Business Research for Journal of Development-myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about theBusiness Research for Journal of Economic Development. Answer: What are the dependent, independent, moderating, mediating (intervening) or control variables in this study? How are these variables defined? Smith, Oczkowski and Selby-Smith (2011) use their journal to examine factors that determine retention of long-term skills as well as turnover among employees working in more than 300 Australian organisations. The authors collected primary data on two different dependent variables. The two variables were employee turnover and employee confidence. Smith, et al defined employee turnover as the percentage annual average over a period of three years. More specifically, they measured the variable along four skill categories elementary skills, intermediate skills, skilled trade workers, and professional skills. While the confidence to retail skills was defined by the degree at which an organisation was likely to continue accessing the skills to assist achieve long term goals. While on the other hand, the study focused on three independent variables including learning orientation (LO), total quality management (TQM), and lean production (LP). Smith, defined LO as organisation-wide activitie s that managers use to create and knowledge to strengthen competitive advantage. They measured the variable along three-sub-constructs (shared vision, open-mindedness, and commitment to learning). They defined TQM as a philosophy that managers use when they want to achieve continuous improvement across all products and services as well as processes (Xiaojun, et al., 2013). While LP was defined as a combination of TQM and teamwork that managers used to operate through minimum resources. What is the motivation for including these variables into the conceptual framework for the study? The motivation to include the two dependent variables; employee turnover and employee confidence was because of the need to extend the previous organisational literature along three dimensions. First, they sought to differentiate between conventional measures of turnover and incorporate a new measure that helps employees retain more skills. Most importantly, the authors understood that retaining skills among employees is critical for achieving long-term goals. Furthermore, they were motivated to include a variable that considers an organisations long term strategic perspective as well as identifying a number of drivers of retention. The second motivation was based on the fact that previous literature that focused on high performance work systems analyzed one set of measures around monitoring systems, training, and practices. In contrast, they sought to examine the significance of various management philosophies that underpin high performance systems and practices of human resource ma nagers. The third motivation was to broaden the previous findings by incorporating four other employee categories of skills in order to identify the presence of unique drivers likely to contribute towards increased retention of skills and turnover to achieve long-term goals. How are these variables measured? Goertzen (2017) explains that any researcher much present a clear definition as well as steps used to measure variables. Variable includes anything that is likely to take a different value. Such values can be unique in terms of objects, person, or similar (Boeren, 2018; Sekaran and Bougie, 2016). For instance, in order to measure employee turnover, the study measured employee turnover on four categories. The professional category of skills were measured based on nominal scale concerning the level of a manager such as in the senior position, middle position, engineering technician, or as an ICT profession. The skilled trade workers category was measured depending on the profession of an employee. Some of the areas of measurement included skills such as plumber, electrician, messenger, or carpenter. The intermediate skills were measured based on nominal scales as whether an employee worked as a service worker, in sales department, or clerical department. While on the other hand, the el ementary skills involved focusing on machine operators, labourers. In overall, the authors measured employee turnover with the help of four measures; human resource management practices, organisational/market characteristics, training practices, and high performance systems. Besides, Smith, et al measured the independent variables based on management philosophies mostly related to high-performance work systems. For example, they used multi-item scale items to measure learning orientation. While on the other hand, they measured TQM and LP by looking at the extent of autonomy that employee had in working with teams such as teamwork autonomy and teamwork employed. Are there other important variables that should be included in this study? Depending on the nature of a study, Trusty (2011) explains that researchers can opt to include all four types of variables (dependent, independent, moderating, and mediating) to help ascertain the cause and effect relationship among variables. However, Venable (2011) points out that the choice to include either a moderating or mediating variables dependents on the need to strengthen the relationship or effect of independent variable towards the dependent variable. That implies incorporating a third variable to serve the role of moderation or modify the original relationship. The analysis of journal article of Smith, et al., (2011) indicates failure to incorporate a third variable to help moderate two dependent variables (turnover and skill retention) and three dependent variables (LO, LP and TQM). The study could include the role of HR practises a moderating variable. The inclusion would help mediate (Hkansson and Waluszewski, 2016) the relationship between learning at the workplace and TQM that predict turnover. References Boeren, E. (2018). The Methodological Underdog: A Review of Quantitative Research in the Key Adult Education Journals. Adult Education Quarterly, 68(1), 63-79. Goertzen, M. J. (2017). Introduction to Quantitative Research and Data. Library Technology Reports, 53(4), 12-18. Hkansson, H., Waluszewski, A. (2016). Methodomania? On the methodological and theoretical challenges of IMP business research. IMP Journal, 10(3), 443-463. Sekaran, U., and Bougie, R. (2016). Research methods for business: A skill-building approach (7th ed). Wiley Smith, A., Oczkowski, E. and Selby-Smith, C. (2011). To have and to hold: modelling the drivers of employee turnover and skill retention in Australian organisations. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22(2), 395-416. Trusty, J. (2011). Quantitative Articles: Developing Studies for Publication in Counseling Journals. Journal Of Counseling Development, 89(3), 261-267. Venable, J. (2011). Incorporating Design Science Research and Critical Research Into an Introductory Business Research Methods Course. Electronic Journal Of Business Research Methods, 9(2), 119-129. Xiaojun, Y., Plaisent, M., Bernard Jr., P., Kuofie, M. (2013). Research on Business Model Innovation and Control of China's Education Training Industry: New Oriental Education Technology Group as an Example. Journal Of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance Marketing, 5(1), 1-13.