Design and methodology of the empirical study--论文代写范文精选

进行的调查是在2009年末和2010年初。太难的受访者指事实比大几岁。也就是说,公司信息和数据对这些因素可能参与培训和创新之间的关系,但并不是严格意义上的知识。下面的essay代写范文讲述了这一问题。

Design and methodology of the empirical study 
The protocol we developed consisted of a questionnaire with 100 closed questions, each taking the form of either a multiple choice or a self-assessment evaluation. The questionnaire was divided into four sections, each investigating one of four main topics: (A) general information about the firm, (B) procedural features of its training and development system, (C) identity and self-perception of the business function in charge of training and development, and (D) the firm's innovation profile. 

The first three sections were administered to the company's HR Manager. The interviewee was instructed to fill them in from the vantage point of the function in charge of training, not that of the firm as a whole, and to always refer to what the state of affairs was in the "real company", rather than to what it was desired or proclaimed to be. With an analogous set of instructions, the Chief Operations Officer was asked to score the company's types and degrees of innovation as investigated in the fourth section. The survey was conducted during late 2009 and early 2010, and the questions referred to the years 2006-2008. Three years are a time frame long enough to capture at least partially the dynamics and structural flows that characterize both training and innovation. On the other hand, it might have been, for several reasons, too difficult for the interviewees to refer to facts more than a few years older. Section A: General information about the firm This section concerned data like corporate designation, size, geographical location, annual revenue, economic situation (e.g. improvements or crisis), etc.; that is, company information and data about those factors that supposedly are involved in the relation between training and innovation, but are not strictly knowledge-based.. Section B: Procedural aspects of the firm's training and development system Here we gathered both quantitative data (e.g., how many training and development hours were delivered per year, or how they were distributed along the hierarchies of employees) and qualitative data about the processes (e.g., how the training and development plan was devised, or what was the overall sense that the company made of it). 

The idea here is to go beyond merely listing or benchmarking the relevant activities. There is no list of suitable or necessary training activities. All the relevant decisions that a company will make are weaved into the web of the interpretations that it gives of the internal and the external environments, and of the strategies that it devises and enacts to deal with them; therefore, such decisions can only make sense and be understood within that specific frame of reference. Unsurprisingly, the actual choices concerning training and development, like all other practices, are too diverse to be compared. 

The data gathered in section B were concerned with: 1. Planning: the range of activities aimed at structuring the complete training program, like the diagnosis of the training needs, the setup of the training plans, the actors involved in the relevant decisions, etc. 2. Delivery: the logistic and operative features of training supply, like microplanning, agenda scheduling, the choice and management of trainees, etc. 3. Evaluation: the activities aimed at monitoring the success, efficacy and impact of the training activities; particular attention was paid to whether and how results are shared and discussed within the firm and used as feedback. 4. Resources: the types (economic, technological and human) and quantity of resources made available by the firm for staff training and development.

Identity and self-perception of the business function in charge of training and development The notion of identity can be understood in terms of subjective positions like "who I am", "what my situation is", "what I want to achieve", "what I am going to do" and so on. This is the foundation on which an agent (whether "economic" or otherwise) frames its environment and situation, its actual and potential actions in that situation and its interpretation of feedback received. Identity is not a still image, but a complex process in which drives toward differentiation and integration are dynamically balanced. In the case of enterprises, or in general of organizations, several layers of identity need be identified: the organization itself, its subsystems, and the individuals. 

The relation between these layers is neither hierarchical nor one of reduction; the overall identity and strategy result instead from the complex interplay of semiautonomous systems that affect each other while following each its own trajectory. Such trajectories include centrifugal and centripetal processes: a dynamic balance between the various types of trajectory is needed to maintain the fitness of the organization as a whole. In this section of the questionnaire, these theoretical assumptions were broken down into three main areas: 1. Knowledge: how and how profoundly the function in charge of training and learning has knowledge of the firm as a whole (i.e., its business strategies, the other subsystems and their activities, the professional skills of the staff, etc.); whether and how it keeps track and makes use of past events relevant to the firm and of its prospective representations of the future 2. Networking: whether and how the function in charge of training maintains cultural, functional and managerial autonomy in the interaction with the other subsystems and with the firm as a whole. 3. Sense-making: what role(s) and value(s) the firm attributes to staff training and development.

Innovation profile of the firm This section of the questionnaire was derived from Community Innovation Statistics indications (CIS by Eurostat, ISTAT, 2008). It included questions about the type(s) of innovation the firm had created (Product, Process, Organizational, Market). Each type of innovation was further broken down into four possible degrees: Radical, Incremental, Absolute, Relative.

Methodological considerations In order to build the questionnaire we adopted a formative indicator measurement model, acknowledging the suggestions of Diamantopoulos and Siguaw (2006) and taking into account the theoretical considerations regarding the nature of the causal link between the construct and its indicators (Blalock, 1968; Costner, 1969; Edwards & Bagozzi, 2000). In particular we conformed to the following rules: • the accepted direction of causality is from items to construct; • the indicators are defining characteristics of the construct; • changes in the indicators should cause changes in the construct; • changes in the construct do not cause changes in the indicators; • indicators should not be interchangeable; • dropping an indicator may alter the conceptual domain of the construct; • it is not necessary for indicators to covary with each other; • the indicators are not required to have the same antecedents and consequences. Those in section B and C were considered the independent variables of the research. Those in section D were considered the dependent variables. Overall, we correlated seven independent variables and sixteen dependent variables. Focus groups A beta version of the questionnaire was tested in two focus groups involving the HR Managers and the Chief Operations Officers of 15 firms selected to reflect the population of interest (Nassar-McMillan & Dianne-Borders, 2002). 

The final version embodied conceptual and linguistic integrations emerged from the focus groups. Participants As we write the sample consists of 17 Italian companies from the Food & beverages and Fashion industries, but we are still collecting data and foresee a final count of about 80 out of a universe of 300. The choice of these businesses was due to several reasons. From the social and cultural points of view, they are among the areas for which Italian industries and their products are most renowned in the world. From a methodological point of view, we wanted to avoid industry-specific effects in the statistics and therefore needed to sample not more than one or two business areas. Also, we needed firms having an internal structured management of HR and specifically of staff training and development. A safe threshold for this feature is 200 employees and, given the highly peculiar structure of the Italian economy, there exist only a few businesses with a substantial number of firms so large. Taken together, the Food & beverages and Fashion industries have a universe of 300 such enterprises.

51Due网站原创范文除特殊说明外一切图文著作权归51Due所有；未经51Due官方授权谢绝任何用途转载或刊发于媒体。如发生侵犯著作权现象，51Due保留一切法律追诉权。（essay代写)
更多essay代写范文欢迎访问我们主页 www.51due.com 当然有essay代写需求可以和我们24小时在线客服 QQ:800020041 联系交流。-X（essay代写)