Question one
In organizational research, one of the main things a researcher must consider before conducting the research is the ethical part of the research. Ethical issues are the issues concerning the research that affect the organization’s workers and any other related parties that the research touches. Researchers have to identify the ethical issues in the research and find ways of how to ensure that the research is carried out in an ethical and responsible manner.
The most common ethical issue is the anonymity of organizational respondents. In organizational research, it is usually challenging because in small organizations, any simple description will define who that respondent is. Organizations also keep employee data in human resource departments hence; anonymity is difficult to keep. When anonymity is not kept, the organizational management may identify the respondents for punishment.
Another ethical issue is beneficence of participants in the research. Researchers should adhere to the utilitarian framework which requires research should benefit the respondents as well as the researcher. The researcher needs to find ways of ensuring that all participants in the research benefit. This can be achieved by giving tokens or anything in return for the information received from all participants.
Other ethical issues include respect. Respect entails the researcher respecting the organizational employees during the research. The respondents should be treated as autonomous individuals with their own opinion. The privacy and autonomy of an individual is their right and must be respected and no harm must be created on them. The fourth ethical is justice where every respondent should be treated justly.
Researcher should take necessary measures to ensure an ethically responsible research is done. This could be by putting in place the following measures. The researcher should seek management disclosure contracts from the organization’s management to protect the employees from any post research action. This will be followed by a Truly Informed Consent which will assure respondents about the researcher’s intentions. The research should assure anonymity of respondents and no organizational members should be coerced to participate in the research. The researcher should have a pre-survey consent to know which respondents are willing to participate in the research. Those who take part in the research should benefit from it in one way or another.
Question two
Researchers over the years have faced different kinds of opportunities and threats. Opportunities are the chances researchers have to carry out a quality research with few or no challenges while threats are the impediments of any research a researcher experiences.
One opportunity in organizational research is that the researcher the chance to acquire first hand information from the respondents, which is likely to be accurate. This opportunity is never available for online or secondary data researchers. This opportunity should be put to good use by ensuring that respondents give as much information as possible.
Organizational research also presents the opportunity to the researcher to determine which type of data collection method to use. Researcher can choose between enclosed questionnaires, interviews, online questionnaires or open ended questionnaires. The researcher also can choose what kind of information to seek from which kind of respondents since there are different people and occupations in an organization.
The threats to researchers have always come in the form of bias. Researchers at times tend to be inclined towards a certain outcome that they end up being biased. Biased outcomes make the research findings inaccurate and can be rendered void. Another threat to researchers is the ethical issues. Researchers should be keen enough to adhere to the core principles of ethics, which are beneficence, justice and respect. For research which involves questionnaires or interviews, the respondents face the challenge of some respondents refusing to participate in the research while others will give false information hence; they make the research results skewed and unreliable.
References
Buchanan, D. A., & Bryman, A. (2009). The Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods (illustrated, reprint ed.). New York: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Kenny, G. K. (1979). Conducting Organizational Research: An Introduction. Cardiff: New South Wales Institute of Technology, Faculty of Business Studies.
