The Research Process
Why business research?
1) In order to take better decisions
- Some may have already been studied
- Business research consists of research performed by scientists. Like other scientists
are empiricists; they base their conclusions on empirical research.
- Some business problems need a new study, moderate problems can be done by the
manager. Complexer ones by a different organization.
What is business research?
Definition:"a systematic process of testing hypotheses through carefully executed data
analyses that are aimed to help a manager solve or minimize a problem."
i. Business research is a systematic process
ii. Business research tests hypotheses
iii. Business research entails collecting and analyzing data
iv. Business research is meant to help managers make better decisions
What about managerial intuition?
Not the best practise
Why can managers' intuition be so wrong?
Mangagers are prone to cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are unconscious thinking errors.
There are over 100 cognitive biases that affect how we process information.
Three of the most common ones are
1) Conformation bias
2) Availibility bias
3) What you see is all there is bias
Conformation bias
Confirmation bias refers to the tendency only to consider information that agrees with and
confirms our preexisting beliefs. We cherry pick the information we consider: we look for onl
the evidence that supports what we are already thinking and disregard the rest. As such, we
may become a prisoner of our own prejudices.
Availability bias
Availability bias (aks heuristic) refers to a coginitve bias in which we decide based on readily
available information, even though it may not be the best information to inform our decision.
Information that is more easily recalled (information that is more available because it is more
vivid or recent) is assumed to reflect more frequent and more probable events, while
information that is more difficult to bring to mind (information that is less available because it
,is less vivid ro recent) is assumed to reflect less frequent and less probable events. The
availability bias thus leads us to overestimate events.
What you see is all there is bias
When evaluating whether there is a relationship between an event and an outcome, we tend
to notice wahat is ‘present’ but we often forget to consider what is ‘absent’. This tendency is
reffered to as what you see is all there is. Because of this cognitive bias, managers adopt
opinions and make decisions without examining all the data, which can easily lead to
suboptimal decisions
How to evaluate research evidence?
Follow an evidence based approach instead of an intuition based approach.
Judging academic journal quality
- Check whether the articles in the journal are peer reviewed
- Look up the impact factor. Not wholly trustworthy. However, a journal with an impact
factor of at least 1.0 is less likely to be predatory
- In the field of business you can consult the list of quality journals compiled by TISM
Judging article quality within peer-reviewed journals
Within peer-reviewed journals, article quality can still vary. Many people firmly believe that a
study is worthless if it is not based on a very large, random sample. However, a large
sample is not always the first priority; other study characteristics may be more important.
In this course, you will learn how to read academic articles more critically and evaluate them
on their merit.
Judging popular-press articles
Science journalists translate the findings of academic articles for a wider audience. Hence, in
your future jobs, you may not only read business research in academic articles, but you may
also encounter popular-press articles that interest you.
Final
you should be knowledgeable about business research:
● To be able to EVALUATE business research.
You should be able to judge to what extent academic and popular press articles can be
trusted as a basis for your decisions.
● To be able to DELEGATE business research.
You should be able to interact effectively with your firm's in-house research department
and/or external research agencies that will conduct research studies for you. If you cannot
steer business research, you may end up with great answers from external researchers but
to the wrong questions.
● To be able to PERFORM business research.
You should be able to perform research studies yourself to solve the smaller problems that
you will encounter in your future jobs.
Stages of the research process
, Deductive vs. Inductive research
When using an Inductive research When using a Deductive research
approach, researchers first collect data. approach, researchers first hypothesisze
Next, they try to find a pattern in these data, relationships between variables based on
after which they develop a theoretical theory. These hypotheses are then tested
framework based on this pattern. using data.
Developing a theory Testing a theory
These two research approaches are not mutually competing. They are sometimes used in
combination, within a single research study.
The 7-step deductive research process
How do you set up a deductive research study?
The figure on the right shows the seven steps in a
deductive research study.
These seven steps form the guiding framework along
which this course is structured.
Problem Statement
Why business research?
1) In order to take better decisions
- Some may have already been studied
- Business research consists of research performed by scientists. Like other scientists
are empiricists; they base their conclusions on empirical research.
- Some business problems need a new study, moderate problems can be done by the
manager. Complexer ones by a different organization.
What is business research?
Definition:"a systematic process of testing hypotheses through carefully executed data
analyses that are aimed to help a manager solve or minimize a problem."
i. Business research is a systematic process
ii. Business research tests hypotheses
iii. Business research entails collecting and analyzing data
iv. Business research is meant to help managers make better decisions
What about managerial intuition?
Not the best practise
Why can managers' intuition be so wrong?
Mangagers are prone to cognitive biases. Cognitive biases are unconscious thinking errors.
There are over 100 cognitive biases that affect how we process information.
Three of the most common ones are
1) Conformation bias
2) Availibility bias
3) What you see is all there is bias
Conformation bias
Confirmation bias refers to the tendency only to consider information that agrees with and
confirms our preexisting beliefs. We cherry pick the information we consider: we look for onl
the evidence that supports what we are already thinking and disregard the rest. As such, we
may become a prisoner of our own prejudices.
Availability bias
Availability bias (aks heuristic) refers to a coginitve bias in which we decide based on readily
available information, even though it may not be the best information to inform our decision.
Information that is more easily recalled (information that is more available because it is more
vivid or recent) is assumed to reflect more frequent and more probable events, while
information that is more difficult to bring to mind (information that is less available because it
,is less vivid ro recent) is assumed to reflect less frequent and less probable events. The
availability bias thus leads us to overestimate events.
What you see is all there is bias
When evaluating whether there is a relationship between an event and an outcome, we tend
to notice wahat is ‘present’ but we often forget to consider what is ‘absent’. This tendency is
reffered to as what you see is all there is. Because of this cognitive bias, managers adopt
opinions and make decisions without examining all the data, which can easily lead to
suboptimal decisions
How to evaluate research evidence?
Follow an evidence based approach instead of an intuition based approach.
Judging academic journal quality
- Check whether the articles in the journal are peer reviewed
- Look up the impact factor. Not wholly trustworthy. However, a journal with an impact
factor of at least 1.0 is less likely to be predatory
- In the field of business you can consult the list of quality journals compiled by TISM
Judging article quality within peer-reviewed journals
Within peer-reviewed journals, article quality can still vary. Many people firmly believe that a
study is worthless if it is not based on a very large, random sample. However, a large
sample is not always the first priority; other study characteristics may be more important.
In this course, you will learn how to read academic articles more critically and evaluate them
on their merit.
Judging popular-press articles
Science journalists translate the findings of academic articles for a wider audience. Hence, in
your future jobs, you may not only read business research in academic articles, but you may
also encounter popular-press articles that interest you.
Final
you should be knowledgeable about business research:
● To be able to EVALUATE business research.
You should be able to judge to what extent academic and popular press articles can be
trusted as a basis for your decisions.
● To be able to DELEGATE business research.
You should be able to interact effectively with your firm's in-house research department
and/or external research agencies that will conduct research studies for you. If you cannot
steer business research, you may end up with great answers from external researchers but
to the wrong questions.
● To be able to PERFORM business research.
You should be able to perform research studies yourself to solve the smaller problems that
you will encounter in your future jobs.
Stages of the research process
, Deductive vs. Inductive research
When using an Inductive research When using a Deductive research
approach, researchers first collect data. approach, researchers first hypothesisze
Next, they try to find a pattern in these data, relationships between variables based on
after which they develop a theoretical theory. These hypotheses are then tested
framework based on this pattern. using data.
Developing a theory Testing a theory
These two research approaches are not mutually competing. They are sometimes used in
combination, within a single research study.
The 7-step deductive research process
How do you set up a deductive research study?
The figure on the right shows the seven steps in a
deductive research study.
These seven steps form the guiding framework along
which this course is structured.
Problem Statement
