Introduction
Social Research, an important dimension of philosophy, is about exploring the reality of the existence of a behavioural phenomenon (Uddin & Hamiduzzaman, 2009). From the research focus, this essay closely discusses organizational justice, diversity, and behaviors. The social researchers in the field of social justice and psychology have broadly constructed their knowledge in a way that has informed our thinking and supposition of society and self which according to Chilisa & Kawulich (2012) is what social scientists call a “paradigm”-referred to as the shared view of world representing philosophical beliefs and assumptions. The basis of social research on justice, diversity and psychology strictly follow several methodological approaches (called as research design) which are informed by the philosophical assumptions. These assumptions for social researchers are characterised by their ontological perspectives holding an objectivist view of justice, diversity and human behaviours and the epistemological perspective which entails their positivist view (Hollis, 1994) justifying that the researchers in social science are widely positivist as they rely on testing their propositions with available theories that are later statistically justified.
The research in organizational justice and diversity has widely be conducted using technical approach. The research design- referred to as the “strategies of inquiry (Creswell & Creswell, 2018)” or “a collection of choices or approaches to integrating different components of the study in a logical way (Labaree, 2009)” that has majorly been used is Survey or non-experimental as the studies mostly aimed to establish an association between variables using numerical explanation to justify their propositions. It is also known as deductive approach in positivism which is greatly dependent on existing theories and empirical studies rather than developing a new theory (Scotland, 2012) and because taking such approach is a common practice it, therefore, suggests that the success of the research is deeply enhanced when the researchers project goals and justifications are correctly and precisely defined from the beginning of the research (Congdon & Dunham, 1999). Therefore, it requires for a researcher to take the clear epistemological stance and sequentially design the research project by correctly addressing the research problem followed by the research plan i-e., from the formulation of questions to selection of methodology, discussion, and conclusion.
Therefore, this essay will unfold the inquiry of research designs and also their philosophical stance by adhering to the previous research in the field of social psychology, diversity, and justice as Kothari (2005) suggests that each research is different with own purpose and technique depending on its requirement and the problem it intends to study. These techniques closely refer to the agenda of conducting a research i-e., to uncover the truth and the solutions to the questions that aren’t yet explored.
Analysis of research design of the previous paper in the field of research.
As said, the research design contributes to the success of research because it in-depth explains several components like explaining the research question and gap, theoretical framework, literature, methodology and data collection and the conclusion. It also explains how well the variables are presented (Johnson, 2017). Therefore, to review, I have selected a two papers in the field of research to analyse. These papers have used different research approach but similar methodologies and have contributed greatly to the field of knowledge.
Procedural and interactional justice perceptions and teamwork quality
(Dayan & Di Benedetto, 2008)
The typical paradigm for justice and teamwork literature follows the correlational design that is the positivist paradigm which applies a structured approach to objectify the author’s stance.
The paper being analysed now is a cross-sectional study on Procedural and Interactional justice perceptions and teamwork quality published recently in 2008. As a collaborative research, the authors’ main interest can be objectified as the title proposes- to explore the scope of justice in devising favourable condition within work teams. It, therefore, focuses on new product development (NPD) teams and aims to comprehend the role of procedural and interactional justice in the teamwork quality and performance and also it addresses environmental factors as moderators of the proposed impact. The authors have precisely instigated to introduce their interest in analysing the cross-sectional team collaboration and has clarified their research question i-e., examining the impact of justice perceptions on the collaborative functioning of cross-functional teams. Stressing on the perceptions of organizational justice the authors have ambiguously proposed their significance of research by only assuming that senior managers must recognize the effects of justice perceptions on team performance. Although the authors are willing to study collaboration, it contradicts with their main agenda of studying team quality and performance because I believe collaboration is one of the components that support team performance and it is already studied by Franç et al. (2012) and the findings suggested that collaboration is highly correlated with team performance and collaborative project teams performs better.
Moving on to their theoretical frameworks, the authors have adopted the instrumental/ relational models of justice (used in teamwork or group literature as it investigates group level outcomes in the presence of justice) to build upon their conceptual design and to formulate the hypothesis accordingly. To simplify the framework, the authors’ conceptualized the outcome variables in two groups as higher-order constructs with six elements i-e task-related (member contribution, coordination, and communication) and social interaction (mutual support, cohesion, and effort). Although the authors’ have confidently claimed this model to be the first complete model of team effectiveness it has futilely confused the concepts of collaboration and team performance which gives the reader a vague outlook of the study. Furthermore, based on the authors’ objectivist view, they endeavoured to assess their conceptual framework which deduces that procedural and interactional justice are positively correlated with both task-related and social interaction related factors. Their suppositions are supported by slight wealth of literature which also lacks the epistemological support because of their inadequate justification of the supporting literature for example the authors proposed the hypothesis (page 567) on procedural justice and task-related components (communication, balance of contribution and coordination) and built their justification by only briefly suggesting that procedural justice evoke respectful feeling and harmony which is important for communication. Here, in my understanding, it lacks strong background support and has overlooked relevant themes that connect the hypothesis deeply with the research question.
Further to methodology, there are strategies that researchers undertake that is well suited to the study approach. Because the authors are studying the impact on outcomes, they have strongly relied on quantitative approach using a statistical survey to justify the implications of justice perceptions on the determinants of the task and social interaction. The collected samples were from Turkish firms and the respondents were product managers of the teams who were asked to only reflect on any projects completed in a period of 12 months. Here, the authors failed to explain the significance of the use of only recent projects to evaluate the team functioning. It clearly seems that the authors used purposive sampling as they have strongly assumed that project managers have a broader view of their teams and are likely to accurately respond to given variables. Furthermore, because the research was conducted in Turkey, a parallel translation was used by the authors to eliminate bias and pre-tested to make the study reliable. This is because the quantitative approaches are highly used to produce reliable and valid outcomes that determine the research question and objectives.
As explained, the authors identified their variables (communication, coordination, balance of member contribution, mutual support, effort, and cohesion) based on the instrumental model of justice; this model has been, however, widely used to study the correlation of factors inconsistent with procedural justice therefore, it only guarantees the outcomes that support materialistic benefits and commitment outcomes and does not promise to maximise any other outcomes (Nadisic, 1989). This suggests that chosen variables could have been either different as reward-related or supported by social identity model which considers performance outcomes that support interactional justice. This is justified by their own findings which showed clear insignificance of the correlation of interactional justice and communication, mutual support, cohesion and effort and falsifies their hypothesis. cohesion
The validity of the variables also depends on their measures. The measures used in this paper are strongly valid as they had been extensively used to measure work-related outcomes but it was unclear on how the variables were measured. Although they identified using 7-scale measures and widely validated the variables from published researches e-g., the teamwork quality measures were adopted from Hoegl and Genmuenden (2001), procedural justice measures from Colquitt et al, (2001), interactional justice from Bies and Moag (1986) but modified from Moorman’s (1991), speed to market and team learning from Lynn et al., (2000) and lastly environmental turbulence from Kholi (1993) which contributes to the research arguments but there is no evidence on how the authors have actually assessed the respondents view.
Furthermore, to evaluate the reliability, the authors conducted multiple regression analysis and further tested for unidimensionality and discriminant validity. The multiple regression analysis strongly addressed the relation between variables and also verified the correlation further using confirmatory factor analysis. The correlations were supportive of the literature and the research objectives and proved that procedural and interactional justice are important determinants of teamwork quality and performance. Because teams are directed to tasks and work procedure, therefore, it justified the importance of procedural justice where in case of interactional justice the correlation was only found between coordination and balance of contribution. This was not justified by the authors and hence requires more clarification. The author could have applied additive composition model for more validate results but it has its limitations of complexity and it is more valid in observatory research (Billheimer et al., 1998). Because this study is more complex and aims to test the framework, regression analysis is well suited.
Although the authors provided a great deal of reliable and valid arguments in favor of considering justice perspective in NPD team performance but the research design had flaws which contribute to its limitations. Firstly, to study the teams, they purposively chose respondents to be the managers to achieve favorable results which as they mentioned is their retrospective reporting (Pg. 572) can be claimed as too biased. My suggestion states, they could have used team members to respond to the survey for more clarity and I find this to be the reason to non-significance of the relation of interactional justice with team quality and performance. Lastly, the research could have been more fruitful if distributive justice was studied as it is closely related to the distribution of roles which is an essential requirement for the NPD teams and this could have supported closely the studied the rationale of social and task-related variables.
Justice in Teams: Antecedents and Consequences of Procedural Justice Climate
(Colquitt, Noe, & Jackson, 2002)
Succeeding the literature of justice at the individual level, the interest of authors in this study are teams. The authors’ main agenda as the title suggested is to study the relationship between procedural justice and team performance, absenteeism. Building on their research question, the authors intended to draw on the recent analysis of procedural justice climate referred to as perception of fairness in procedures in teams as a whole (classified as level or quality and strength or consensus) as Lindell and Brandit (2000) suggests and predicted that procedural justice climate is directly related to team effectiveness. To validate the study, the authors presented team diversity, team collectivism, justice climate level, justice climate strength and team performance and team absenteeism as to be the main variables of the study.
Furthermore, to the theoretical framework, this paper is also a correlational study and has used an instrumental and relational model as it sets the rationale of the study by suggesting that procedural justice protects the individual’s interests through group membership and with this the individuals will fulfil their individual role requirement, enhancing team performance and absenteeism. To conceptualize the research query, the author uses deductive approach to evaluate “how findings from individual assessment perspective will generalize to team setting”. Using profound literature on justice climate, the authors deducing that procedural justice climate level positively related to team performance and negatively to team absenteeism. He further deeply investigated the variations in teams in relevancy to his research question proposing that consistency in justice climate level strengthens team effectiveness. To strengthen his argument of individual-level justice, he took support from fairness heuristic theory to connect his idea with self-interest and justice judgments in the presence of strong/weak justice climate. The authors emphasized that team collectivism and diversity are also the crucial factors that require justice climate but it is seen to discourage subordinated relationships due to the differences and also stressed that the larger the team size, the weaker the bonds are with other subordinates.
The authors took the support of the statistical analysis of structural survey to quantify their propositions. Therefore, they surveyed 46 teams and to create a strong judgment it was made sure for team members to be task interdependent to evaluate the climate strength and outcome interdependence to evaluate climate level which vice versa will mediate or moderate team performance and absenteeism. Here, to validate the research the authors have made sure each variable was accurately measured and separately stated e-g., climate level was measured using a validated 7-item scale by Colquitt (2001) the respondents were asked if they were allowed to express their views or appeal during procedures and if they were free of bias and accurate. Climate Strength was calculated by measuring its relatively high and low variation, team performance was evaluated by the team members on efficiency, accuracy, quality, and productivity because they leaders were more aware of the role and dependence of procedural justice. Similarly, team absenteeism was evaluated by using an hour of absence record of past 3 months for each team and lastly, team demography and collectivism measure was adopted from Medsker and Higg’s (1993) and teams were asked to rate diversity on age, gender and ethnicity. It requires careful evaluation of papers to identify corrective measures to be used. The authors could have created their own measures which might have been a contributing factor but there are risks of pre-testing the questionnaire associated to it which I assume can contradict with the desired finding to support research question.
Unlike the first paper, this paper has a clear research design and is carefully strategized to connect each variable with their propositions. The context and measures for both the paper are closely related however, the second paper has shown more clarity in supporting its rationale. This paper adopted additive composition model and dispersion model to study climate level and strength. The additive composition model was run to justice climate level as it was selected as a higher level construct as a sum on lower level variable providing support for relationships across level and dispersion composition model was run to apprehend variability among collective judgments (Cole et al., 2011) and clearly stated the relationship in each hypothesis separately. I believe it has enhanced its reliability more as the results are more precise and strongly relates to the literature suggesting that climate level and strength have positive significance on team performance and absenteeism and supported authors’ proposition that team size was negatively related to climate level and strength while team collectivism was positively related to climate level but not strength and diversity had no significance on climate level.
The papers have applied a quantitative approach which is more applicable in this type of research because both the researches have contextually bound their findings the with the reflection of its assumptions and therefore, tests the existing theories to validate the expectations which however is not possible in qualitative research. The authors, however, could have embraced qualitative approach too as they measured performance e-g., the performance of the workers was evaluated through project managers reporting. Instead of questionnaires, the authors could have interviewed them to eliminate social desirability bias which is more prominent with questionnaires.
Moreover, the studies conducted were cross-section which are a limitation to social sciences quantitative research and it applies to my research as well. These design as Labaree (2009) suggests, clearly determines the outcomes within given time frame, however, it limits the indication of historical context or series of events. Whereas Longitudinal studies in social sciences are known for reliability as it facilitates the duration of observations and also can predict causal explanations and the prediction of the future outcome but they are more compatible with qualitative research due to required explanations of the fluctuations in outcomes.
The second paper’s limitation was found in diversity literature and failed to find any significance. It is because of their reliance on a perceptual measure of diversity where it is suggested to construct measures on actual data. Whereas in the first paper, they failed to adjust the variables in the study and also lacked convincing linkage of its literature with the variables and findings. I will here summarise the conclusions of both papers by adjoining them to provide a clear picture. In the first paper, the authors said that their study can be implied in future by managers who seek higher performance in any product innovation teams whereas I do not support that because the study is itself conducted in a collective environment which suggests that it can only be useful where collectivism is high. On the other hand, the second paper has valid and reliable justifications of its implications and it suggests that fostering justice climate results in favorable outcomes and the leaders can be trained to strengthen the climate. This, however, also cannot be implied to any teams because it covers collectivism and diversity.
Analysis of my research design:
Justice and Diversity in teams: A traditional and moral perspective
The design of my research will be more relative to second paper because: 1) It is much relative to my research 2) the authors have justified every correlation’s significance to the research question which makes the research more reliable and valid.
What is my agenda?
Extensively studied, Justice and Diversity are different fields of social sciences literature that has broadly been investigated. Scholars exploring diversity were dedicated towards the management of increasing diversity at the workplace to eliminate conflicts whereas Justice was precisely individual focused and explored the perception of justice in different work settings. Scholars have, however, identified the importance of justice in highly diverse work environments but their research is only dominant in an individual context. My interest, therefore, is to explore and connect both kinds of literature in a team setting. As an objectivist, I think it is a holistic concept (seeing justice and diversity as a single reality) because it is intended to propose a sense of belongingness as we humans have a sense of morality which either accepts or rejects and also shapes justice perception in heterogeneous environments. That upholds my agenda to explore the impact of justice perception on diverse team performance and cooperativeness, innovation and employee motivation and the aim to evaluate the attitude of team members in environments like decision-making and task interdependence and to explain how justice influences diverse subgroup strength and member responsiveness. Since my study is closely related to the analysed papers, therefore, it also will use deductive setting and not inductive which directs this study to base the propositions on investigated pieces of literature, theories and models this is because the existent models and theories of justice and diversity are well developed to support my research.
A research strategy to support this study:
This study more like the reviewed papers is a correlational study design followed by a quantitative approach. The use of this approach specifies my realist attitude as I suggest diversity and justice have an existing relationship and the individuals are influenced by justice because they all possess different elements of diversity in them. And to justify that I intend to explore both primary and secondary resources close to the area of research. As I mentioned the literature on justice and diversity Is limited, therefore, I will make use of theoretical and empirical findings separately from each field to build a strong argument. For example, decision support system is not conjointly studied in the literature, therefore, the argument is built collectively as: from the research of Colquitt et al., (2001) that perception of justice is generally dependent on the actions, outcomes, and decisions. Also, the support theory implies that employee’s concern for self-worth is based on the perceived support the employees receives from the organization (Fu & Zhang, 2012) which proposes there exist a relationship between diverse workforce performance, justice and decision making.
To explain, the theoretical basis of the research will be formed firstly on group engagement model as it argues that justice based social-identity implications mediates the influence of justice on outcomes and secondly on moral virtues model which answers the “why” of the research stating that individuals may possess moral values on the basis of which they might feel motivated to perform better (Greenberg & Colquitt, 2005). To conceptualize my research unlike the reviews of the paper, the alternative is “cause and effect” research design in which I can use the same models to develop a relationship between justice and diversity. For example, I can imply that “Lower self-esteem is a cause of higher task interdependences in diverse groups” which further can be related to outcome variable i-e., employee motivation. Moreover, the study will use quantitative approach i-e., structured questionnaire design to validate the arguments. Therefore, the study will use random sampling technique to collect the data from project teams in the banking sector in England where the study variables will more likely be Justice variables (procedural justice and interactional justice), Diversity variables (culture, Work experience), group work variables (decision-support, task interdependence) and the outcome variables are Performance and cooperativeness.
The Measures of variables:
The measures to study each variable will be created more likely by using ordinal scale as procedural justice will measure the extent to which the procedures “support individuals feeling and opinions” and “support fair decision support system”, interactional justice will measure the extent to which “individuals treat each other morally” and “create a sense of belongingness”, Culture will measure the extent to which respondents are culturally different by identifying their background by asking respondents how they perceive their group identity, work experience will determine the autonomy of behaviour or attitude by asking how respondents perceive their group status based on their experience, decision support and task interdependence will measure the degree to which one’s actions affect others. There are profound studies from where the measures can be adopted like for this study I can adopt task interdependence measures from Seong, Kristof-Brown, Park, Hong, & Shin, (2015) which applied Medsker, and Higgs’ (1993) 7-point scale to measure task interdependence variables’ interaction with diversity variables. And so likely procedural justice variable from Colquitt (2001). The use of these variables that are test can be more validated and might help produce reliable results, therefore, measures used in second paper reviewed i-e., (Colquitt et al., 2002) because the study variable is relative to my research as well. These variables will then be used to identify the correlation between the research propositions and question.
Since both the reviewed papers have used self-related questionnaires, there is always a propensity of social desirability bias which applies to my research as well. Social scientists and psychologists suggest that social desirability is either an individual level characteristic where individuals are more prone to demonstrate social desirability in reporting information about self than other or it is a survey characteristic where the questionnaire is formatted to produce desirable outcomes (Gittelman et al., 2015). The use of indirect questions can, however, mitigate the effect of this bias (Fisher & Tellis, 1998) and also the use of Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale to detect the individual’s consistent response style and the expectation stimulated in self-evaluation (Leite & Beretvas, 2005)
Data Test:
As explained it is a correlational study like the studies analyzed, the tool for statistical analysis will be Multiple Regression. This analysis will predict the degree of relationship between variables. In my research, this analysis will identify the relationship between justice variables and group work variables as high or low. This will further proceed with multiple factor analysis to analyse the association of work-related variables and diversity variables and lastly, it might use conformation factor analysis to measure the consistency of construct with the factors. This analysis is helpful but there exist many alternatives like a linear model and correlation analysis which can easily determine the relationships as well (Macdonell & Gray, 1996) and this understanding fits the analyzed papers as well.
Discussion and conclusion:
This is the important segment of a research design as it explains the relationship between the variables and determines if the study conducted study justifies the literature and question. Hence in this section, I will determine the if the analyses support my argument of reality as Bruner (2014) explains that humans can reason with their behaviours Iqbal (2018) therefore, this section will justify my thinking that questions whether individuals in teams or groups act or perform any different given the moderators and mediators like diversity or group related components interact with justice perceptions.
Ethical Considerations:
It is one of the important aspects of conducting a research. Like all researches, my research will also require the realization of agreements to satisfy the ethical requirements that will maintain the self-esteem of the respondents and protect them from any discomfort that may be dominant in the exploration process as Wiley (2017) suggests, it will benefit with offsetting any risk by reassuring privacy protection and participants consent. Because my research is questionnaire survey based, it will require for respondents’ anonymity and be informing them of the research scope to ensure honesty in responding to questions and less biased results.
The conclusion of the Analysis:
This essay accomplishes a systematic view on research design. While the papers were analysed, formulation of the research question and methodology were established to be the most important factors in designing a research for quantitative studies. Therefore, the analysis of deductive approach was informed as to the finest for objectivists in social sciences research. To summarise, as researchers we all have different views of the construct of knowledge which informs our thinking and suppositions of society and self, therefore, reflecting on a research design is crucial to make the research valid and reliable.