BUS703: Managing Research- Employee Motivation and Performance- Research Proposal Writing Assignment

Research Proposal Writing Assignment:

• Employees are the base of any organisation which also implies the professional and productive responsibility of the employees. However, from current workforce reports it can be noticed that more than 25% of employees are losing their interest in their operational field (Dobre 2013). Employees are showing lack of innovativeness in their respective field. This unexpected condition is also hindering the productivity level in a significant range. Lack of interest and productivity generate unnecessary execution conflicts. The existing leadership approach is being hindered due to this unsynchronised work environment.
• Increased rate of internal and external negative influence, misconception and misinterpretations of regulations are making some workforce dilemmas. Most of these issues are consistently distracting the responsible employees of various departments from their way of work execution. Lack of internal coordination is reducing the optimum balance of logistics management with respect to the supply and demand management (Miner2015). The resultant information interchange is reducing significantly. The value chain model of the organisation, as well as its work flow diagram, is significantly being diverted from their original process.
• The accuracy is reducing due to the excessive competitive environment within the workforce. Most of the employees are focusing on their initial output range rather than accuracy and productivity of their works. The organisational culture is also being affected due to the highly competitive environment and operational politics (Lauand Roopnarain2014). Remunerating with customisable incentives as per the output count has increased the internal unhealthy competitiveness to some extent. Employees are dividing themselves into multiple groups to beat other groups of employees, that constantly reducing the healthy and cooperative environment of the work culture.

• Finding out the cause of employee de-motivation will be the initial process of developing an optimum solution?

• What is the current average satisfaction level of entire workforce about their work environment?
• What are the basic causes that de-motivating the employees from their operational field?
• Which of these de-motivational factors is generating misinterpretation of leading processes?
• What is the best leadership style to be inherited in order to increase the acceptance of the workforce?
• What would be the best internal recruitment policies that will not make any dilemma?
• How to sustain the stable and healthy work culture and operational environment within the organisation?

• Students should refer to the guidelines for Assessment Task 2 on BlackBoard and check their work against the marking rubric on BlackBoard before submitting their assignments.
• In-text citations and a Reference List are essential requirements of this assignment.
• Ensure you have incorporated feedback from assignment 1.
• Submit the assignment as a Word document

1. Introduction and Background (1/2 page max) Highlight the key issues/symptoms that have led to the problem/opportunity arising using paragraph structure, not bullet point form.
2. Management problem (100 words) What is the decision management have to make? How will the research assist with that decision? Discuss in one paragraph with relevant information included.
3. Literature review Approx 700 words; minimum of 10 references including a mix of refereed journal articles and practitioner sources. (700 words = 2 pages = 6-7 paragraphs) Discuss the literature that is directly relevant to your particular project, not just the general topic under investigation; using an academic or practitioner conceptual model from the literature is very helpful for framing the research. In-text citations are essential in the literature review and all 10 source/references should be cited in the discussion where they are relevant. A better literature review will be analytical, not just descriptive.
4. Research Design (in five parts; 800-1,200 words total = 150-200 words per section = one paragraph per section – with refs!). The Zikmund et al. (2016) textbook, or other suitable business research methods textbook, should be used to write and reference this section.
   1. Overall research design and justification. Outline why you have selected the particular research design for your research question. In other words: why are you proposing doing interviews? Why are you proposing doing a survey? Why use social media, etc.)
   2. Sources of data for the research, which includes research participants and secondary data. For both primary and secondary data discuss what participants and secondary material are selected, why they were selected and how reliable the information gained might be.
   3. Conceptualisation and measurement. If quantitative research, what are the research constructs (IV, DV, CV) and how will they be measured in the proposed research? If qualitative research, what is the research question (and sub-questions) you will be addressing?
   4. Data collection/generation methods (interviews, surveys, observation, online, social media etc). Why was the particular method chosen?
   5. Data analysis. How will the data be analysed? Check Zikmund et al. (2016)to understand how various data are analysed. How will you ensure data analysis is rigorous?
5. Ethical issues and limitations of the proposed research. Discuss the ethical issues relevant your research (e.g. confidentiality). Describe the limitations of your research that managers must take into account when making any decisions?
6. Proposed time frame and budget of the research. Discuss how the research could be conducted in a three-month time frame and what possible expenses may be involved (purchase of Survey Monkey subscription, for example). Include a Gantt chart for activities and time frame.
7. Reference List. Given that this is an academic proposal for business research in a Master’s level course, in-text citations and a full Reference List in the correct Harvard style are essential. All facts and theories must be referenced with an in-text citation. Check both in-text citations and the Reference List against the Harvard Quick Guide which is on the <Learning Materials> section of the BlackBoard site for the course. Be particularly careful with website citations – never include the URL in the discussion. The Quick Guide shows how to do in-text citations of company websites, government reports etc. and include them in the Reference List. Remember: whatever you cite in the discussion must appear in the Reference List, and whatever is in the Reference List must be cited in the discussion. So cross-check both ways before submission. Software referencing systems must still be checked: they often get things wrong.