A few years ago Mark and Phil thought it would be fun to work together on a piec

Question

A few years ago Mark and Phil thought it would be fun to work together on a piece of research. They also hoped it would benefit their continuing development as researchers. Mark’s research background (strength) has its origins in the recruitment and subsequent mobility of labor. His research methods skills emphasize the quantitative approach, although he had undertaken a variety of qualitative research projects. Phil’s strength is as a mainstream HRM academic with an bias towards understanding the processes of everyday HRM. His research methods skills are mainly qualitative. Unlike many students Mark’s and Phil’s research area was one in which they were aware of the literature. However, despite this, they were in a similar situation to many students. They wanted to undertake a new piece of work that would excite them and be of some practical benefit to organizations.

In the early 1990s Mark had carried out a survey of recruitment methods used by local authority employers. This had built on and developed research he had undertaken as part of his doctoral thesis approximately 10 years earlier. While discussing the findings in the coffee shop Phil agreed to take a more detailed look to see whether there was anything of practical significance for managers. During discussion a few weeks later an issue that they felt was fascinating emerged. Throughout the previous decade there appeared to have been a dominance of internal and word-of-mouth recruitment. Internal recruitment is where recruitment is restricted to an organization’s existing employees. Word-of-mouth is where recruitment relies on the organization’s existing employees to tell other people in their social networks about the vacancies.

Through their discussion Phil and Mark developed a clear research idea that was in both their areas of academic strength. This was concerned with explaining why, given the centrality of equal opportunities to local authorities’ recruitment, internal and word-of-mouth recruitment was so dominant. They felt this idea was fascinating because, on the face of it, both forms of recruitment were alien to the principle of equal opportunities. Quantitative evidence from Mark’s survey showed that the phenomena of internal and word-of-mouth recruitment were dominant. Mark’s experience of working in local authorities supported this. They now needed to refine the idea, develop a clear research question and objectives, and write their research proposal.

They adopted what we felt was a rational process. They both drafted outline proposals simultaneously and criticized each other’s work. This led to an outline proposal that integrated their ideas and encompassed research questions and objectives.

Next they reviewed the literature to establish what work had been done on this aspect of recruitment. The overall conclusion from the empirical research, undertaken in all sectors of the economy, was that word-of-mouth and internal recruitment methods were still important. However, none of this work concentrated on local authorities. Moreover, they thought that awareness of the importance of equal opportunities would have grown since the time when the research was conducted. Their research proposal still seemed valid, and the literature confirmed its relevance. In addition, reading the literature had suggested possible new research questions. However, they still needed to discuss their proposal with other people.

The first discussion was with an equal opportunities officer with a London borough. He was not excited by their research idea, and commented that he was not surprised by the survey findings. These, he said, were due to the need to redeploy people who would otherwise be made redundant. The second discussion was with a personnel specialist from a large county authority. Her response can be paraphrased as ‘well what do you expect.... the pay for manual positions is relatively low so there are few applicants.... we therefore have to rely on word of mouth.’

Mark and Phil were depressed, to say the least. They thought they had a fascinating research question. Yet the first two people they had discussed their ideas with had shown them the answer was obvious. They had spent a great deal of time refining their research proposal and in searching the literature. Their immediate reaction was to abandon the research completely. However, a few days later they decided to revise their research ideas. They decided to discard the local authorities and equal opportunities perspectives and focus on the notification channels used by employers. Their revised research question was: ‘Why do organizations use word-of- mouth recruitment?’

What lessons can you learn from Phil’s and Mark’s experience? (at least 350 words)

Explanation / Answer

research on any topic require a lot of effort and proper approach in order to be successful because in depth research require a lot of ingredients, like knowledge investment, time investment, effort investment, resources from scholars, etc. I believe that it is one of the most difficult and interesting activities in the world because through research a lot of ideas and questions come up and if we need to answer them we need to study and understand. In this context we see two individuals from different academic backgrounds plan to research on a topic based on their interest, both have been involved in research in the past and has been successful in some extent with their way of research. They wanted to undertake a new piece of work which will provide them with excitement and challenges and they can at least look forward to this new thing and therefore they started planning regarding their topic.

They decided to research on the recruitment methodologies used a decade back and they felt that it was very interesting and is challenging too because the recruitment approach used were something unique and that will kindle interest in people who actually work in the process of recruitment. They gathered a lot of information and prepared a very strong literature regarding the topic so that they can find answers to every question that is asked but the response was not fascinating because the individuals they approached felt that this is expected and the results were very much obvious, hence they felt that the topic must not be that interesting and they planned to change the question. I believe that any kind of research is important and has some imputes which are important and in order to be successful, patience is the key and Mark and Phil needs to be patient in order to be successful because opportunities will come if they possess a strong literature regarding the topic. I feel that they can alter some portion and make the topic based on recent facts and figures which will make people relate to the actual situation. A strong research should not go in vain but in order to make it successful some modifications can be done so that it is interesting to people they approach and in order to make it interesting the approach needs to be clear and should be communicated effectively.

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