Application Draft Mixed Methods Proposal
Introduction
This paper proposes a draft mixed methods proposal for a study on crisis management in companies. The study will select and justify one research method. It will then describe a survey, explain the rationale for the study, evaluate data collection methods, choose a sample size, evaluate some survey instruments, evaluate some research variables and lastly check on the data analysis and its interpretation.
This study shall combine qualitative and quantitative research design aspects. A previous study by Wooten and James (2008) studied the impacts of human resources on crisis management using mixed methods. The study identified the desired characteristics of human resources in the success of crisis management plans. It noted that business executives who enable their businesses to recover from a crisis exhibit five phases of solving the crisis. These are signal detection, preparation and prevention, damage control and containment as well as reflection and learning. These are all qualitative aspects. Besides investigating the qualitative aspects of crisis management, this study aims to look at the quantitative aspects of the issue such as leadership and organizational structure. What should be the ideal composition and the numbers of staff to make up crisis management teams? What should be the frequency of meetings? What is the resource-allocation needs numerically?
The first way to of researching using mixed methods is to establish some qualitative and quantitative aspects from existing studies. Boud and Tennant (2006) affirm on the need to use post-doctoral studies when researching. Lester (2010) states that studies on organizations should begin with an overview of the underlying issues in modern workplaces.
Besides the literature reviews of post-doctoral studies, research through interviews, questionnaires and observations shall suffice for the study. Online questionnaires shall be sent out to several companies while interview shall be held with a few managers from the many that will respond to the questionnaires. The interviews are expected to respond to the majority of the qualitative aspects of the study while the questionnaires will mostly respond to the quantitative aspects.
The study shall be guided by the following questions:-
- How many and what are the types of crises that can affect companies?
- What are the types of crisis management plans that can suit both small and large companies?
- What should be the composition of an ideal crisis management team?
- Which components of the crisis management plan should be prioritized/
Notably, the above questions call for descriptions as well as numerical figures, which is the essence of a mixed methods kind of research. In order to ensure that the study obtains proper qualitative and quantitative data, these questions shall be enhanced to offer quantitative data on crisis management in differently sized companies.
This study shall also draw from the previously independent qualitative and quantitative studies.
Rationale for the research design
The use of mixed methods research combines the benefits of qualitative with those of quantitative studies. The figures or numerical data elaborates on the qualities exposed by the qualitative study. Since crisis management has many issues tied to human experiences as well as the numbers in terms of staff, finances, resources among others, a mixed method study would respond to crisis management in an effective manner.
Going by the social constructivism theory where individuals give meaning to real life experiences, the objective (quantitative) coupled with the subjective (qualitative) offers the best avenue of doing justice to research on crisis management. Whereas the open-ended interviewing allows respondents to give details of crises management, the close-ended questions (asking for figures) could offer conclusive figures that should accompany certain desirable outcomes.
The target population of 30 companies shall be selected (the same companies selected for the quantitative study). Ten of the companies shall be big companies that have more than 250 employees while 20 of the companies shall be small and medium sized companies that have less than 250 employees. The researcher shall send self-administered internet questionnaires to all the selected companies. After receiving the responses, the researcher shall then select 10 of the companies (five from each category) and hold in-depth discussions with the relevant managers on crisis management issues in those companies.
The mixed method of study improves the credibility and the quality of the research. According to Creswell (2007), the mixed method of study is the best because the methods become complementary to the research topic a hand. The qualitative aspects substantiate the quantitative aspects and vice versa.
The quality of the data obtained in the study can be ascertained when the researchers organize their questionnaire to address all the pertinent issues. The questions should be easy to understand in order to increase the accuracy of the responses from the respondents. The study should take in and brief all the respondents adequately in order to obtain data from willing and enthusiastic respondents. When the study targets to obtain organizational information from junior managers, consent should be sought from, and the senior management in order o avoids breach of protocols and jeopardizes the study.
The analysis of the data shall consider using special statistical software for the quantitative data and subjective analysis for the qualitative data. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software from IBM is a reliable option for the analysis of quantitative data. The software can accurately predict the outcomes of the study and help the researcher to make reliable and smarter conclusions. A study by Modeus et al. (2012) used SPSS to examine crisis management in social media, which had massive statistics, and the software proved reliable to study crisis management.
There shall be several variables in the quantitative study. The number of companies having crisis management teams versus those without the teams is an important independent variable. The size of the teams, the numerical values of resources (money and staff), as well as the frequency of crises in the different participating companies, shall be taken as the dependent variables.
In response to the quantitative aspects, the study shall use a phenomenological research whereby the researcher seeks to attach importance of human experiences to certain phenomena as described by the participants of that study (Creswell, 2007). The data obtained from this research shall be analyzed subjectively. The availability of crisis management teams shall serve as an independent variable upon which the issues of crisis management in different organizations shall be weighed and determined and dependent variables.
In the final analysis, the statistics obtained using the SPSS software shall be merged with the qualitative details obtained from the interviews. In other words, if the quantitative study revealed that the most ideal crisis management teams are made up of eight members, the qualitative study shall explain the nature of the team composition (qualifications, portfolios, and roles of each of the eight members). As such, the qualitative and the quantitative data shall complement each other and give a holistic view of the study on crisis management.
The target audience for the study shall be business owners, business students, managers, insurance and finance companies as well as business regulators. Each target group aims to reduce the adversity that crisis can bring into companies. Most importantly, each group can identify the roles it can play in crisis management solely and collectively with the other target groups.
Conclusion
This paper proposed a draft for a mixed methods study into crisis management of differently sized companies. The study considered 30 companies (ten big and 20 SMEs) to take part in the study. A literature review of the study on crisis management from post-doctoral studies should precede primary research in order to establish the underlying issues that should inform the research. The selected 30 respondents shall then take part in a self-administered online questionnaire targeted to respond to the quantitative aspects of the study (companies with crisis management teams, frequencies of crises, membership numbers to the teams etc). After the responses have been obtained one-on-one interviews with 10 of, the 30 respondents shall be held to obtain qualitative data on crisis management. The quantitative data shall be analyzed using SPSS software from IBM while the qualitative data shall be analyzed subjectively. The results of each study shall then be explained on in light of the other in order to give reasons occurrences thereby giving closure to the study. With business owners, managers, insurance companies and business students being some of those targeted by the study, this draft proposal offers an exciting way to study crisis management and offer practical solutions to the problem.
References
Boud, D., & Tennant, M. (2006). Putting doctoral education to work: Challenges to academic practice. Higher Education Research & Development, 25(3), 293–306. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier Database.
Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approach (Laureate Education, Inc., custom Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lester, S. (2004). Conceptualizing the practitioner doctorate. Studies in Higher Education, 29(6), 757–770. Retrieved from ERIC database.
Modeus et al, (2012) Crisis management in social media. Linneus University, School of Business, and Economics. Retrieved 10 Oct 2014 from http://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:530491/FULLTEXT01.pdf
Wooten, L. P., & James, E. H. (2008) Linking Crisis Management and Leadership Competencies: The Role of Human Resource Development. Advances in Developing Human Resources. Sage Publications.
