Research Methods For Business: A Skill Building Approach

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John Wiley & Sons, Jun 27, 2016 - Business & Economics - 448 pages

Research Methods for Business: A Skill-Building Approach is a concise and straightforward introduction for students to the world of business research. The skill-building approach provides students with practical perspectives on how research can be applied in real business situations. Maintaining Uma Sekaran’ s popular and accessible style of writing, Roger Bougie draws upon his extensive experience in the field to present an up-to-date guide on business research which is ideal for aspiring managers.

The seventh edition has been fully revised and updated to include cutting-edge examples and enriched pedagogical features designed to improve student learning outcomes. There is now an increased emphasis on the relationship between the scientific and the pragmatic approaches to research, while the key concepts are explored and applied to real-life research throughout the book.

 

Contents

Introduction to research 1
1
Managers and research 8
8
Discussion questions 14
14
The hypotheticodeductive method 23
23
Summary
30
Preliminary research
37
The research proposal
45
the critical literature review
51
Rating scales
213
Goodness of measures
220
Summary
226
sampling
235
The sampling process
239
examples of when certain sampling designs would be appropriate
252
Sample data and hypothesis testing
260
The sample size
261

Ethical issues
59
Bibliographical databases
66
The need for a theoretical framework
72
How theory is generated
81
Managerial implications
90
Elements of research design
96
Mixed methods
106
interviews
113
Advantages and disadvantages of interviews
123
Two important approaches to observation
130
Advantages and disadvantages of observation
137
Guidelines for questionnaire design
145
Review of the advantages and disadvantages of different
157
experimental designs
165
The field experiment
172
Types of experimental design and validity
179
Ethical issues in experimental design research
185
operational definition
193
international dimensions of operationalization
204
Discussion questions
268
Getting a feel for the data
278
descriptive statistics part 1
287
descriptive statistics part 2
293
Hypothesis testing
300
hypothesis testing
323
Discussion questions
329
Reliability and validity in qualitative research
348
The written report
354
Contents of the research report
357
Summary
366
example of an abridged basic research report
373
Statistical Tables
379
Glossary
389
Bibliography
399
vii
401
index
407
Copyright

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About the author (2016)

Uma Sekaran (deceased) was Professor Emerita of Management, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale (SIUC), Illinois, USA.

Dr Roger Bougie is Associate Professor in Business Research Methods, TIAS School for Business and Society (The Netherlands). TIAS is the business school of Tilburg University and Eindhoven University of Technology.

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