BU5583 Research Practice Assignment - University of Aberdeen

Part 1 - Transcript Coding

Gender diversity in organisational leadership has been understood to benefit organisations from various perspectives. Yet, several studies have demonstrated that despite significant shifts towards greater acceptance of women in leadership roles over the last couple of decades, women are still underrepresented in organisational leadership everywhere in the world however to varying degrees. The following TED talk transcript is focused on this issue. It is an abridged version of the talk that was held by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, in 2010. More than a decade later, the points that she raises in her talk are still relevant.

Assume the following Research Question and sub-questions for this talk:

RQ: How can organisations address the problem of women's underrepresentation in leadership positions?

Sub-Q1: What are the challenges that women face in their career path towards leadership?

Sub-Q2: What are the possible solutions to overcome women's underrepresentation in organisational leadership positions?

Your Task is to:

1) Code the transcript (Please note: You must mark the codes in the transcript, using different colours, AND you must provide a list of your codes, specifying their corresponding colour in the transcript).

2) Develop a coding framework with themes and sub-themes (Please note: You must provide a clear definition for each theme and sub-theme).

3) Illustrate your themes and sub-themes using direct quotations from the transcript.

4) You should provide at least 10 codes, 2 themes and 3 sub-themes for each theme. You must provide at least 3 illustrations for each sub-theme. Illustrations must be in the same colours as their corresponding codes which are marked in the text.

In conducting your analysis, you should always consider the research questions. That is, the codes, the themes, and the sub-themes that you create should be in relation to the Research Questions and help potentially address them.

Part 2 - Quantitative data collection

In a research project, you have been asked to examine the impact of managers' demographic characteristics on their choice of initiating compulsory redundancy during the pandemic. You will read the literature to see if there is any theory explaining the relationship between managerial characteristics and firm strategic decisions. You find Upper Echelon Theory by Hambrick and Mason (1984). You find the following graph in Hambrick and Mason (1984) and you think this conceptual framework can help you when collecting the data.

You decide you want to collect primary data using a questionnaire. To be able to conduct this research, what questions do you include in your questionnaire?

You need to consider the following points when designing your questionnaire:

1. The questionnaire must contain only 4 questions. A high-quality questionnaire contains questions that are directly related to the topic under investigation (you receive no mark for less relevant questions). Each question can contain one or several related sub-questions or statements (maximum of 4 sub-questions or statement) to construct a measure.

2. A high-quality questionnaire consists of questions that leads to quantifiable measures; therefore, using open-ended questions is not advised.

3. You need to choose between binary, ordinal, categorical and numeric variables. An excellent questionnaire frames the questions in a way to have the most appropriate variable type as output. For example, one student might ask about the intensity of employee downsizing using a question that employs Likert rating, another student might ask a yes or no question to examine whether the firm had announced employee downsizing. While the two questions are related to downsizing, the first one is preferred as it provides more information about downsizing.

4. The questions in a high-quality questionnaire are all relevant, have the right wording (i.e., the question is stated so clearly that all the respondents interpret the question the same way) and come in the right order.

Attachment:- Research Practice Assignment File.rar