discuss management concern statement
1 and then management concern statement
2. What is your advice?
Professor B: Why do you want to
talk about them, and how are the two management
concern statements related?
Scenario
2:-
Student A: My interest is on management concern statement 1. For this
management concern statement, I want
to consider management topic statement 1 and,
specifically on theory ABC. What would you advise me on these ideas?
Professor B: In what way are management concern statement 1 and management topic statement 1 related?
Why do you think theory ABC is relevant to the study of management concern statement 1 and management topic statement 1. Does the
management statement with its ingredient of theory ABC offers useful ideas that
enable you to evaluate and make recommendations on management concern statement 1?
The two scenarios, in the form
of questions and feedbacks, point to the need to justify with clear reasoning
the choice on a specific combination of management concern and topic statements
by a researcher. This requirement sounds obvious, but many of this writer's
undergraduate and post-graduate students have difficulty to do this task well. This
said, the space of imagination of how the formulation of a set of related
management concern and topic statements can be done with intellectual vigour
and with regard to the researcher's personal voice is very often large. The
following table, Table 1, further provides examples to illustrate the
relatedness of the management concern and management topic statements. On the
right-hand-side column with the statements on management topics, the words in
bold are the key academic words to be used by a researcher in literature
search.
Table
1: Examples of statements on management concerns and associated management
topics
Management concern statements
Characteristics
·
Concerns/ issues-focused
·
Expressed in the language of the client
system's world
·
Felt by one or more stakeholder groups in an
organizational setting
|
Management topic statements
Characteristics
·
Solutions/evaluation-focused
·
Expressed in the language of the academic
world
·
Felt by the researcher to be relevant for
working out some recommendations with good actionable value
|
Examples on management concern statements
|
Examples on management topic statements
|
Example 1: Product range of the company too narrow and mature [felt by
the senior management of the company]
|
To evaluate and strengthen
the innovation capability of the
company.
|
Example 2: Company's staff in low morale due
to the poor organizational atmosphere
associated with the upcoming business process outsourcing [felt by the senior
management and the employees of the company]
|
To evaluate how the organizational atmosphere of the
company affects its employee morale
and the resultant employees' job performance.
|
Example 3: Salesmen unwilling to share customers'
information with their colleagues in their company [felt by the owner of the
business]
|
To evaluate and strengthen the
teamwork of the company so as to improve customer satisfaction.
|
Example 4: Some managers considered too harsh to
their subordinates [felt by some of the company's middle managers]
|
To evaluate and improve the management styles and leadership styles found in the
company.
|
Example 5: The middle managers and their subordinates of the company are considered unwilling to learn and adopt innovative ideas [felt by
the top management of the company]
|
To evaluate how the existing corporate culture of the company
affects its innovation capability.
|
The two scenarios and Table 1 underscore the intellectual effort
required to develop a clearly articulated reasoning that associates the ABB
topics, notably on topics (ii) and (iii). Moreover, the reasoning on the
management concern and topic statements should capture "a useful contrast
and enough similarities" (Boothroyd, 1984) among them in order for
"them to work together" (Boothroyd, 1984). The relatedness of these
topics is further portrayed in Figure 1.
Referring to Figure 1, the researcher needs to explore the
problem-situation in a specific site setting in which, time and again, "interconnections
are cultural" and "dominated by the meanings attributed to their
perceptions by autonomous observers" (Checkland, 1984). The researcher's
personal voice influences this problem-situation exploration attempt. In the
ABB exploration process, the researcher will come across a number of diverse
management concerns expressed by different stakeholder groups. It is then up to
the researcher to formulate a management concern statement out of the
concern(s) from one or more of the stakeholder group while heeding his/her
personal voice in a way that is associated to the management field(s) he/she
focuses. The arrow from "site setting of the client organization chosen to
study" to "a management concern statement formulated for
investigation" in Figure 1 expresses the
direction of perception influence between them. Additionally, in
evaluating the choice of a management concern statement, a researcher needs to
consider two criteria: (i) the statement's perceived importance, urgency and
complexity from a particular group of managers' standpoint as well as (ii) the
statement's relevance to the personal voice and academic value conceived by the
researcher. The context for the formulation of statements on management
concern(s) and topic(s) can be more deliberative with higher level of
participation of stakeholders in the project. Having formulated the management
concern statement, the researcher has got to construct a management topic
statement by also learning from the academic literature. Such literature offers
useful insights to evaluate and make recommendations with good actionable practical
value as well as certain academic value. Examples of the management concern and topic
statements have been provided in Table 1. Oftentimes, managers in a particular
site setting are not simply obsessed with a 'well-structure problem'[1]
but rather a number of inter-related problems. In such a problem-situation, a
researcher might choose to study a set
of several related management concern and topic statements in his/her research
project instead of a pair of management concern and topic statements. By the
time these management concern and management topic statements have been figured
out by the researcher, he/she should have gained a clearer sense of direction
to work on the research objective formulation and the preliminary literature
review. In Figure 1, this is indicated by the two arrows from the factors on
the management concern statements and the management topic statements to the
factor of "a few derived and related research objectives, among other
topics". Also, the writer's suggestion is that a researcher could construct
specific research objectives by adapting the management topic statements with some
reference to certain ideas or tasks covered in the literature review and
research methods study for the research project. Doing so makes the logical
association among the ideas involved in the research project's management
topic, literature review and research method more explicit. Some examples on
research objective statements are now presented in the following table, Table
2:
[1]
A 'well-structured problem' has "unambiguous objectives", "firm
constraints", "established relationships between causes and
effects" and "one clear solution" (Rosenhead, 1989).
Table 2: Examples of management topic statements and
associated research objective statements
Management
topic statements
|
Associated
specific research objective statements
|
Example 1: To
evaluate how the organizational
atmosphere of the company affects its employee morale and the resultant employees' job performance.
|
To evaluate how
the organizational atmosphere of
ABC Ltd. affects employee morale in
the human resource management department and the marketing department by the participant
observation research method.
|
Example
2: To evaluate and strengthen the teamwork of the company so
as to improve customer satisfaction.
|
To explore how teamwork of salesmen in ABC Ltd. could contribute to customer
satisfaction improvement by the focus group research method.
|
Example 3: To
evaluate how the existing corporate
culture of the company affects its innovation
capability.
|
To evaluate the impact of the corporate
culture on the innovation capability of ABC Ltd., using Edgar Schein's Organizational
Culture Model.
|
The research objective statements in Table 2 serve as illustrative examples on this type of statements. Apparently, the examples did not cover all types of research objective statements, since some being general while others specific (Patidar, 2013). They do convey the writer's view on the rather inconspicuous difference between management topic statements and research objective statements. We now move on to another review of these topics in the next section by drawing on some contemporary systems thinking ideas.
A look at the relevant intellectual ideas on
management concern and management topic statements via the contemporary systems
thinking lenses
From the perspective of contemporary systems thinking, management
concerns can be treated as perceptions owned by certain stakeholders of a particular
problem-situation. For Jackson and Keys (1984), a problem-situation can be
conceived differently by different stakeholder groups, which can be depicted as
unitary-simple, unitary-complex, pluralist-simple, pluralist-complex,
coercive-simple or coercive-complex in type. The writer would also suggest that
the subject of management concern statements can be more easily understood by
locating them in Phase 1 (The problem situation unstructured) and Phase 2 (The
problem situation expressed) of the early version of the Checkland's Soft
Systems Methodology (CSSM) (Checkland, 1981; Wilson, 1984). The CSSM is a
systems thinking-based problem-solving approach very often employed in an
Action Research mode. It is thus quite applicable in applied business research
project - a topic this article deals with. These two CSSM phases could be labeled
collectively as the CSSM "Finding out" stage (Wilson, 1984). A
technique employed in this stage is the rich picture building technique of the
CSSM, which has also attracted quite some academic interest to study per se, see
Ho (2015). Using the rich picture building technique, diverse, and often
incompatible concerns of stakeholder groups are recognized so as to reveal the
soft complexity of the problem-situation of the client's site setting. Other
systems thinking strands, notably, critical systems thinking (Jackson, 2000), are
more prepared to perceive a situation as coercive, wherein certain concerns
could be suppressed, thus not discussable, by the powerful stakeholder groups. Being
sensitive to these aspects of a problem-situation, sometimes obscure themselves,
is also important for a researcher to explore the ABB of his/hers. As to the
subject of management topic statements, its nature could be better comprehended
by positioning them in phase 3 (root definitions of relevant systems) and phase
4 (conceptual models) of the CSSM. These two phases make up the stage of "systems thinking about the real
world" in the CSSM (Wilson, 1984). For our present discussion on applied
business research, this stage is more appropriately dubbed as "academic
thinking about the real world as related to certain chosen management topics".
One notion from the CSSM associated to this stage is that of root definition,
which is a statement expressing an insightful idea relevant for alleviating a
problem-situation. Furthermore, the root definition, as an expression on a
human activity system, can be studied by figuring out its ingredient CATWOE elements,
i.e., (i) customers, (ii) actors, (iii) transformation process, (iv) worldview,
(v) owner(s) and (vi) environmental constraints (Checkland, 1981; Wilson, 1984).
Specifically, this suggestion encourges making management topic statements as root
definitions with some ingredient academic management notions that offer
relevant insights to alleviate a problem-situation. All in all, an examination
on the subjects of management concern and topic statements via the systems
thinking lenses reveals the intellectual complexity of these ABB topics,
despite, very often, the brief instruction of them in universities applied
business research module guides. The contemporary systems thinking-based review
underlines the importance of avoiding the machine age thinking to unitarily comprehend
a problem-situation which, very often, exhibits soft complexity. [Note: Machine
age thinking chiefly encourages efforts to discover "well-structured
problems" in a specific problem-situation even when the problem-situation
is messy.] Mainstream research methods textbooks, e.g., Gill et al. (2010) and Saunders et al. (2016), do not discuss management
topics and concerns from this systems thinking perspective. The discussion
here, on the other hand, underscores this perspective's relevance. In the
regard, this review is novel and makes some additional intellectual
contribution to these research methods topics. Now that the ABB exploration theme
has been discussed at some length, the writer now takes up the task of
explaining how a well-thought-out ABB account is able to inform a researcher to
conduct the agile literature review approach I(ALRA I) in an applied business
research project.
The
contribution of a well-thought-out ABB account to the ALRA I application
The agile literature review approach (ALRA) has been elaborated in Ho
(2017a, 2017b). In particular, it expounds on an idealized process of
conducting literature review in an agile way with some awareness of systems
thinking, which is called ALRA I. [ALRA II is more related to managerial
intellectual learning using ALRA I, thus outside the scope of discussion for
the article.] As a brief introduction of ALRA I to the readers, the following
table, Table 3, tersely summarizes the main ALRA I ideas in the form of an ALRA
I practice guide:
Table 3: A practice guide on ALRA I
The
ALRA I Steps
|
Tasks
and deliverable
|
Relevant
resources and support
|
ALRA
Step 1 - ideas search
|
Tasks
·
Identify relevant key words on the
formulated management topic statement
that responds to the management concern
statement made (re: Table 1)
·
Literature search
·
Browsing and screening contents found
·
Ideas snowballing
Deliverable
A folder for storing the relevant literature, primarily in pdf form
|
·
Suggestions of relevant academic ideas
for key word search from academic advisors and supervisors
·
Library facility, notably e-library for
accessing academic publishers' websites
|
ALRA
Step 2 - ideas collection
|
Tasks
·
Collect ideas from the literature and
save them into one or more documents on different topics
·
Quick reading of the literature
materials collected from Step 1
Deliverable
A set of study notes on a
chosen set of topics
|
·
Computer
·
Brief evaluative comments and advice on
the content of the study notes from
academic advisors and supervisors
·
e-resources on study notes [for
illustration]
|
ALRA
Step 3 - ideas categorization
|
Task
·
Review ideas on each study note on a
particular topic and group the ideas from the study note into a number of
categories that are relevant for addressing one or two management concerns under
examination
Deliverable
A set of categories
for grouping the ideas in each study note
|
·
e-resources on cognitive mapping-based
literature review
·
e-resources on mind mapping-based
literature review
·
e-resources on coding in qualitative
research
|
ALRA Step
4 - ideas systemic diagramming
|
Task
·
Link up idea categories to produce a
theoretical framework/ ideas systemic diagram
Deliverable
A theoretical
framework/ ideas systemic diagram
|
·
e-resources on theoretical framework
·
e-resources on systemic diagramming
·
e-resources on coding in qualitative
research
|
Referring to Table 3, readers are specifically drawn to ALRA I Step 1,
which makes use of the formulated management
concern and management topic
statements (re: Table 1) as major inputs to launch the required literature
search covered in this step. It should be reminded again that, sometimes, both
the ABB exploration and the ALRA I Step 1 do not simply involve the handing of
a pair of management concern and topic statements (which can still be done to
reflect a researcher's voice involved in a specific research project), but
rather a set of related management concern and topic statements. This is at times
necessary in order to be able to comprehend the messiness of a research project
setting encountered. Studying a set of related concern and topic statements in
this case enables a more holistic comprehension and a more complicated
understanding of the connected concern and topic statements. Doing so therefore
is in line with the contemporary systems thinking that the ALRA endorses. In
actual research works, very likely a researcher would perform an ABB
exploration and the ALRA I at the same time, using the ALRA I practice guide as
an idealized reference framework. By now, the significance of an ABB
exploration done with intellectual competence to the ALRA I is made clear.
Concluding remarks
The ABB exploration as presented in the introduction section of an
applied business research proposal is an intellectually complicated topic
albeit having often been treated briefly in universities' applied business
research module guides. When more informed by learning from the relevant
academic literature, i.e., from the research methods and the systems thinking
fields, a researcher is able to build up stronger intellectual competence to do
the ABB exploration. Beyond that, a well-thought-out ABB account is required
for the application of the agile literature review approach I. In summary, for
the purpose of (i) providing an introduction section of research proposal,
covering the ABB, with good quality and (ii) providing good quality inputs,
i.e., management concern and topic statements, for the employment of the ALRA
I, a better understanding on the intellectual knowhow on ABB exploration is
much desired. The study in this article is a contribution to this
understanding. Finally, as a critical reminder, throughout the discussion on
project background exploration, the writer's attention is directed at applied
business research. This kind of research as documented in universities module
guides, mainly aims at "addressing the presumed pragmatic concerns and
presumed business needs of practising managers" (Gill et. al., 2010), and much less at "investigating and
understanding the structures and processes of oppression and injustice, that
are the taken to be part of organizing in a capitalist society" (Gill et. al., 2010). This standpoint of study in this article needs to
be made explicit.
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