You work with an accounting firm that offers taxation and advisory services to clients. Recently, your firm decided to increase the flexibility of working arrangements and introduce the concept of mobile advisors. Rather than meeting with clients at the office, meetings are conducted via the Internet or at client premises. A fortnightly meeting of staff is held using Zoom (a platform that allows many people to communicate via video viewing over the Internet). One hundred and thirty advisory services staff from offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide were invited to participate in a six month trial. The partners want to find out the staff’s opinions about their experiences in conducting services to clients as mobile advisors and any staff suggestions for improvements. They ask you to conduct a qualitative research to answer the following questions

What do staff believe are the advantages of the mobile advisory services? -

What problems have staff encountered in operating as mobile advisors?

What suggestions do staff have to improve the mobile advisory services?

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 the data will be collected from participants

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

h. the steps that will be taken to analyse the collected data

i. any possible limitations to applying the findings to other non-accounting organisations that are considering offering mobile advisory services.