Category: MBA Projects

Title

Role of HR outsourcing towards employee motivation and job satisfaction: A case study with System simulation software organization.

Project description 

HR outsourcing the common practice implemented by most of the organizations across the world these days and the main benefits with the HR outsourcing is that the overall organization performance and efficiency can be improved. When the organizations outsource their non-core HR administration activities to the vendors, they find ample time to concentrate on the core business values of the organization and thus the overall business value is increased.

The main aim of this research is to evaluate the role of HR outsourcing in improving the employee motivation and job satisfaction and for this purpose a small software organization, System Simulation from London is considered as the case study. Qualitative research methodology is implemented in this context and the key information is gathered using the interviews from HR managers, project managers and the employees. Based on the research findings and analysis the overall role of HR outsourcing towards the employee motivation and job satisfaction is evaluated in this research.

Involvement of the employees towards the organizational strategies is really important to decide the fate of the strategies being developed and implemented across different units of the organization. Employee involvement against the production strategies initiated by the operational manager is analyzed in this section. When the question like, the level of involvement of the employees across the production strategies, one of the operational managers replied like “I occasionally involve the employees in the strategy development process” and from this statement it is clear that in most of the cases employees are not involved in the strategy development process and they are just fixed to be communicated with the strategies developed or changed by the management. There could be many reasons behind this like; the regular work done by the employees towards the targets should be affected by involving them in the strategy development process.

When the same question is asked to one of the operational manager, he replied that “We don’t involve the employees when developing a new strategy, but take their opinion when doing some changes to the existing strategy”. From this statement it is clear that, involvement of the employees is really important when there is a proposal to change the strategy implementation process, as they are the ultimate resources to make implement the proposed strategy in to implementation and also  The opinions of the employees is are really required while changing any existing production strategy, as their performance should be affected with the changed strategy.

Now when the operational managers are asked the a question like, do your employees understand the strategies implemented across the production unit, most of them responded like “Our employees can understand the strategies developed across the production unit, but we expect more queries and suggestions against these strategies”. From this statement it is clear that, even if the management strives a lot to involve the employees in understanding the strategies of the production unit, there is only partial involvement of the employees. and There could be many reasons behind this, and the most common among them as per the opinion of one of the operations manager is that “Maybe the employees are really busy with the targets rather than the strategies ”.  

From this statement it is clear that  the employees are fixed to the routine, target based work and may skip the importance of the strategies across the organization.  and It is the responsibility of the operational manger to make sure the employees are on same track with respect to understanding the production strategies. 

Research sample size (If you interview and give questionnaires to 45 respondents, are these all the employee of the branch where you are working? If that’s the case, you can say you used a census of the entire population of employees in that particular branch.):

The actual number of employees or participants interviewed for collecting their opinions in order to obtain the primary source of data is called as the research sample size. Based on the research problem considered and also due to the issues raised due to time and money the research sample size will varying from one project top the other project. Generally sample size of a project can be decided using several sampling techniques, the systematic sampling, clustered sampling, random sampling and probability sampling are the commonly used sampling techniques (You need to rewrite this sub-chapter after you read about sampling. You need to understand the difference between probability and non- probability samples and decide what sample techniques are you using. 

For probability sampling you need to have at least 30 respondents. ) . The strategy for each and every sampling technique is different in deciding the sample size, the sample size in this research project is decided by using the random sampling approach. The subset of the participants in the semi structured interview is selected with a probability of non-zero and this done in the random sampling technique. In this particular research project the sample size considered is 45 participants.

Various levels of employees in the AMT COFFEE LTD Company that is clearly speaking operational manager, two area managers and three general managers are interviewed in order to gather important information from the management perspective. Three assistant managers and two supervisors from different departments are also included in the sample size.  Even the questioners are given to the front line employees irrespective to their designation, age, gender and experiences and these front line employees includes the cash handler, customer care representatives, stockers and cleaners.

The semi structured interviews conducted for the sample size are done based on the questioner  prepared for gathering the opinions of the employees which are very much necessary for obtaining the required information related to the research project that re-write, what do you mean, In an organization the implementation of the strategy and its success is varied from one level to the other. A strategy in an organization is useful in the medium level and top level but in the bottom level (Rewrite, what do you mean? Understanding strategy is not useful in the bottom level? I thought you were trying to prove otherwise. ) . The importance of the strategy will be reduced if it reaches to the bottom level of the organization.

Summary:

This chapter focuses on the actual research methodology used in the research project is described clearly. It is stated that the qualitative research methodology and quantitative research methodology are the two research methodologies that are generally used in the research projects and the qualitative research methodology is used across this research project in order evaluate the research problem considered. The research design is used in this project for understanding the reasons in an organization the implementation of the strategy and its success is varied from one level to the other.

A strategy in an organization is useful in the medium level and top level but in the bottom level. The importance of the strategy will be reduced if it reaches to the bottom level of the organization. Research designs are of two types of descriptive research design and other one is the correlation based research design .  The design used in this project is the case study approach and this approach is used to gather the related information required for the research project. In this project AMT COFFEE LTDis considered as the case study and the employees of this company are interviewed using a questioner prepared.

These semi structured interviews are conducted among the various levels of employees in a limited sample size considered; the sample size considered in this project is a total of 50 members . The primary source of data is collected from the semi structured interviews and the secondary source of data is collected from various theoretical sources and these are information gathered are analysed and compared in the further chapters to determine the accuracy of the collected information.

Data collection methods:

In order to complete the research of the project successfully, certain information related to the problem considered in the project is very much necessary and that important data is collected is used for further analysis. Primary source of data and secondary source of data are the two ways for collecting the necessary data for the project. The detail explanation of the primary source of data and secondary source of data is given below:

Primary source of data:

In this project, semi structured interviews are conducted for  with various participants for collecting the primary source of data. Questioners an interview protocol is are prepared by the researchers in order to conduct the semi structured interviews. The (Eleven managers have been interviewed, namely  the operational manager, two area managers, three general managers, three assistant managers and two supervisors from different departments.  – this is what you say in 3.5 you need to be consistent!!!  Also please revise and correct the total no of respondents #: is it 45 as under 3.5 or is it 50 as in 3.6?)  research problem considered and the relevant solution for that problem can be obtained from the primary source of data.

The human resources who are the direct respondents of the research process are generally interviewed for collecting the primary data. The primary source of data collected from the respondents will be more accurate because of the reason that the opinions of the direct participants are gathered directly and then that information is evaluated for consistency (The accuracy of collected date is ensured through a process of trangulation involving the use of ‘multiple sources of evidence’ (Yin, 2003), namely semi-structured intervies and questionnaires.). The research problem can may be clearly understood and the a solution for that problem can be obtained from the detailed analysis of the primary data and this primary data is also used comparisons with data the basic knowledge obtained from the other sources, mainly and the information obtained by primary secondary sources of data.

Various employees of the AMT COFFEE LTD are involved in the semi structured interviews for collecting their opinions in various perspectives and few questioners are prepared for conducting the interviews which can cover are the doubts that are needed for doing the research of the project. The primary part of the research can be completed successfully using this primary information. The opinions of the participants can be similar for some questions and sometimes they may vary with their opinions for the same question. The preparation of the questionnaires should be done in such a manner that they don’t make the participants of the interview bored.

Few ethics and policies should be followed while preparing the questioners (The construction of the questionnaires needs to follow some ethical principles such as  being clearly understood and not not huring the personal feelings of the participants) . The questioners must be prepared by covering all the questions which can fetch all the important information from the participants. The questions in the queisstioner should not hurt the personal feelings of the participants and even the questions must not be problematic to answer. Depending on the opinions of the participants of the research problem can be clearly understood and even new questions can be raised by the researcher for a better research on the project.

Particularly in this project the main aim of the project is to understand explain the importance of understanding of the employees’ understanding  of with the organizational strategies implemented in the company and  how this understanding relates to also the improvement in the job satisfaction of the employee and productivity of within the organization. The opinions of the management and the employees are gathered from the interviews and that information is  analyzed and evaluated for further process of the research.

Secondary source of data:

The core information data collected of the project can be  better understood by the in relation to secondary sources of data. Various sources like  the internet and intranet websites of the AMT COFFEE LTD as well as  journals, published articles, informal discussions and websites are studied in order to collect the secondary sources of data and these sources are also called as the secondary sources. The information collected from the primary source of data and the secondary source of data are compared with each other in order to determine consistency of the information and also allow the researcher to draw useful conclustions and make pertinent recommendations. to obtain some observations and recommendations for the research problem considered.

The secondary source of data for this particular from the internet and intranet websites of the AMT COFFEE LTD and thus obtained information is used for the comparison with the primary source of data that is obtained from the above process. Different article, journals and weekly updates sent by the management to the employees is used as Such  secondary data sources of information and such a sample is are given in the appendix section.

Research design:

The research of this project is done by the implementation of a design process and that design process is called as Research design ( Research design is “the general plan of how …to go about answering …a research question.  It will contain clear objectives, derived from …the research questions, specify the sources from which …. data are collected, and consider the constraints that … the researcher will inevitably have (e.g. access to data, time, location and money) as well as discussing ethical issues.” Saunders et al, 2009, p137. The dots … are replacing text that is not relavant. Please re-write the Research design part. You may want to describes different  approaches to research design such as exploratory studies, descriptive or explanatory studies and then describe your own research in relation to these 3 design strategies. You may decide that your research is explanatory since the aim is to collect qualitative data to explain the reasons why employees need to understand strategy and also to gain insight  how this understanding contributes to improved company performance.).

Based on the aim and purpose of the research the type of research design is decided as there are many types of research designs. The most commonly used research designs are of two types one is the correlation based research design and the other one is the descriptive research design. The correlation based research design is very accurate in case of the studies related to the case control and also in case of the studies related to the observation based because this design deals with the assumptions and predictions. Whereas the descriptive research design is based on the descriptions and observations and the process of research is implemented using these observations. In this project we use the case study approach which is a research design based on the descriptive research design and this approach is explained clearly as follows:

Case study:

A specific form of research design particular in descriptive and/or explanatory design approach to research is the case study approach. The research problem considered in the research project is analysed and evaluated deeply using the case study approach (You mean: the case study strategy allows the researcher to build a rich understanding of the context of the organization. Especially useful is the ability to find answers to the question ‘why’. A variety of data collection techniques may be used in combination. These may include interviews, observation, documentary analysis and questionnaires..  in using a variety of data collection techniques the researcher is able to triangulate the data.  For example,  data collected via semi-structured interviews can be triangulated by other techniques such as a questionnaire.  Triangulations is important as it helps the researcher prove validity of the research carried out.

Within this research based on a case study of   AMT Coffee Ltd , the researcher is using semi-structured interviews as well as questionnaires to explore employees’ understanding of company strategy as well as the way this understanding is reflected in company performance.  – Why can’t you write like this – it is pretty simple!!) . Using the case study approach the difficulty in the problem is simplified and divided into various sub tasks and then clarified. Using the research finding collected directly from the case study approach are used to evaluate and compare the information collected using the scientific models and theoretical models.

When a research problem is considered by the researcher and then the case study approach is used to focus on the problem considered and various perspectives of the problem are analysed in this approach for finding the solution of the problem. According to the interest of the researcher the research problem can be analysed and compared that with the theoretical information obtained. By observing the researches that are already done it is evident that using the case study approach gives accurate data which is more relevant to the research project when compared to information collected from the quantitative research method and even from the statistical analysis approach. The data collected from the case study approach is mostly based on the opinions of the respondents but not based on the statistical analysis.

This particular research project is done with the aim that to understand the     significance of the communication of a strategy to the employees and implementation of strategy in an organization is related in many research studies is dependent on the experiences that are taken from the real time case studies. Many researchers have used the developing, communicating and implementing approaches of a strategy from many organizations both successful and failure ones and established the case study considered in this project is AMT COFFEE LTD and the semi structured interviews are conducted among the various employees of this company in order to collect the primary data that is needed to proceed with the project research.

Quantitative research method:

The quantitative analysis of the research problem considered is done using the quantitative research methodology. This kind of research methods will explore the statistical and numerical analysis of the research problem that is regarded. The evaluation of the results gathered from this research method is done statistically and numerically done. This research methodology also includes the empirical evaluation of the quantitative properties and the study of the relationship of various attributes that are important is done clearly.

The quantitative research methodology is used for the science projects that means researches related to science subjects where the numerical and empirical evaluations are required. This quantitative research methodology is also used for the creation and exploration of few of the theories, models and hypotheses. All this indicates that statistics is very important for using the quantitative research methodology in a research project and this method also involves few methods of measurements of statistics and these measurements are divergent in behavior.

In this particular project the research (You are now talking about your qualitative research but under the heading Quantitative research.  You need to start  with quantitative, continue with the qualitative heading and then talk about your own research.)  approach used is the qualitative research. methodology and this method is used in order to evaluate and analyze the research problem considered in this project. To make the research of the project more perfect some information is required and that required primary information is gathered from the qualitative research methods (Using data collection methods suitable for a qualitative approach.) . This information is collected from the sources that are directly interacted into the process but not from sources that are not direct and even the information is collected from the channels that are intermediate.

The primary source of data collected can be used for analyzing the research problem in detail and also to explore the internal issues that are hidden in the problem considered in the research and for this the opinions of the respondents who directly involved in the research project are escalated using this research methodology. In this project the main concentration emphasis is given to evaluating the importance of employee understanding of the strategies implemented in the organizations and also to know how the organization performance. At the same time and the employee (An understanding is gained about employee job satisfaction and how it can be improved through better communication from managers.)  job satisfaction is improved with proper communication of organizational strategies and the.

Semi structured are used in this project for interviewing the various respondents of the research in the organization taken as case study and that information obtained from the opinions of the employees is used for the successful completion of the project. The (The particular cata collection method used in this study is a semi-structured interview.)  case study used in this project is AMT COFFEE LTD and information is obtained from various levels of employees of this company (The research project is carried out in AMT COFFEE LTD where the research has worked for —- months/years).

The information gathered is very accurate as it is taken from the direct respondents of the research problem that is considered in the research project. (Care was taken to gather the information with accuracy. In order to ensure validity, the author recorded the interviews, transcribed them and asked the respondents to check their answers.- you promised to do so when we last talked!!!) The case study approach used is clearly explained in the research design section and the number of respondents is represented specified in the research sample size section. Questioners are prepared in order to interview the employees for escalating the information required.

These (An interview protocol was prepared and the questions were piloted with one respondent in order to check whether they were clear.  Some corrections were made and then interviews were carried out)  questioners will be helpful in analyzing the opinions of the employees individually and the information gathered from the employees is investigated further used for the research problem using the qualitative research methodology. This can provide many qualitative methods and it is proved that these qualitative methods will provide good benefits and depending on these benefits a qualitative research methodology based on the case study approach is used in this project.

Summary 

Complete review to the organizational strategies and the corresponding employee performance and job satisfaction towards the organizational strategies is done across the Literature review with reference to the opinion of various authors. There are few gaps in the literature towards the level of communication to be implemented to make sure the employees understand the organizational strategies and the actual research done to close these gaps are as given in the coming chapters. 

Research Methodology

Introduction:

                         The research methodology that is implemented in this project is explained in this chapter. This chapter concentrates on the clear representation of the considered research problem and also focuses on the required data for the project and the implemented data collection techniques particular in this project. The representation of the research methodology used, the data collection techniques like primary source of data and secondary source of data, research design used that is the case study approach and the sample size considered to conduct the semi structured interviews is done clearly in this chapter.

Methodology Implemented:

In order to complete the research project, the problem considered in the project must be clearly understood and the requirements of the projects must also be clearly known and this can be done by the implementation of the research methodology. The research methodology used in this project for the clear understanding of the research problem is explained in this section. There are two types of research methodologies and they are the qualitative research methodology and quantitative research methodology . These research methodologies are used to collect the data that is required for solving the research problem considered and for the other process of the research . The following section will clearly explains the qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.

Qualitative research method:

The behaviors of the individuals involved in the actual research project are targeted in the qualitative research methodologies. The procedure of the qualitative research methodology is carried out by analyzing the opinions gathered from the respondents involved in the project. The information obtained from those respondents is also reviewed in this process. The qualitative research methodology is also used to review and record the opinions of the respondents from various groups and sub groups. In general the behavioural and the social sciences are the basis for the origination of these qualitative research methods and these methods are applied in some of the case in analytical studies. Qualitative research methodology is very much important for the completion of the research project because this process is involved with basic issues like understanding the research problem, interviewing the respondents and gathering the required information and in exploring the other issues in the project.

The management of the organization concentrates on designing of a strategy and its implementation in the organization to improve job satisfaction for the employees working in the organization. Job satisfaction plays a significant role in the performance of the employee. An employee becomes productive when he is having job satisfaction; even it is evident from many researchers that job satisfaction shows a lot of impact on the production and performance of the employees. So job satisfaction is focused in this section as it has much relation with the organization commitment and organization outcomes. If an employee is satisfied his/her performance is superior when compared to the performance of a less satisfied employee . The factors that influence employees’ job satisfaction are discussed as follows.

Dispositional Impacts

Employee’s disposition shows a significant impact on the job satisfaction. Job satisfaction is also related statistically to the childhood dispositions. Job satisfaction is different for different employees based on their variations in behaviors and dispositions. Research shows that disposition exactly influences the job satisfaction of the employees. This shows that  the job satisfaction of an employee can be disturbed because of his/her disposition. It is also discussed that the disposition first influences the psychological factors of the individual and then influences the job satisfaction. As an instance, the experience of the events that are emotionally important are influenced by disposition and that will disturb the job satisfaction. There are many studies that explain the relationships of job satisfaction to disposition.

Cultural Impacts

The culture of the employee also influences the job satisfaction of the employee. The attitude of the employee is based on their cultural background and childhood experiences as well as the milieu in which he/she grew up. The situations of globalization in the organization particularly the cross cultures that exist in an organization and the related employee issues will influence the employee job satisfaction and so this is considered as a challenging tasks for the human resource management. Few researchers have considered the four dimensions in the employees’ attitudes, namely “risk taking versus uncertainty avoidance”, “achievement orientation”, “individualism-collectivism” and “power distance”.

When these dimensions are considered according to country of provenance,  it is proved that United States is low on uncertainty avoidance and high in risk taking, low in power distance and high on individualism. In case of Mexico, it is high on power distance, high in collectivism and also high in uncertainty avoidance. These four dimensions can elaborate the variations in the employee attitudes that are based on the cross cultured situations that they face in the working and also shows how their job satisfaction is affected.  It is evident from the researches that employee attitude and the job satisfaction are influenced a lot by the country of origin and cross cultural aspects.

The level of employee is also considered when the effect of cross cultural aspects is considered. Employees are viewed in the humanistic and instrumental approaches that means in these approaches employees of various countries and cultures are viewed and their attitudes are observed in order to test their job satisfaction in certain situations. These all discussions will prove that the cultural variation in the organization and even the employees from different countries and their attitudes are observed by the human resource practitioners to analyses its influence on the performance of the employees and job satisfaction of the employees because of the reason that the progress of the organization is based on the employee performance.

Work Situation Influences

  Employee job satisfaction is also affected by the working conditions of the employee. General working situations play a major role in the employee performance, so organizations should ensure a good working environment to ensure employee job satisfaction. Various sides of the employees work are evaluated by the researchers in order to determine their influence on employee performance; they are pay, co-workers, opportunities, supervision, and promotion. In addition to these, it is observed that the  work situation is the major side that plays an important role.

In general an employee will work in the organization in the situations provided by the organization if the conditions are good he can work peacefully and if the working conditions are not so good then they feel some discomfort in working. So management of the organization needs to provide good working conditions for the employees. Employees must be assigned work based on their capability and interests because when they are provided with work that they like then they will show much commitment towards the work and this will increase both their job satisfaction and company performance.

The job satisfaction of the employee can be achieved by other means like good salaries, attractive bonuses and increment plans etc. The other factor that increases job satisfaction in employee is work flexibility. This means the employee likes to work, the working environment is comfortable,  flexible working hours  are available to satisfy personal commitments. Change in the working conditions make the employee fresh and  variety and so there will be a lot of scope for the increase in job satisfaction.

So management should focus on different factors that show impact on the job satisfaction of the employee and then provide them the required support from the organization. Management should also focus on designing strategies in such a way that they meet all the requirements of the employees and the organization. All the factors that influence employee job satisfaction should be considered while designing strategies.   These strategies must be implemented in a proper way with clear communication for employees. Communicating the strategies clearly will also increase job satisfaction.   As strategies are understood clearly employees can work better.

Due to the social embbededness, in impersonal economic estimation the economic activity is not possible to place in the different sphere. The financial characteristics are rooted into a network that contains families, careers, relations and the state. The ends and means of the activity are influenced by these networks, and the reasonable and appropriate nature is defined for their people.

Therefore, the economic activity is shaped using the personal histories where the factors like gender, religion, family back ground, educational back ground and ethnicity are included.  So the suggestions given to guide a strategy are cultural but not cognitive as viewed by the social constructivist. Social systems that are in a series, the effects by the organizations, economies and the industries will define the culture. The four forms of culture are “contingency, classical, socio-cognitive and socio-political”.

Bird Approach:

                             In this approach the organization behaves like a bird.  Generally a bird cannot live in the air forever and it needs to land somewhere in order to take a rest and so it will search for a tree and then select a comfortable branch and then land there. In the same way the organization also search for suitable situation where it can have better outputs. This type of taking decisions is random because it’s the never ending process for searching the best from what is available. As it is random and changing always there are more chances for risks .

Squirrel Approach:

Using this approach the organization will ignore the factors that are said to be important for their survival as they have certain potentials and talents. These strategic approaches ares  not used frequently and if they are practiced rarely in an organization, then also these approaches are giving unsuccessful results.

                              The study and relative research is done by observations and scenarios and from those it is indicated that most of the literature studies have focused on the strategy development but not on the strategy implementation. All the above discussed approaches are definitely useful but there are some drawbacks. One such drawback  is that strategy effectiveness is not measured by these approaches. This problem is solved by David Norton and Robert Kaplan in 1996. They have generated a method called “Balanced Scorecard Performance Measurement Method”.   This method is designed for both the qualitative measures and monetary measures for the sake of employee satisfaction.

They have also designed a balanced score card with a motive of better explanation and implementation of these strategy for the sake of employees using easy, understandable terminology. Various functions are integrated and related to the strategy and these functions include sales, finance, human resources, manufacturing and marketing. The employees are associated with the strategy in their daily work and so they need a better understanding of the strategy. The balance scorecard method explains the strategy for the employees clearly. Even good leadership qualities are developed in the employees with better explanation and implementation of the strategy.

The classical approach is influenced by the military tradition, because there the decisions are finalized by the solitary general and so here the world is viewed as a rigid hierarchy. The “intellectual inheritance” of the economics has complemented the military tradition. Later, in 1994 Von Neumann and Morgernstern sited this tradition at the heart at the strategy beginning and viewed this as a game that is elaborated between the interdependent businesses that are competing with one another with “move, bluff, counter move and counter bluff. The managers become confident in adopting the strategies that increase the profit of the company with balanced plans that can be used for  the long term with this classical approach of strategy. Particularly, the confidence in terms of capacity and enthusiasm of the manager is developed.