Page 105 - [Uma_Sekaran]_Research_methods_for_business__a_sk(BookZZ.org)

VARIABLES 89

loyalty of organizational members with a view to control it. If he finds that
increased pay levels would ensure their loyalty and retention, he can then offer
inducement to employees by way of pay raises, which would help control the
variability in organizational loyalty and keep them in the organization.
It is possible to have more than one dependent variable in a study. For exam-
ple, there is always a tussle between quality and volume of output, low-cost pro-
duction and customer satisfaction, and so on. In such cases, the manager is
interested to know the factors that influence all the dependent variables of inter-
est and how some of them might differ in regard to different dependent vari-
ables. These investigations may call for multivariate statistical analyses.

Now respond to Exercises 5.1 and 5.2

Exercise 5.1
An applied researcher wants to increase the performance of organizational
members in a particular bank.
What would be the dependent variable in this case?

Exercise 5.2
A marketing manager wonders why the recent advertisement strategy does
not work.
What would be the dependent variable here?

Independent Variable
An independent variable is one that influences the dependent variable in
either a positive or negative way. That is, when the independent variable is
present, the dependent variable is also present, and with each unit of increase
in the independent variable, there is an increase or decrease in the dependent
variable also. In other words, the variance in the dependent variable is
accounted for by the independent variable. To establish causal relationships,
the independent variable is manipulated as described in Chapter 7 on Exper-
imental Designs.

Example 5.7 Research studies indicate that successful new product development has an
influence on the stock market price of the company. That is, the more suc-
cessful the new product turns out to be, the higher will be the stock market
price of that firm. Therefore, the success of the new product is the indepen-
dent variable, and stock market price the dependent variable. The degree of
perceived success of the new product developed will explain the variance in
the stock market price of the company. This relationship and the labeling of
the variables are diagrammed in Figure 5.1.