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THE RESEARCH PROCESS FOR APPLIED AND BASIC RESEARCH 55

APPENDIX:
• Online databases
• Bibliographical Indexes
• Referencing in the APA Format
• Referencing and Quotation in the Literature Review Section

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After completing Chapter 4 you should be able to:
1. Identify the steps in the research process.
2. Identify problem areas that are likely to be studied in organizations.
3. Discuss how problem areas can be identified in work settings.
4. State research problems clearly and precisely.
5. Develop relevant and comprehensive bibliographies for any organizational
research topic.
6. Write a literature review on any given topic, documenting the references in
the prescribed manner.
7. Apply all you have learned to a group project that might be assigned.

Referring back to Chuck Orlando’s concerns cited at the beginning of Chapter 1,
why was he so confused and bewildered? How could he have had a better han-
dle on how to go about solving the various issues? What were the specific fac-
tors he should have investigated?
In this chapter we will examine ways to identify the variables that would oper-
ate in any specific situation that might tend to be problematic for the manager.
We will also see how a literature survey is done and how problems can be nar-
rowed down and clearly defined.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS FOR APPLIED
AND BASIC RESEARCH

In Chapter 2 we discussed and illustrated through Figure 2.1 the foundation or
the building blocks of science. Scientific inquiry in the hypothetico-deductive
mode can be discussed relating to its two distinct aspects—the process of devel-
oping the conceptual framework and the hypotheses for testing, and the design,
which involves the planning of the actual study, dealing with such aspects as the
location of the study, the selection of the sample, and collection and analysis of
the data. Figure 4.1 captures the research process in the first five boxes. Boxes
6 and 7 embody the design aspects, which will be elaborated later in this book.