Research in Accounting Practice Assignment -

Question 1 - You work with an accounting firm that offers taxation and advisory services to clients. The firm has offices in all the state capital cities, as well as Canberra, Cairns, Newcastle and Toowoomba. Recently, your firm decided to try to improve the productivity and the worklife balance of their staff. More than 1000 taxation and advisory staff are employed along with 500 administrative staff. After reading about organisations that cut working hours to 20 hours per week, your office has decided to have a six month trial. On Monday each week staff at each office meet to nominate the days and hours they will work in the following week. The aim of the meeting is to enable staff to collaborate to ensure there is an adequate staff presence at each office during the opening hours of Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. The partners want to find out the staff's opinions about their experiences in servicing clients as the staff work reduced hours. Staff have also been asked to talk with clients about how the change in accounting staff hours may have affected the service they receive. They ask you to conduct a qualitative research to answer the following questions concerning the taxation and advisory staff:

• What do staff believe are the advantages of the 20 hour work week?
• What problems have staff encountered in 20 hour work week?
• What comments have staff received from clients about services after the 20 hour work week was introduced?
• What suggestions do staff have to improve client services while maintaining the 20 hour work week?

Required: You have been asked to write a research plan for the research. Your plan should include the following issues and provide a justification for the choices that you have made. Write your research plan as a report, with appropriate headings for each section.

a. the objective of the research

b. why a qualitative approach is more appropriate for addressing the research objectives

c. the population from which participants will be selected

d. How the sample size will be determined, (how will you determine the number of participants?)

e. How the sample of participants will be selected from the population (once you have determined the number of participants, how will you select them?)

f. How will the data be collected from participants.

g. Provide examples of three questions to participants; for each question explain how it is linked to the research objectives.

h. What steps should be taken to analyse the collected data?

i. What are the possible limitations to applying the findings to other nonaccounting organisations that are considering implementing a 20 hour work week?

Question 2 - Explain how the answers to qualitative interview questions might be used in a mixed methods study. Explain which type of mixed method approach would be used: explanatory sequential mixed methods; exploratory sequential mixed methods or convergent parallel mixed methods.

Question 3 - This question focuses on writing an academic paper. To aid students in their learning, the task of writing a paper is broken down into steps. It is highly recommended that you use the resources from USQ that are linked through the Writing and Grammar section of the Learning Centre. Your answers to question 3 will be evaluated using information from the Purdue Online Writing Lab. Students are required to answer each question separately, you do not need to write a report. The topic is about participatory budgeting (participative budgeting, participation in budgeting). The organisation you work for employs 450 staff, evenly spread at two locations: Toowoomba and Springfield. The organisation provides advisory services for clients who wish to restyle and refurbish their offices.

a. Definition - Define participatory budgeting in your own words, ensuring you provide an in-text reference to your source. Explain why the source you have chosen is reliable.

b. Finding literature - Find four academic research articles published since 2007 that have discussed the advantages of participatory budgeting in for-profit organisations. List your four articles using Harvard referencing.

c. Summarising article findings - Using the four studies that you found in question 3 part b. above, summarise the findings of each article using no more than five sentences per article. Ensure you use in-text referencing.

d. Writing an argument - Rewrite your information from question 3 part c. above to present an argument that integrates the findings of the four articles to outline the advantages of participatory budgeting in for-profit organisations. Ensure you use in-text referencing.

e. The significance of culture - Using the work of Hofstede, explain the cultural dimensions of power distance and individuality. Ensure you use in-text referencing.

f. Culture and participation in budgeting - What do researchers suggest regarding the influence of the power distance cultural dimension on budgetary participation? Ensure you use in-text referencing.

g. Factors that influence participation in budgeting - Briefly explain three factors (other than culture factors) in the academic literature that may contribution to enhancing employee engagement in participatory budgeting. Ensure you use in-text referencing.

h. Writing an introduction - Write the introduction paragraph to an essay that would address the topic "successfully introducing budgetary participation".