Research Methods Section

Walden Sports: Methods Section

Introduction

The success or failure of an organization is evaluated by measurement of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and the job involvement of the employees in the various activities and processes that the organization undertakes. If the relationship between the employees and the organization is healthy to the extent that their attitude towards job involvement and organization commitment is positive, then it is possible to conclude that the organization will be successful. A company can be successful with regards to its expansion, the creation of new ventures, the establishment of new branches and realization of profits, but if its employees lose the focus. Then, the productivity will go down, and the tempo of workflow is deemed to go down, and thus they begin to look for new ventures or even if they stay, they will be less motivated to work. Thus, an organization has to ensure that it carries out a job diagnostic survey to establish whether the employees are happy and motivated. Comment by dpeck: I am not sure I agree with this statement but that is okay for now. Comment by dpeck: I don't think you meant to end the sentence here? If not, you will end up with a run-on sentence so you need to break it up anyway. Comment by dpeck: I am struggling with a definitive discussion liek this when there are no citations or literature to lean on - so how are you making these statements as fact? Comment by dpeck: Maybe soften it and 'advise' rather than 'has to ensure'

Walden Sports is a company that has been in existence for a while and has undergone tremendous transformations and changes in its operations something that is associated with its success. The company's success, on the other hand, brought up an unexpected change that became a concern to the Chief Executive Officer. The success brought about a sharp decrease in the productivity and a rise in absenteeism of the employees from their workstations and performance of roles. The CEO even stated that the employees looked more orf less energized as opposed to the previous situations when they used to have the vigor for their duties. They didn’t look motivated to work as they used to be initially and the ones who would stay back to aid the others who had a workload in completing their tasks stopped. The employees even stopped attending the activities that were aimed at boosting their morale at the company. Thus, the task of this discussion is to identify the source of this change and how it can be combated by evaluating the factors in a procedural manner in which a job diagnostic survey instrument is to be used to gather information to determine the effective behavior. Comment by dpeck: How do you know? Where are your citations? Comment by dpeck: This is good.

Job Attitudes

In a brief recap, an attitude is an evaluative comment or notion that people hold with regards to others, objects or events and this definition suffices for this situation with a marked difference being recorded in the context of its application. Job attitudes refer to the notions of the employees towards their work or the company they work for at large. Comment by dpeck: Okay - I am really going nuts without literature. Where is your evidence?

These attitudes fall into three broad categories namely, the cognitive, behavioral and the affective components. The cognitive component encompasses the opinionated segment of an attitude while the behavioral component encompasses the intentions that individuals possess that compels them to behave in a particular way towards somethings or others.

The Affective component of attitude encompasses the feeling or emotion segments of an attitude. Job Attitude, therefore, includes employee engagements, perceived organizational support, satisfaction and involvement, and the organizational commitment. The job attitudes that were employed in this evaluation study were employee engagements, perceived organizational support and both job satisfaction and involvements. Comment by dpeck: We didn't realy get into engagement so you can leave this out.

These job attitudes play a great role in determining the success or failure of an organization, and if they are negative, for instance, poor employee engagements only reflect on the fact that an organization lags behind on proper communication between its employees and lack of diversity, teamwork.

Instruments Used

The Job Satisfaction survey or JSS is an instrument designed with the idea indicating if employees are happy in their current role. This could pinpoint departments or specific job roles with disgruntled employees. The instrument was also developed with the notion of providing a methodological format that could assess the variables that were theory specified and in numbers. The JSS is often used globally and is a multidimensional, job specific tool (Van Saane, Sluiter, Verbeek, & Frings-Dresen, 2003). The JSS assesses job satisfaction from a low as in dissatisfied workers, all the way to high or satisfied workers (Spector, 1994). Comment by dpeck: What could pinpoint it? The instrument? More likely the demographics would capture these.

Jobn Descriptive Index survey (JDI) on the other hand encompasses the inclusion of the motivational strategies that are used by companies in encouraging the employees as well as keeping them involved in the organizational activities that transpire in the company on a day to day basis (Gillespie et al., 2009). Comment by dpeck: What does this instrument measure?

Jobs in General scale survey (JIB)is the third instrument that can be used to evaluate the satisfaction that the employees derive from their involvement with the duties that have been entrusted to them by the company. The focus of the JIG is to measure participants job satisfaction in a broad sense (Gillespie et al., 2009) Comment by dpeck: You are measuring satisfaction twice?

Why the three instruments

Job Satisfaction Survey (JSS) is an instrument hatthat has been tried and used during which it underwent many transitions and reformations that have aided in improving the efficiency of its usage and making it reliable for situations like this one of Walden sports. This instrument can measure employee morale and satisfaction that affect the operations of the organizations, which in turn affect the relationships between the companies and their employees. The classes of variables that can be tested by this instrument include the personal reactions of the employees to their jobs and work on large scale, usually an effective reaction. Comment by dpeck: cite? Comment by dpeck: Did you mean 'affective' - or emotional reaction?

The preparedness of an individual to respond to a job positively to an enriched job and the degree to which the jobs are delegated to the employees with the aim of enhancing their motivation. This instrument, therefore, relies on the theory of how work affects an employees' motivation. The other two tools are more of specific to their objective hence they deem effective for their usage in the determination of the variable that they test and can, therefore, complement Job diagnostic survey. Comment by dpeck: this sentence seems incomplete. Comment by dpeck: this seems confusing. We aren't measuring motivation - that is #1. The last sentence is a very general explanation and non-specific if you are justifying their use for Walden sports.

Psychometric Properties of the Instruments

Job Satisfaction Survey is a tool that if used effectivelyficiently can provide information that is useful to gather feedback from employees but that does not mean that it does not have limitations and suggestions for improvements. Many reviews have highlighted its limitations and came up with suggestions for its improvement aiding in its advancement to diversify the portfolio of measures to accomplish many but distinct purposes. Comment by dpeck: I don't see any discussion about the psychometrics related to this instrument?

The Job Descriptive Index tool comprises of up to 72 items, which look into the five facets of job satisfaction. It works by combining the facets with satisfaction ratings, and its updated form entails the inclusion of the contents of the job, work atmosphere, and work technology. Job in General Scale survey tool, on the other hand, entails the tools that describe the satisfaction derived from a job on a global scale. Comment by dpeck: Again, why are you using two instruments to measure job satisfaction? Are you comparing them here to decide? Again - there are no psychometrics explained.

Items and Scoring Method

Items that were to be used in the data collection, recording, analysis, and compilation included a questionnaire, observation strategies, means and variances scale for determining job descriptions, and analysis of Variance. Comment by dpeck: Items refer to the questions and/or categories of questions that are asked. Not all of this information.

The purpose of the instruments is to aid in evaluating and identifying the source of the fallout in some of the cultures that reigned in the organization. A sample of the employees was obtained with the aim of getting data from them that was to help in solving the problem at hand.

The process of picking a sample population for the surveys took many factors into consideration to ensure that the information given out had no biases. Once the sample was obtained a questionnaire that included all the aspects and classes of factors that were being tested was issued to some of them, while others were subjected to oral questioning with the promise that their identities were to be concealed. The questionnaire was divided into three sections with each section taking care of the requirements of the instruments used in this analysis to bring out a comprehensive result. Comment by dpeck: What sampling method did you use? How did you determine the sample. Comment by dpeck: Why did you split up the methods like this?

The questionnaires were issued to the sampled population and the various points classified since the questionnaires covered a lot of data and it was in depth and could not easily be understood. The data collection agents were to aid in the filling of the questionnaires, and the employees were told to fill in the answers to the questions to the best of their ability and with sincerity, since their life depended on the descriptions they gave. Comment by dpeck: If the questionnaire cannot be understood, it is not a valid or reliable instrument to use. Comment by dpeck: This is a bit strong - don't you think?

The questions comprised of yes/no options to light descriptive prompts as they progressed to demanding questions where the respondent was required to write briefly about the organization before the expansion and after the expansion. What the expansion meant to them, what the expansion and creation of new branches meant to them at personal levels without paying attention to other factors that didn’t concern them. Comment by dpeck: Are you using one of the identified instruments here or are you asking open ended questions? It isn't clear what you are doing.

The information on the job rating form was to be filled in by the researchers as they had to watch what transpires in the organization during work hours and other free hours for some days and the score for each event noted down. The members of the management of the organization were also asked to note down the work performance of a selected number of the employees. This sampled number of employees also was picked on an unbiased procedure that was geared to giving out the information that was going be used in establishing a summary measure of the effectiveness of work conducted or done by the organization on three scales across all the supervisory managers that were asked to rate the employees. Comment by dpeck: I am not sure where you are getting this methodology. There is no supportive evidence that backs it up.

Scoring cards were made where the answers for each section of the questions on the questionnaire were scored from all the questionnaires from the employees. For instance, the answers for section one were all responses to the data needs of job description survey. The group then went ahead to issue custom made questionnaires to the managers and other officials since the activity was to aid in evaluating the company to come up with the reasons. And the reasons were to explain why there was a decrease in the productivity and loss of interest in some of the activities that were functional as cultures in the organization like the motivational strategies.

Data on absence from work or absenteeism from duty at the organization were fed to the information collection sheet from the records of the organization based on the attendance sheet on the reception desk. These records had a clear indication of both the periods when the employees were motivated to work and could miss and when they began to lose interest in the motivational activities that were installed by the company.

In the scorecards, these are the sections that were to be filled and documented. Under job dimensions, the information that was collected were summarized in the columns of autonomy, dealing with others, feedback from the agents, feedback from the job and task significance. Under the effective responses to the job, the data collected were summarized under general satisfaction, the motivations that originated from within the work and the security of the job.

References Comment by dpeck: You will need to review the format of these references and edit them for the next part you submit. I don't see where you used most of these references in your paper.

Gillespie, M.A., Balzer, W.K., Brodke, M.H., Garza, M., Gerbec, E. N., Gillespie, J.Z. Gopalkrishnan, P., Lengyel, J.S., Silter, K.A., Silter, M.T., Withrow, S.A., & Yugo, J.E. (2009). Normative Measurement of Job Satisfaction in the U.S. Journal of Managerial Psychology. Vol. 20, No. 1.

Kanungo, R. N. (1982). Measurement of job and work involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 67(3), 341–349. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Knoop, R. (1995). Relationships among job involvement, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment for nurses. Journal of Psychology, 129(6), 643. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases

Morrow, P. C. (1983). Concept redundancy in organizational research: The case of work commitment. Academy of Management Review, 8(3), 486–500. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases

Rabinowitz, S., & Hall, D. T. (1977). Organizational research on job involvement. Psychological Bulletin, 84(2), 265–288. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Saal, F. E. (1978). Job involvement: A multivariate approach. Journal of Applied Psychology, 63(1), 53–61. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.

Spector, P. E. (1994). Job satisfaction survey, JSS page. Retrieved on March 25, 2017 from http://shell.cas.usf.edu/~pspector/scales/jsspag.html

Van Saane, N., Sluiter, J. K., Verbeek, J. H. A. M., & Frings-Dresen, M. H. W. (2003). Reliability and validity of instruments measuring job satisfaction: A systematic review. Occupational Medicine, 53(3), 191–200.