Case Study Questions and Answers

Question No. 01
The organizations that financed the research (banks) are both research subjects and are involved in the research design which could cause the conflict of interest. How could you deal with this ethical issue in this research situation?

What is research..??
Research and experimental development is formal work undertaken systematically to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humanity, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications. Research is the broad study of subject. If anyone wants to research on an issue the he must do a wide exploration by surveying different kind of people and institutions. (ABUDHABI COMMERCIAL BANK, 2012)

Why conflicts create??

The conflict was basically created due to the two different bidders. There were two highly ranked research institutions taking part in the research of how job characteristics have an impact on stress. One of them was a private institution and the other was Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). There were two different parties. One was the employer and the other was the employee representative known as Union. The employer support one bidder and the Union support other bidder. The private company specialized in Stress at work and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven has the different ideas. They were asked to co-operate with each other and draw a map of questionnaire to conduct the research. But the conflict created as both of them has a different mentality. Both have different scales of questionnaire and neither could they draw a single scale nor do have included the both scales. (Anti-Corruption Knowledge Products) The conflict is created everywhere whenever there are two different decision makers. If one take a decision without the consulting other partner or if the other partner don't get agree and try to impose his decision then the result is always conflicting and complex. The conflict is also created because both the parties have the different mentality and they are supposed to measure the same concept.

Solution of the issues:

The solution of the issue is to do compromise with each other. They should also combine the research knowledge. The result could never be better until unless they don't compromise and share their knowledge and discuss it with a co-operative mind. By sharing knowledge and doing a broad study and getting more and more data they can produce a good result. They should go in different

institutions to get different opinions as the people working in different environment have different thinking. Although the job demands are everywhere same, means you have to work but you don't have to authority to take decision. But researcher explores more and more and discuss with the partner to produce a better result.

Question No. 02
Sample size is n=15,000. Is this large sample is necessary? Discuss its relative and absolute size. What other options could have been taken?

Answer:
Yes this sample size is needed. Because as large survey you conduct as more opinions you get. Everyone has a different thinking and vision. So when you ask a question to him/her, you will get a response of according to his/her capability. There are few persons who can afford stress and don't take burden of job's work rather they do the job with their own interest and they love to enjoy the work. There are also some kinds of people who just fulfill their duties and don't take it personal. So when you ask questions about the characteristics of job they will response differently. But it is true that if they ask questions from each of 69,000 employees then it would definitely take much time and also consume more budgets. If groups are made such that each group consists of 4 to 5 employee having similar mind set up and also keeping the gender equality, then survey can be conducted with almost 21% of the total employee which is about 15000.

Other Option:
Another option could have been taken that is if a box is placed in every bank by the order of employer and all the employees are asked to write their opinion and put the letter in the box. It is also told them that dont mention their name in this way the privacy would not be exposed.

Question No. 03
This is research in real social context. Hence the issues such as time, budget and politics are important. How would you deal with them? Discuss some of the decisions researchers have made?

Answer:
Here researchers have used a decentralized method of performing their research. Here each group of research was made to visit the entire bank to explain the theoretical framework and outline of research to the representatives of employer and employee. Further initiatives were taken by the banks to ensure prompt response by the employees. These methods were analyzed by the

researcher whether these methods were suitable for their research or not. (UAE: 2013 Outlook - On the Mend, 2012)

Question No. 04
Is it worth the effort to send another questionnaire, in another language, when the respondents ask for it? After all you have a sample size of 15,000. Would the attrition of some French and some Flemish not be random? Would it bias the research?

Answer:
In this situation we have to use different languages. In order to minimize the biasing we can send the various language questionnaires to various individuals. It may bias the result but only on those cases when the number of individuals is less. Here since the numbers of individuals are very large it would be difficult to create any kind of biasing as far as the language issue is concerned. Now since the employees have different language so it is necessary to send different language questionnaire but since the sample size is very large, the chances of biasing are minimum. (World Economic Outlook)

Question No. 05
The small banks were over presented in the sample. Afterwards, a weight factor was calculated in order to correct for this. However, as could be expected, for some small banks the response rate was still too small to allow for the organizational conclusions. So, what was the point of this over representations? Discuss its appropriateness in contemporary organizational research with many small firms. What alternatives could have been used to allow for conclusion at organizational level?

Answer:
In small organizations , the results were in small number so in order to overcome this problem , every column ,in which there were at least 15 entries, were considered,. In small number of organizations only generally all the employees were considered while to cover the employees of large organizations, they were divided in various sections e.g. gender, age etc. the point In over representation was the same one that every category of employees were considered in one general category. (ABCD Partners with Green Crescent Insurance, 2013)

Question No. 06
Due to the strong campaign some banks were reached a response rate of over 60% while others hardly reached 20%. To what extent did this bias the reliability of the results? What can be said about generalization issue?

Answer:
Some banks were able to initiate a response of 60 percent while some were able to have only 20 percent of response. In this way the response of some organizations would be more represented while in those organizations which have only 20 percent response, their effect would be less repressed. In this way some biasing may take place. Because In order to minimize the biasing the data should be completely randomly obtained i.e. it should never be concentrated on some areas while reduced on other areas. Ideally such situation should have been avoided. It may alter the final result. But since the sample size is large, we can assume that the generalization would not be much effected. Since it is randomly chosen but the effect is slightly biased. But this is inevitable whenever research is conducted on such a large scale. So generalization is not much effected but randomization is affected. (Derhally, 2013)

Question No 07
Presenting results play around with graphs so that an event occurs (or doesn't occur) just by using the same results in other graphs. How can you use graphs deceptively in your job? Can you convince others? Is there an ethical issue here?

Answer:
In this conclusion, it is clearly established that mostly people pretend to be tiered but only 50 percent people are actually stressed. So if any person is saying about the stress of his job, the probability of his pretention is two times more than the probability of actually being stressed. The ethical issues associated with this result are the manipulation of these results by the employer. If an employee is actually stressed and the employer looks at this data and says that according to this data you are mischievous. This would definitely increase the agony of employee. The same thing could also be manipulated by the employee. He may argue for the fifty percent stress people stressed people while actually pretending to be stressed. These issues pose ethical problems also because in this way the employee or employer may be deceived which certainly poses an ethical issue for every organization. (About Emirates NBD)

References
ABCD Partners with Green Crescent Insurance. (2013, March 25). Retrieved April 5, 2013, from 4 Traders Corporation: http://www.4-traders.com/ABU-DHABI-COMMERCIAL-BANK-9059322/news/Abu-DhabiCommercial-Bank-PJSC-ADCB-Partners-with-Green-Crescent-Insurance-Company-to-Provide-Prem16582167/ About Emirates NBD. (n.d.). Retrieved April 14, 2013, from http://www.emiratesnbd.com/en/aboutEmiratesNBD/ ABUDHABI COMMERCIAL BANK. (2012, December 30). About Us: Annual Reports. Retrieved April 5th, 2013, from http://www.adcb.com/about/investorrelations/financialinformation/annualreports.asp Anti-Corruption Knowledge Products. (n.d.). Retrieved April 8, 2013, from UNDP Regional Project on Anti Corruption: http://www.undp-pogar.org/resources/ac/publications.aspx Derhally, M. A. (2013, March 3). Dubai Economic Outlook 2013. Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://www.arabianbusiness.com/dubai-economic-outlook-2013-back-basics-491694.html UAE: 2013 Outlook - On the Mend. (2012, December 29). Retrieved April 12, 2013, from http://www.zawya.com/story/UAE_2013_Outlook__On_the_Mend-ZAWYA20121228060756/ World Economic Outlook. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2013, from Economics Stats: http://www.econstats.com/weo/CARE.htm