The Factors Affecting Team Performance in the Technical Committees of the Saudi Standards - Research Proposal Example

Introduction: The following is a research project proposal to produce a dissertation towards an MSc in Strategic Quality Management. A brief background of the selected organisation and the previous researches are presented first, followed by the scope, aim and objectives of the proposed research. The research philosophy, approach and strategy are presented next, with careful consideration of the available research methodology, validity of the research and possible alternatives in methodology (Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill, 2009, p.41; Westover & Taylor, 2010, p. 814). Finally, the research sample selection process, data collection and analysis, assumptions, and value of the research, possible difficulties and limitations to the research are discussed. Dissertation Title: The Factors Affecting Team Performance in the Technical Committees of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organisation (SASO) Background Context: The Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organisation (SASO) was founded by Royal Decree in April 1972 under the chairmanship of the Minister of Commerce and Industry. SASO develops and enforces standards of quality, metrology and conformity in all commodities produced or imported by the nation, with the primary objective of providing consumer protection and co-ordinating metrology and quality standards with the country’s regional and trade partners (SASO, 2011). As an agency whose critical mission is to develop and maintain quality and metrology standards, SASO’s processes must meet high standards and likewise be expected to generate revenue and shareholder value. Any concepts that can improve the management, efficiency, quality of output and performance of the organisation are of great practical value. Previous Researches: The overall objective of this research and of the technical committees in SASO itself is to find ways to continuously improve the organisation’s output. One tool that can help is the identification of critical success factors (CSFs) and their opposite, obstacles to the process of continuous improvement (CI). However, CSFs and CI processes are significantly different for public- and private-sector enterprises, so proper identification of the applicable factors is critical to finding effective improvement techniques (Fryer, Anthony & Douglas, 2007, pp. 506-508). One significant area of interest to this research is the fundamental and theoretical bases for team formation, coherence and control. One theory that appears to contribute significantly is the viable systems theory of autonomous social communities, wherein a particular political climate or set of conditions establishes social coherence in a group (Yolles, 2005, pp. 617-618). The mandate of SASO may represent a political framework that enables teams to function as units. The basis for team coherence is important because there is evidence that long-term orientations and goals among diverse team members can negatively affect the long-term orientation and goals of the team overall (Yu & Cable, 2011, p. 63). The organisational framework of SASO’s technical committees represents a form of postbureaucratic or network-shaped organisation, in which individuals are at least partly responsible for setting their own professional and personal boundaries in order to interact with other team members (Maravelias, 2003, p. 547 & 2007, p. 555). This research will explore in depth how team members regard their places within their teams in terms of control and freedom, because there is some evidence that too much individual empowerment can be detrimental to team performance since it is intimately correlated with achievement obligations (Chan, Ng & Casimir, 2010, p. 531). One of the most important functions of a team is the sharing of knowledge among team members, which ideally results in the best performance of the team as a unit. In studies of teams in public sector settings, most participants rate the importance of knowledge sharing very highly, but the actual sharing of knowledge is handicapped by self-interested biases and unclear protocols within organisations (Sandhu, Jain & Ahmad, 2011, p. 206). One of the areas this research will address is the role of team member motivation in knowledge sharing, specifically intrinsic motivations such as empowerment, work satisfaction and values, all of which have been found to encourage knowledge sharing (Cruz, Pérez & Cantero, 2009, p. 478). The degree to which these motivations are present in SASO’s teams and the role they play in team performance will be explored. Research Scope: The research will be applied to the technical committees of the SASO, of which there are currently 32 operating under the guidance of 6 general committees (SASO, 2011). There are approximately 300 members in SASO’s technical committees. The technical committees are comprised of members from other agencies or institutions that work in cooperation with the SASO to develop standards; these may be private-sector industry or business representatives, representatives from other government agencies or academic and research interests. Research Aim: The aim of this proposed research is to investigate factors influencing the effectiveness of interactions among technical committee members of the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organisation (SASO) in the context of the teamwork necessary for the development of new standards. Research Objectives: To analyse the team interaction process in four technical committees of SASO. To identify effective ways to build successful teams and compare the experience of technical committees in the SASO with the best practices suggested in the research literature. To review concepts of team management and motivation as they relate to team performance. To provide recommendations for the SASO for how to improve teamwork among technical committee members to maintain the highest performance in the preparation of Saudi standards. Research Philosophy, Approach and Strategy: Ontology is the theory of the relationship of objects to each other, which can take either an objective or subjective form (Saunders, et al., 2009, p. 110). The objective form of ontology is that a certain reality, such as a group, a particular sort of environment, or a set of beliefs is external to social actors; that is, the actors – people – and the entities can be defined separately. The functions of a particular object, in the case of this study a member of a technical committee, can be expressed in discrete terms, which can be used to describe any similar “object”, such as a member of a different sort of team. A subjectivist position, on the other hand, views “reality” as not being separate from the knowledge and perceptions of the person. (Saunders, et al., 2009, p. 112) Because the personalities and other attributes of people in teams determines the behaviour of the team and can in some cases even determine the form of the team, this subjective view would obviously be a better position to take for this research. Epistemology is the study of the formation and sharing of knowledge. Because a subjectivist ontological approach is being used, a subjectivist rather than an objectivist epistemological approach must also be used for this research. An objectivist position assumes the possibility that the external world—the thing being studied—can be accessed objectively and described in “theory-neutral” language (Johnson & Duberly, 2000, p. 17). In other words, objectivism describes something “as it is” without putting it in a context of an established theory. This is not appropriate for this study of teams, because their behaviours can be compared to hypotheses and generalisations already established by other research (Remenyi, Williams, Money & Swartz, 2003, p. 19). With that in mind, a semi-structured interview method is the best method for conducting this research because it provides a fairly tight focus on the theoretical questions suggested by the literature review yet still allows for open-ended questions and candid answers. While the research is deductive in nature, seeking to confirm or refute prior theories with observed results, it will permit an inductive aspect to the research and give greater practical value to its qualitative nature (Bryman & Bell, 2003, p. 472). This research method is the best choice for this study for two reasons. First, the survey method has been used by numerous other studies and thus has credibility because the method is well-understood and can be duplicated. Since part of the aim of this study is to test conclusions reached by similar research, it is necessary to employ similar, comparative methods. (Brewerton & Millward, 2001, p. 10; Somekh & Lewin, 2005, p. 36). Alternatives to the Research Method The alternative to the semi-structured interview approach would be a fully structured interview, where the survey answers had fixed characteristics and could be analysed statistically (Remenyi, et al., 2003, pp. 21-22). This seems more appropriate to a purely inductive approach to establish a theory from the results, which is not the main aim of this research. This would lack validity because a search of the literature shows that no such research has been conducted on an organisation like SASO; therefore, the results would be too limited to have any general practical value Data Collection: The methodology of this research will be two sets of semi-structured surveys and interviews. The first will be conducted by means of a written survey given to a sample of 40 committee members selected from 4 technical committees. These questionnaires will use a Likert-type scale to ensure the collection of clear, quantitative data (Bryman & Bell, 2003, p. 249). The second will be conducted through face-to-face interviews with the four presidents of those committees. The semi-structured interview will permit respondents to offer their own opinions about particular questions, while still allowing some statistical evaluation of the responses (Saunders, et al., 2009, p. 45). The overall strategy of the research is as follows. First, a comprehensive review of the literature of prior research into team dynamics, quality management and other relevant topics will be conducted. Next, the semi-structured survey will be administered to the sample of 40 technical committee members, which is comprised of 10 members from each of the 4 technical committees. Interviews will be then conducted with the presidents of the four sample committees. After completion of the larger survey and the interviews, the survey and interview data will be compiled and the results will be analysed. Data Analysis: Although, more study on data analysis techniques still needs to be done to confirm the best analysis method, a least squared regression analysis appears to be the best approach because the semi-structured interviews are likely to generate multivariate descriptors (Westover & Taylor, 2010, pp. 814-815). Either Microsoft Excel or SPSS can be used to conduct a least squared regression analysis (Maylor & Blackmon, 2005, pp. 300-301). Reliability and Validity: The objective of this research is to produce a study which has a high degree of reliability and validity. Validity refers to the results of the research and whether they produce information that the research methodology was intended to produce. Reliability refers to the research methods and whether they can be repeated to achieve similar results in another study of a similar nature (McNabb, 2010, p. 38). Research Population and Sample Selection: The sample was selected to establish a group large enough to provide valid results for this qualitative research, yet still be manageable within the time allotted for the study. The four committees to be chosen will be from three different general committees; two will be from one general committee, and the remaining two will be from two different general committees. The reason for this is to test the differences between technical committees that work more closely together (the two in the same general committee) and committees that do not. The four technical committees will also be selected on the basis of their performance evaluations for 2010 based on the criteria established by SASO. Two committees will be selected on the basis of high performance ratings, and the remaining two will be committees with lower performance ratings. This will allow the research to explore key differences in the teams that may account for differences in performance. In order to develop an acceptable margin of error and level of confidence in the survey results—which should be about 5% and 95%, respectively—a survey sample of at least 170 of the 300 people in the technical committees would be required (Maylor & Blackmon, 2005, pp. 267-268). A sample that size is unmanageable, so a representative sample based on the performance criteria described above was selected. Underlying Assumptions: One underlying assumption of the research is that the proximity of teams has a positive impact on the effectiveness of teamwork. In other words, teams that work closely together, such as teams within the same general committee, will exhibit more effective teamwork than teams from different committees. A second underlying assumption that follows from the first is that within the teams that work in close proximity to other teams, teamwork among individual members is more effective. A third underlying assumption is that the make-up of a team in terms of the individual characteristics of the team members has a greater effect on team performance than the structure of the team or the overall organisational framework. Value of the Research, Possible Difficulties and Limitations: The main value of the proposed research is to provide results that can be put into immediate practise by SASO, thus avoiding the problem of the ‘relevance gap’ between the body of developed knowledge in the research literature and the primary research and its utilisation by businesses and organisations (Saunders, et al., 2009, pp. 7-9). Because SASO is a government organisation, the research will help add to the best practises available to public-sector organisations, an area of management that does not seem to receive as much attention as the private sector. In terms of ethical limitations, this study maintains strict confidentiality for two reasons. First, members may not wish to speak candidly if they are concerned they can be personally identified. Second, because SASO is a government organisation, some organisational and procedural details may be required to be held in confidence. Appropriate care will be taken before the research commences to fulfil any requirements for authorisations and non-disclosure from all relevant parties (Saunders et al., 2009, p.186). One difficulty in conducting this research is the time and effort required to translate between Arabic and English. Most of the survey participants will likely be more comfortable speaking in Arabic, as this is the native language of the technical committee members. For the sake of accuracy, the questionnaires should be written in Arabic and interviews conducted in Arabic. The responses will then have to be translated into English for publication, which will require not only extra time and effort on the part of the researcher, but close attention to make sure meaning is not lost in translation as well. Other difficulties that may arise include constraints on the time available to conduct the research and limited or incomplete participation in the surveys/interviews by technical committee members. In addition, there may be seasonal or holiday complications added to the schedule for the research; for example, the month of August 2011 is the holy month of Ramadan, and access to survey participants may be difficult during this time. The most obvious limitation to this research is that it is limited to a single organisation. Also, there is a cultural limitation in that the SASO is strictly a Saudi organisation. Anticipated Project Schedule The following table shows the anticipated schedule for this research project. Access to survey participants and other unforeseen difficulties may alter the order or the time needed for particular tasks, and so the schedule is presented in a very general form: Work to be Accomplished Timeframe Review proposal, research aims and objectives and make revisions as necessary. Begin gathering research literature. June 1-30, 2011 Conduct literature review and complete draft of this portion of dissertation. Develop survey questionnaires (two needed). July 1-31, 2011 Conduct primary research by administering questionnaires to team members and conducting interviews with committee presidents. August 1-31, 2011 Data analysis: complete draft of research methodology portion of dissertation. September 1- 30, 2011 Complete draft of research findings, recommendations and conclusions. Prepare first draft of dissertation. October 1-31, 2011 Review first draft of dissertation and revisions, make necessary corrections. Submit final draft of dissertation to supervisor. November 1, 2011 Submit final copy of dissertation. December 1, 2011 Read More