How Do We Know

How Do We Know
What We Know about Organizational Behavior?

By Uma Sekaran

This book has examined the skills and knowledge that managers need to be successful in their jobs. But how do you know how much faith you should have in all the information you acquire from textbooks and management journals? Are some theories and statements more applicable than others? Even when applicable, will they apply at all times and under all circumstances? You can find answers to these important questions once you know the foundation on which theories and assertions rest. This appendix provides that foundation. It first examines why managers need to know about research, and then discusses the basis for knowledge in this field. It then looks at the research process and research design and ends with a discussion of how research knowledge affects you.

Why Managers Should
Know About Research

Why is it necessary for you to know about research? First, this knowledge helps you determine how much of what is offered in textbooks is of practical use to you as a manager. Second, a basic understanding of how good empirical research is done can make you an effective manager by helping you to make intelligent decisions about research proposals and reports that reach your desk. Third, it enables you to become an informed and discriminating consumer of research articles published in the management journals that you need to read to keep up with new ideas and technology. For your convenience, a list of the current academic and practitioner-oriented journals that frequently publish articles on organizational behavior is provided in Table B.1.

Table B.1Journals with Organizational Behavior Articles

Academic JournalsPractitioner-Oriented Journals

Academy of Management JournalAcademy of Management Executive

Academy of Management ReviewBusiness Horizons

Administrative Science QuarterlyCalifornia Management Review

Advances in InternationalColumbia Journal of World Business

Comparative ManagementHarvard Business Review

American Journal of Small BusinessHuman Resource Development

Behavioral ScienceQuarterly

Group and Organization StudiesIndustrial Relations

Human RelationsIndustry Week

Human Resource ManagementOrganizational Dynamics

Human Resource ManagementPersonnel Journal

ReviewSAM Advanced Management Journal

Human Resource PlanningSloan Management Review

Industrial and Labor Relations ReviewSupervision

International Journal ofTraining

ManagementTraining and Development Journal

Journal of Applied Behavioral Science

Journal of Applied Business Research

Journal of Applied Psychology

Journal of Business

Journal of Business Ethics

Journal of Business Research

Journal of Human Resource

Management

Journal of International Business

Studies

Journal of Management

Journal of Management Studies

Journal of Occupational Psychology

Journal of Organizational Behavior

Management

Journal of Vocational Behavior

Organizational Behavior and Human

Decision Processes

Personnel Administrator

Sex Roles

Women in Business

Understanding scientific research methods enables you to differentiate between good and appropriate research, which you can apply in your setting, and flawed or inappropriate research, which you cannot use. Moreover, knowledge of techniques such as sampling design enables you to decide whether the results of a study using a particular type of sample in certain types of organizations is applicable to your setting.

Managers need to understand, predict, and control the research-oriented problems in their environment. Some of these problems may be relatively simple and can be solved through simple data gathering and analysis. Others may be relatively complex, needing the assistance of researchers or consultants. In either case, without some basic knowledge of scientific research, managers will be unable to solve the problems themselves or to work effectively with consultants.

Managers need to discuss their problems with consultants in a useful way. This includes informing the problem solvers right at the start of the consulting process of any constraints (such as company records that are off-limits to outsiders) or of types of recommendations that will not be considered (such as laying off or hiring more people). Such discussions not only save time but also help the managers and researchers start off on the right foot. Managers who don’t understand the important aspects of research will not be equipped to anticipate and forestall the inevitable hurdles in manager–researcher interactions. Also, paying a consultant handsomely for a research report will not help the company unless the manager is capable of determining how much scientific value can be placed on the findings. For these and other reasons, a working knowledge of the scientific research process and research design is necessary.

Our Basis for Knowledge

Observation and scientific data gathering have led to some of our knowledge about management. For instance, very early on, Frederick Winslow Taylor observed, studied, experimented, and demonstrated that coal-mining operations could be more efficiently managed by changing the way men shoveled coal—changing how the shovel was handled, how the body movements were made, and so on. The era of scientific management that Taylor’s work ushered in provided much knowledge about how management could improve efficiency. This type of knowledge is not easy to come by, however, when we are examining employees’ feelings, attitudes, and behaviors. Our knowledge of organizational behavior stems instead from armchair theories, case studies, and scientific research.

Armchair Theories

In trying to understand organizational behavior, management experts and scholars initially resorted to armchair theorizing—theorizing based on the observation of various phenomena and behaviors in the workplace. For instance, Douglas McGregor, through observation and experience, theorized that managers have two different world views of employees. Some managers (Theory X) assume that employees are by nature lazy and not very bright, that they dislike responsibility and prefer to be led rather than to lead, and that they resist change. Other managers (Theory Y) assume that employees have the opposite characteristics. McGregor’s concept of Theory X and Theory Y managers has become a classic armchair theory.

Few people either totally accept or totally dispute this theory because of the lack of hard data to either substantiate or negate this interesting notion. Armchair theories are based on natural observation with no systematic experimentation and hence are not very useful for application in organizations.

Case Studies

Case studies—studies that examine the environment and background in which events occur in specific organizations in a particular period of time—help us to understand behavior in those organizations at that time. For example, we could study a particular organization in depth to determine the contributing factors that led to its fast recovery after a prolonged recession. We might find several factors, including price reductions, the offering of good incentives to a highly motivated work force, and the taking of big risks. However, the findings from this one-time study of an organization offer only limited knowledge about fast recovery from recessions because the findings may not hold true for other organizations or for even the same organization at another time. The replication of case studies is almost impossible, since environmental and background factors are rarely the same from organization to organization. Most of the companies whose problems you have been asked to solve are from real cases written by management scholars who studied the companies. The solutions they found may not work for other organizations experiencing similar problems because of differences in size, technology, environment, labor force, clientele, and other internal and external factors. However, through case studies, we do gather information and gain insights and knowledge that might help us to develop theories and test them later.

Scientific Research

Empirical or data-based scientific research identifies a problem and solves it after a systematic gathering and analysis of the relevant data. This type of research offers in-depth understanding, confidence in the findings, and the capability of applying the knowledge gained to similar organizations. Scientific research is the main focus of this appendix.

Scientific Inquiry

Scientific inquiry involves a well-planned and well-organized systematic effort to identify and solve a problem. It encompasses a series of well-thought-out and carefully executed activities that help to solve the problem—as opposed to the symptoms—that is identified.

Purposes of Scientific Research:
Applied and Basic Research

Scientific inquiry can be undertaken for two different purposes: to solve an existing problem that a particular organization faces, or to examine problems that organizations generally encounter and to generate solutions, thereby expanding the knowledge base. Research undertaken to solve an existing problem in a specific setting is applied research. In this type of research, the findings are immediately applied to solve the problem. Many professors acting as consultants to organizations do applied research.

Research undertaken to add information to our existing base of knowledge is basic research. A large number of issues are of common interest to many organizations—for example, how to increase the productivity of a diverse workforce or how to eradicate sexual harassment in the workplace. The knowledge gained from research on such general issues can become useful later for application in organizational settings, but that is not the primary goal of basic research. The goal is to generate knowledge with which to build better theories that can be tested later. Basic research is often published in academic journals.

The Two Faces of Science:
Theory and Empirical Research

Theory and empirical research are the two faces of science. Organizations benefit when good theories are developed and then substantiated through scientific research, because the results can then be confidently used for problem solving.

THEORY A theory is a postulated network of associations among various factors that a researcher is interested in investigating. For example, given what has been published thus far, you might theorize that self-confident employees perceive their work environment positively, which fosters their productivity, which in turn generates more profits for the company. In constructing this theory, you have postulated a positive relationship between (1) the self-confidence of employees and their positive attitude toward their work environment, (2) their attitude toward the work environment and their productivity, and (3) their productivity and the company’s profits.

No doubt, this theory appeals to common sense; but in order to establish whether or not it holds true, we need to actually test it in organizations. Thus, theories offer the basis for doing scientific, data-based research; and the theories and research together add to our knowledge. Conducting empirical research without the basis of sound theories does not steer us in the right direction, and building theories without empirically testing them limits their value.

The usefulness of good theories cannot be overstated. A good theory is formulated only after a careful examination of all the previous research and writings on the topic of interest, so that no factor already established as important is inadvertently omitted. Theory building offers unique opportunities to look at phenomena from different perspectives or to add new dimensions to existing ways of examining a phenomenon. New insights and creative ideas for theory building can come through personal observation, through intuition, or even through informal discussions with employees.

Testable theories are theories whose hypothesized relationships among measurable variables can be empirically tested and verified. When tested and substantiated repeatedly, such theories become the foundation on which subsequent theory building progresses. The next issue of interest is how theories are affirmed through empirical research.

EMPIRICAL RESEARCH As we have just seen, theories are of no practical use unless we have confidence that they work and can be applied to problem solving in organizational settings. Empirical research allows us to test the value of theories.

Empirical research is research that involves identifying the factors to be studied, gathering the relevant data, analyzing them, and drawing conclusions from the results of data analysis. It could involve simple qualitative analysis of the data, or it could be more complex, using a hypothetico-deductive approach. In qualitative analysis, responses to open-ended questions are obtained and meaningfully classified, and certain conclusions are drawn. In the hypothetico-deductive approach, a problem is identified, defined, and studied in depth; then, a theory is formulated; from that theory, testable hypotheses are generated; next, a research design is developed, relevant data are gathered and analyzed, results are interpreted, and conclusions (or deductions) are drawn from the results. Figure B.1 illustrates this approach.

To be called “scientific,” research should conform to certain basic principles. It should be conducted objectively (without subjective biases). It should have a good and rigorous design (which we will examine shortly). It should be testable; that is, the conjectured relationships among factors in a setting should be capable of being tested. It should be replicable; that is, the results must be similar each time similar research is conducted. Finally, the findings should be generalizable (applicable to similar settings). It goes without saying, then, that scientific research offers precision (a good degree of exactitude) and a high degree of confidence in the results of the research (i.e. the researcher can say that 95 percent of the times, the results generated by the research will hold true, with only a 5 percent chance of its not being so).

The Research Process

The research process starts with a definition of the problem. To help define the problem, the researcher may interview people and study published materials in the area of interest in order to better understand what is happening in the environment. After defining the problem in clear and precise terms, the researcher develops a theoretical framework, generates hypotheses, creates the research design, collects data, analyzes data, interprets results, and draws conclusions.

Problem Definition

The first job for the researcher is to define the problem. Often, however, it is difficult to precisely state the specific research question to be investigated. The researcher might simply know the broad area of interest—for instance, discrimination—without being clear about which aspect of discrimination to study. In order to focus on the issue to be investigated, the researcher might need to collect some preliminary information that will help to narrow down the issue.

Such information can be obtained by interviewing people in organizations and by doing a literature survey. For example, employees of different gender, race, age, physical ability, and the like may be interviewed to determine the specific aspect of discrimination on which to focus. These interviews also provide insight into what the employees (rather than the researchers) consider important. The literature survey ensures that no pertinent variable is inadvertently omitted and that there is a credible and defensible basis for the research to be done. The researcher conducts an exhaustive search for all the published work in the area of interest to determine what research has been done thus far in the particular area and with what results. The search consumes a lot of time, as one must wade through several psychological, sociological, anthropological, and other relevant journals.

With all this information in hand, the researcher is now ready to define the problem. A well-defined, precise problem statement is a must for any study. The problem definition for the broad topic of discrimination could be this: What are the important factors that contribute to employees’ beliefs that they are being discriminated against by their immediate supervisor in cross-gender or cross-racial supervisor–employee relationships?

Theoretical Framework

The next step is to develop a theoretical framework for the study. It involves focusing on the pertinent variables for the study and discussing the anticipated or theorized network of connections among the variables. For the discrimination problem, the framework might identify three factors related to employees’ beliefs that they were discriminated against by the supervisor: (1) the level of mutual trust that is perceived by the employee to exist between the supervisor and employee (high to low), (2) the manner in which the supervisor offers performance feedback to the employee (in a forthright and helpful manner rather than in a derogatory and hurtful way), and (3) the extent to which the supervisor plays the role of mentor to the employee (training the subordinate and promoting the person’s interests in career advancement to being indifferent toward the employee’s career progress).

A network of logical connections among these four variables of interest to the study—discrimination (the dependent variable) and trust, performance feedback, and mentoring (the three independent variables)—can then be formulated. These connections with the anticipated nature and direction of the relationships among the variables are postulated in the theoretical framework.