Question

Case study

Mahmoud is a manager in a car manufacturing company, he is faced by a business problem; as he has poor staff commitment and this, in turn, has a negative effect on the company’s profit. Mahmood will need to deliver a report and a presentation demonstrating his approach to solving this problem to the Company Executive Manager. Mahmoud has decided to do some research to solve this problem.

1. As a student in the course BA 307 (Scientific Research methods), Identify first your understanding of what is the meaning of Research methods, and why do you think Mahmood needs to do research?
2. Translate for Mahmoud his business problem into a problem statement ( 5 marks) –
3. Mahmood is between hiring an external researcher or using internal researchers. Identify the other terms (names) for these two types of researchers  
4. Compare the positive and the negative aspects of the internal and external researchers
5. Develop a research process that Mahmoud needs to take in order to solve his problem. And ensure to explain each station of the research process from the initial stage in understanding the research problem to the presentation of his finding to his manager. .

Subject: Methods of Scientific Research

Answer 1

Problem Statement:

What motivates the employee?

What is making them not performing well?

Why companies profit is going down?

Based on these three questions, a problem statement can be made:

• We want all our car launches to go to produce smoothly, without faults, where everyone is aware of the performance and the status.
• Today we have so many release failures that lead to too many failures in the rollback. If we neglect this issue; resources will have to increase to address the cascading issues, and we could meet crucial consumer deadlines that could lead to missed sales, SLA fines, loss of business, and more harm to our reputation for quality.
• When reviewing the new update we will be using our Kaizen Blitz approach to help us develop our processes.

Other two terms are:

• Consultants
• Auditors

External consultants/researchers advantages:

• They stand a greater chance of being easily recognized by the workers of an organization's subunit.
• They are also available to apply their suggestions after approval of the results of the study.
• This needs less effort to grasp the organization's structure and purpose.
• They could cost less than the outside cost.

External consultants/researchers' disadvantages:

• They may well slip into a caricatured way of looking at the company and its issues, inhibiting any new thoughts and viewpoints that may need to address the question.
• Often the staff and management do not approve the most well-skilled internal study term because their opinion does not receive the respect and support they merit.
• Many strong coalitions within the company have the ability to manipulate the internal team to hide, alter, or misinterpret that information.
• Any internal analysis unit night corporate prejudices, in some cases, make the results less conclusive and, ultimately, less scientific.

Advantages of external consultants/researchers:

• The external staff has the benefit of professional experience because they have worked on the same sort of issues in so many other organizations. This allows them to search for the solution in a divergent and convergent way.
• Via their regular training courses, they may have more experience in the current advanced problem-solving style.

Independent contractors/researchers disadvantages:

• The cost of recruiting external contractors is typically high.
• Has required some time to consider an organization's structure and purpose.
• During the deployment and assessment stages, extra payments are charged for their assistance.