A few years ago Mark and Phil thought it would be fun to work together on a piece of research. They also hoped it would benefit their continuing development as researchers. Mark’s research background (strength) has its origins in the recruitment and subsequent mobility of labor. His research methods skills emphasize the quantitative approach, although he had undertaken a variety of qualitative research projects. Phil’s strength is as a mainstream HRM academic with an bias towards understanding the processes of everyday HRM. His research methods skills are mainly qualitative. Unlike many students, Mark’s and Phil’s research area was one in which they were aware of the literature. However, despite this, they were in a similar situation to many students. They wanted to undertake a new piece of work that would excite them and be of some practical benefit to organizations.

In the early 1990s Mark had carried out a survey of recruitment methods used by local authority employers. This had built on and developed research he had undertaken as part of his doctoral thesis approximately 10 years earlier. While discussing the findings in the coffee shop Phil agreed to take a more detailed look to see whether there was anything of practical significance for managers. During discussion a few weeks later an issue that they felt was fascinating emerged. Throughout the previous decade there appeared to have been a dominance of internal and word-of-mouth recruitment. Internal recruitment is where recruitment is restricted to an organization’s existing employees. Word-of-mouth is where recruitment relies on the organization’s existing employees to tell other people in their social networks about the vacancies.

Through their discussion Phil and Mark developed a clear research idea that was in both their areas of academic strength. This was concerned with explaining why, given the centrality of equal opportunities to local authorities’ recruitment, internal and word-of-mouth recruitment was so dominant. They felt this idea was fascinating because, on the face of it, both forms of recruitment were alien to the principle of equal opportunities. Quantitative evidence from Mark’s survey showed that the phenomena of internal and word-of-mouth recruitment were dominant. Mark’s experience of working in local authorities supported this. They now needed to refine the idea, develop a clear research question and objectives, and write their research proposal.

They adopted what we felt was a rational process. They both drafted outline proposals simultaneously and criticized each other’s work. This led to an outline proposal that integrated their ideas and encompassed research questions and objectives.

Next they reviewed the literature to establish what work had been done on this aspect of recruitment. The overall conclusion from the empirical research, undertaken in all sectors of the economy, was that word-of-mouth and internal recruitment methods were still important. However, none of this work concentrated on local authorities. Moreover, they thought that awareness of the importance of equal opportunities would have grown since the time when the research was conducted. Their research proposal still seemed valid, and the literature confirmed its relevance. In addition, reading the literature had suggested possible new research questions. However, they still needed to discuss their proposal with other people.

The first discussion was with an equal opportunities officer with a London borough. He was not excited by their research idea, and commented that he was not surprised by the survey findings. These, he said, were due to the need to redeploy people who would otherwise be made redundant. The second discussion was with a personnel specialist from a large county authority. Her response can be paraphrased as ‘well what do you expect.... the pay for manual positions is relatively low so there are few applicants.... we therefore have to rely on word of mouth.’

Mark and Phil were depressed, to say the least. They thought they had a fascinating research question. Yet the first two people they had discussed their ideas with had shown them the answer was obvious. They had spent a great deal of time refining their research proposal and in searching the literature. Their immediate reaction was to abandon the research completely. However, a few days later they decided to revise their research ideas. They decided to discard the local authorities and equal opportunities perspectives and focus on the notification channels used by employers. Their revised research question was: ‘Why do organizations use word-of- mouth recruitment?’

1. Draft a possible first research question for Mark’s and Phil’s idea as described in the first three paragraphs of the case study. (at least 200 words)