Research Project A

BUMG4103A

Learning Outcomes
1. aware of issues related to gaining access and research ethics;
2. able to evaluate a range of strategies to help you to gain access to
organisations and to individual participants;
3. able to anticipate ethical issues at each stage of your research
process and be aware of a range of strategies to help you deal with
these;
4. able to evaluate the ethical issues associated with a range data
collection techniques, so that you can consider these in relation to
your proposed research methods.

Prepared by Dr. Sajjad Nazir

Academic Year: 2022
Course Coordinator Name: Dr. Sajjad Nazir
Read the scenario below and, along with your group members, work with the
following questions.

Scenario 1

Centrelink, the one-stop-shop for access to Australian Government benefits and

services, believes that employee satisfaction will influence employees’ attitudes to
customers, work and the organisation. Employee satisfaction is seen as crucial to
the success of the organisation. Within its Western Australia (WA) area, Centrelink
employs approximately 1500 people. Managers in this area were interested not only
in the level of employee satisfaction at Centrelink, but also in finding out what factors
were likely to influence it. They therefore commissioned a research project to
discover how Centrelink employees’ attitudes and perceptions were related to their
job satisfaction and performance.

Exploratory data collection consisted of an introductory e-mail to all employees

introducing the research and asking them to complete a short survey posted on
Centrelink’s intranet. The questions were:

1. What aspects of your work make you satisfied?

2. What are the issues that prevent you from doing your job to the best of your
ability?
3. What could be done by management and staff to make your work more
satisfying?

 trust in management;
 commitment;
 satisfaction with extrinsic and intrinsic rewards;
 Job satisfaction.

There were also a number of behaviours likely to be influenced by the organisational

environment, job characteristics and attitudes included in the survey. The research team
labelled these ‘behavioural outcomes.’ This included scales that measured: citizenship
behaviour, job-related effort, turnover intention, and self-reported measures of sick leave
taken.

1) Draw a research framework including all variables

2) Discuss the above research framework
3) Develop all hypotheses that need to be tested
4) Discuss the unit of analysis for each scenario
5) What kind of ethical issue can you face during data collection
REFERENCES
Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. (2016). Research Methods for Business
Students (7th ed.). Italy: Pearson Education Ltd.
Sekaran, U and Bougie, R. 2018. Research Methods for Business: A Skill-Building
Approach. 7th Edition. Wiley.