Managing Research Assignment

Assessment Task 1 - Draft of Background and Problem Definition of Research Proposal

Background to the problem

• The company BrandAd are facing issues of employee retention
• The employees state the reason that they do not see growth in the company after reaching a certain point.
• Employee turnover is proving to be expensive. Every time an employee leaves the organization, there is a cost associated with losing the employee as well as hiring and training a new one.
• It has resulted in decrease in the performance of the company as it has impacted both the profit margin and client servicing.
• The current employees are over-burdened with the excessive work
• The constant change in the employee ranks also leads to having weak teams. The employees are not able to work effectively. The new employees are less experienced and are still in learning process. They are not able to deliver optimized service.

Research Question (from a research perspective what information is required to answer the management problem?).

• What are the primary reasons as to why employees leave the company? How can companies work on employee retention and decreasing the employee turnover rate that can further decrease the costs and increase company performance?

Objectives (specific information required to address the research problem - must be in objective form. As a guide, minimum of three and no more than six).

• To examine the causes of employee turnover in companies
• To understand the employee retention practices that companies can adopt to decrease employee turnover
• The research seeks to understand the importance of employee retention
• To understand the consequences that companies will have to face if employee retention practices are not adopted
• To understand the cost associated with labour turnover in companies.

Assessment Task 2: Research Proposal

Goal: The Research Proposal is fundamental to ensuring any research conducted is relevant, timely and cost effective. This Task will allow you to develop a full research proposal in corporating all stages of the research process.

Assessment Criteria:

Demonstration of sound presentation and communication skills in presenting a professional written report

• Presentation
• Referencing
• Communication (spelling/grammar/expression)

Introduction and background:

Introduction (around ½ page max) - clearly state your purpose and outline the format of your proposal.

Background to the research problem (around 200 words)

• briefly present the circumstances that have lead to the immediate problem
• why it is worthy of investigation - expected benefits
• boundaries, or delimitations of scope.

Make sure you incorporate any feedback from Task 1.

Problem definition (around 100 words):

Clearly states the management problem, research question and the research objectives/issues

• management decision should be in question form and should focus on the management decision to be made
• research question should be in question form and should focus on the management issue to be resolved
• research objectives/issues are more detailed information that will allow you to answer your research question (make sure any terms used are defined and measurable).

Make sure you incorporate feedback from Task 1.

Literature review (around 700 words):

• Overviews the current state of knowledge
• Relevant academic & practitioner based literature (min of 10 refs including a mix of academic journals and practitioner sources)
• Analytical not descriptive.

Research design and method (around 800 - 1200 words):

Remember when proposing this design that you should be able to do this research project in a subsequent course (MGT726) in 3 months. If your research objectives are not specific enough, it may take longer than 3 months. Be realistic about your research project, and take note that a number of stages may be needed, and that you may only be able to do the first stage(s) of that design, during the a semester. Key issues to be addressed in this section include:

State the reasons for your of research design choice (ie exploratory, descriptive, causal or some combination - why is this design appropriate and why are other designs not appropriate)

Describe and justify that the methods are appropriate

• If your study is a desk study consider the data sources you need for each objective, where you will source the data from, how valid and reliable the data are, and what analytical techniques or theoretical models will you use to address your objectives
• If your study requires primary data consider what method(s) you will use eg interviews, focus groups, surveys etc; what sampling approach will you use? What will your sample size be, how will you actually select respondents?
• If your study combines desk research with primary data you will need to address all the points above.

Assignment Files -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jh18jzry1tulenm/Managing%20Research%20Assignment%20Files.rar?dl=0