The authors intend to examine the psychological contract between employee and employer due to implications of various phenomena like globalisation, restructuring and downsizing. The hypothesis is clearly defined in the literature and it is says that 'fulfilment of the psychological contract by the employer will have a positive effect on employees' perceived organisation support.' The author has explained it further and modified to include the commitment toward organisation as well (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
How are these related to the wider issues of business and management?
The concept explored and studied in this research is about psychological contract between employee and employer is a crucial relationship for any successful organisation. It is one of greatest concern of today's business to under this relationship and improves it to motivate employee towards greater commitment. With changing time, this relationship has also got affected due to many phenomenons like globalisation, restructuring and downsizing. In such difficult time, the organisation wants to devise methods to motivate their staff. There has been lots of research done in past about this topic due to sensitivity and importance of it (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
How are they related to "the body of knowledge", that is the literature?
Based on the above research interest, author has selected a public limited organisation to further study. Throughout the literature, author has integrated the core concept very well. The research work was divided in different phases. The surveys were customised to collect data. The author has clearly defined the data analysis methods for measurement of psychological contract fulfilment. At the end, author has nicely explained the results of this study work (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
In what ways are the research methods appropriate to the questions being asked or hypotheses posed?
The research method used is a quantitative (Southern et al., n.d.).The objective of research is to learn the psychological contracts in today changing world. The quantitative method is a suitable choice since it helps to learn characteristics of workers with respect to psychological contracts scientifically. The workers responses further can be analysed using accurate and reliable statistical methods (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
Are the criteria for/approach to sample selection, data collection and analysis clear and systematically applied?
Author has explained clearly the procedure carried out to produce this research document. The samples and measurement used explained in the document. The criteria used for sample selection and data collection are consistent throughout the document. The way respondent sample were classified & two approaches for the measurement of psychological contract were consistently applied in whole analysis (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
Is the context for the research adequately described and accounted for?
The context for the research adequately described in the document. The author has covered the nice introduction & described the many important past literature in the document (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
What are the ethical issues associated with this research design?
The research was conducted in local public authority. The research addressed the ethical points like voluntary participation, confidentiality & anonymity and informed consent (Southern et al., n.d.). The employee or employer's agents (managers) were informed about research in covering letter to survey questionnaires. It also talk about 30% response rate hence prove that the voluntaries participation was a option and survey was not made compulsory on employee or on managers. The confidentiality was maintained by giving code numbers to employees (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
Reporting the findings
How are the findings derived from the data?
The sample was first analysed for key demographic characteristics to check whether it has same qualities as that of whole group under research. The different scales from "not at all" to "very well fulfilled" were used for estimating psychological contract fulfilment. The authors mentioned that organisational commitment was estimated using a scale developed by cook and Wall. The quantitative research methods were used to analyse the data and report findings. The T-test was conducted to find the difference between the data groups. In order to describe important parameters mean, alpha & standard deviation were used (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
What is the approach used to interpret the findings?
The hypothesis were formed and tested against the data collected. The data collected was analysed using quantitative methods. In order to test the hypothesis, the control variable analysed against three components (mean, SD and 95% confidence interval) of psychological contract (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
What is the relationship between the findings and the conclusions?
The findings suggest that the large portions of employee are experiencing contract breach. In conclusion authors talk about, that the managers as agent of employer also agree to this. The authors also conclude that it has significant adverse effect on the employee commitment and organisation support towards employer. It also derive that extent of perceived contract fulfilment from employer has positive effect on employees commitment towards organisation (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
Is the relationship between the researcher(s) and researched considered, and have the latter been fully informed?
The research was conducted in local public authority. The employee or employer's agents (managers) were informed about research in covering letter to survey questionnaires (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
In what ways are the findings related to the literature?
The findings suggest that there are many contract breach instance in the organisation research. It also derive that the employers contract fulfilment leads to positive effect on employees commitments. These findings are in line with literature. The findings were derived using quantitative research method. The hypothesis were formed and tested against the data collected. The data collected were further analysed using accurate and reliable statistical methods. Therefore, the research report beautifully organised and findings were derived based on scientific approaches (Coyle-shapiro and Kessler, 2000).
Qualitative
Answer:
Research Questions and Methods
What are the research questions or hypotheses? How clear are they?
The study paper given in the assignment written by Perlow describes & analysis how people use their time at work & the reason behind it. It also investigates whether their time efficiently used and also suggests recommendation (Perlow, 1999).
The hypothesis well presented in the report. It prepares the foundation of the topic by forming hypothesis that the corporate lawyers, investment bankers, computer programmers and many other types of workers regularly put extra hours in the range of 70-80 hours per week. The workers put extra efforts in hectic times by misbalancing the personal and professional life (Perlow, 1999).
How are these related to the wider issues of business and management?
The research papers is based on the time management issue where unbalanced work and personal commitments can cause the problem to worker and ultimately to organisation in which he/she work. The time management is a wider issue in the business world. Many literatures have contributed to time management. The time management of an individual can affects other group members and interdependent tasks. It can affect whole group and affecting division and entire company (Perlow, 1999).
How are they related to "the body of knowledge", that is the literature?
The approach used in this report is deductive approach. The hypothesis is based on theory. The hypothesis is analysed in literature and the body of literature shows how data was collected and how it was analysed. Based on findings, it confirms there are issue with current way of time management (Perlow, 1999). It seems that the research is conducted in interpretivism (Southern et al., n.d.). Here the focus is of exploring time management and its effect on employee and organisation. It socially explores the subjective meaning of time management. At the end, author has nicely explained the results of this study work (Perlow, 1999).
In what ways are the research methods appropriate to the questions being asked or hypotheses posed?
The research method used is a qualitative approach. The concept of time management is subjective and the author formed his hypothesis where he stressed that the current time management is detrimental to employee and organisation. Therefore, the qualitative research method is much appropriate for this kind of social scenarios. The data collected and presented is much less concrete. It focuses on a real life scenario of one of product development in strict time schedule. It does not rely on the pure numbers and mathematical analysis of it (Perlow, 1999).
Are the criteria for/approach to sample selection, data collection and analysis clear and systematically applied?
We can see that Perlow used deductive approach and interpretivism based approach. He selected a team of software engineer working under pressure for this time management study which was suitable choice as a sample for study. He used observation, qualitative interviewing, conversation and discussions as data collection methods. He used same set of criteria for pooling information from all engineers. The data collections & its interpretation were clearly defined in the research paper. One of engineers' rough data log was provided and showed as sample in the research paper (Perlow, 1999).
Is the context for the research adequately described and accounted for?
The context of the research is described and considered such that author stress the need of relooking into the time management of workers. The context describes the unbalance between personal and professional life of some workers due to insufficient time to meet all demands from wok and their personal life (Perlow, 1999).
What are the ethical issues associated with this research design?
The research has collected information by first hand observations, interview and shadowing. The research was conducted in real & natural environment of an activity. The observations were direct and mostly taken at the time of interesting actions. It does not talk about any formal informed consent and voluntary participation from the group members. It may have possible that some of group members might not have willingly participated in the whole exercise but due to some managerial involvement they might have found difficult to refuse it. It also says that the interviews were taped and transcribed (Perlow, 1999).
In summary, consent, confidentiality and harm to participant, integrity and quality are main issues in this research work (Perlow, 1999).
Reporting the findings
How are the findings derived from the data?
The collected data was explored for interdependent tasks, content of the engineer's work, its sequencing. Perlow developed coding system for activities & analysed an engineer log into types of activity like individual, interactive, social and personal affairs (Perlow, 1999).
What is the approach used to interpret the findings?
Perlow calculated the total time the engineers spend at work and its individual piece of activity. Then the percentage times spent were calculated for each activity. Then the individual scenario problem were analysed on back of it. For example engineers claimed that real engineering required long & uninterested hours. This problem was analysed and found that interactive activity though necessary cause much interruption. Similarly other problems were analysed (Perlow, 1999).
What is the relationship between the findings and the conclusions?
The research study the time being used by all engineers & point outs several problems of inefficient time management. The research sees that the interaction activities, interdependent work patterns, vicious work time cycle, crisis mentality. With help of these findings author concluded that the present system is not good and better work time management should be devised. Perlow suggested remedies to these problems in conclusions. Therefore, given research, findings helped author derive conclusion (Perlow, 1999).
Is the relationship between the researcher(s) and researched considered, and have the latter been fully informed?
Perlow got engaged in this work right from beginning even funding approval stages. The research does not specifically mention consent from the engineer but many places it talk about continuous observation and discussion with engineer and getting daily time log from them. Therefore, it would be safe to consider that engineers researched were fully aware of this research project (Perlow, 1999).
In what ways are the findings related to the literature?
The literature talks about time management and its efficient use. The findings like time crisis, interaction activities, interdependent work patterns, vicious work time cycle, crisis mentality are directly related to literature. The purpose of literature is to find how people use time at work and why and its implication on productivity and their personal life. Therefore, the finding is in line with literature (Perlow, 1999).
