Reference no: EM132914686

Please read the case study below and answer all the questions.

ISABELLE'S RESEARCH DILEMMA

Isabelle was very thoughtful. She had a puzzled look on her face. The dilemma she had was one experienced by many students in conducting research for a dissertation. Her research was concerned with managers and how they coped with pressure in the workplace. She particularly wanted to find out the coping strategies they used. This required consideration of theory and method and whether the research would have practical relevance. After her preliminary reading around the topic she decided that it was necessary to engage in both the world of theory and the world of practice and that the problems addressed would develop out of the interaction between these two worlds.

Theory in management could be seen as problematic, because for some researchers management is not a discipline. It is perceived as multidisciplinary with many of its early practitioners receiving their training in the social sciences (Pettigrew, 2001). Isabelle thought this could be advantageous in that it enables management research to gain new insights that may not be obtained through a number of disciplines separately. She also considered that a topic on pressure and coping could be understood at a number of levels of analysis from an individual to a structural level. In doing this she would be considering theoretical ideas and attempting to perceive them in a pragmatic way. It also meant looking at them anew which would provide some imaginative and original insights for her dissertation.

Isabelle found that more traditional research on managing pressure focused on positivistic approaches with an emphasis on being scientific and rigorous. This approach often uses quantitative methods with an emphasis on measuring and the use of factor analysis.

Researchers hope this allows them to find statistical correlations between two variables and demonstrate some relationship between sources of pressure and possible physical, psychological or even physiological outcomes, if coping strategies were not successful. Research of this kind can be found in the work of Sadri and Marcoulides (1997) and Wheatley (2000).

Isabelle decided she would not use this approach. She felt that a number of students' dissertations had already used this approach and she wanted to get away from statistical analysis and examining pressure on managers using a positivistic approach. She also thought that this traditional research ignored the managers' biography which could prove to be important in understanding how the manager coped with pressure. The more traditional approach seems to perceive the individual as passive and playing little part in making and constructing his/her reality. It was as if the researcher with questions asked in the questionnaire had already structured the reality. However, people working in organisations do have histories, futures and expectations and pursue their individual goals. For example, long-term sources of a person's distress may be traced back to experiences at work many years before. To study this would require Isabelle to use a different method. She decided to adopt in-depth interviews as primary sources so that she could study the turning-points in the lives of her participants over a period of time. This may indicate why they took particular decisions and the consequences of making those decisions.

In terms of method Isabelle decided that the approach she would adopt would be qualitative rather than quantitative. This would involve using in-depth interviews. She would also use life stories and family histories because this kind of biographical approach was more holistic (Miller 2007). This holistic viewpoint manifested itself in two ways. Firstly, biographical data range across time. Hence, 'a biographical approach is indicated where the area of interest is either the effect of change across time, historical events as these events have impinged upon the individual, or his or her movement along their life course' (Miller 2007:74). Secondly, the biographical approach is a bridge between social structure and the individual. Social structure is a complex concept in which there was some disagreement among social scientists. But it can be understood to mean a relative enduring pattern of social arrangements within a particular society, group or social organisation. Thus, social structures may constrain the individual's behavior and expectations. Discussing your biography means telling about the constraints and opportunities, and turning-points that were available in the past and how one dealt with them. The biographical approach is about the intersection between the individual and social structure.

In conducting such research Isabelle knew she had to deal with complex issues with the subject-matter and the method she wanted to adopt. The relationship between the interviewee and interviewer is central to this type of research. She felt she had the emotional maturity to manage the process. Most importantly she felt that the research was rigorous, systematic and relevant to managers in the workplace.

Question 1

Propose a good research title for Isabelle's research dissertation. Motivate you answer.