Saturday, March 12, 2011

SCIENTIFIC METHODS


Management initiates and determines the activities of an enterprise. It makes plants, offices, computers, materials, and equipment productive through human effort. It gives competence and effectiveness to organizations in rendering goods and services to society. The aims of the management are to motivate the employees in the organization to achieve a high degree of work performance in competitive situations, utilize resources efficiently, and to provide high quality goods and services. In trying to achieve these aims, the manager faces many hurdles and problems, which he needs to, overcome and solve. He does this by taking appropriate decisions.

 A decision-making situation is one in which a manager is faces with a number of possible courses of action to solve a problem and a number of possible states and conditions of problem situations, which arise with uncertainty. The manger, in order to be effective, has to choose the curse of action which is the most suitable against a set of criteria (like minimum cost and maximum profit in a particular situation though in practice there may be other criteria).The procedures for decision making in an organization range from simple rules to complex analysis, individual decision-making to group decision making, from application of precedence and experience to considerable amount of enquiry and investigation.

Defining Research

Research is defined as a systematic, self-critical enquiry. The enquiry is aimed at understanding a thing or phenomenon or solving a problem. When an enquiry is aimed at understanding, it is practical or commercial use. When the enquiry is aimed at applying the available knowledge for practical or commercial use, for solving a problem faced in practice, it is termed as applied research.

Research is a systematic enquiry, whether scientific or otherwise. Scientific research, on the other hand, employing scientific method, (to be dealt with later in the chapter) has well defined objectives and methods, generates dependable data, reliable and unambiguous findings, and justifiable conclusions.

SYLLABUS OF MBA FIRST YEAR SECOND SEMESTER MBA – 205: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY & SPSS MBA 211: Research Methodology and SPSS – LAB



Module – I:

Nature and Scope of Business Research, Identification of Research problem, Research objective, Type of Business Research, Research Process, Research Designs: Exploratory, Descriptive, Experimental and Observational, Planning and formulation of Research Projects, Preparation of questionnaire and schedules, Measurement problem and scaling techniques. Collection of data: Primary and Secondary data, Purpose of research application, Type of research reports, Structure of Research report, Report writing and Presentation. SPSS and Report Presentation: Use of Statistical package for social sciences.

Module – II

Sampling: Probabilistic and Non-probabilistic sampling. Methods of drawing samples: Lottery methods and using random number table, Sampling Vs. complete enumeration, Sampling and Non sampling errors, Concept of different sampling methods: Simple random Sampling, Stratified random sampling, Cluster sampling, Multistage sampling.

Module – III

Data analysis: Editing, Coding, transformation of data, Basic data analysis, setting of hypothesis, hypothesis testing, Cluster and Factor analysis (Concept only). Hypothesis: Null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis, Testing of hypothesis, Type I and Type II errors, Sampling distribution and Standard errors, Test of Significance: Small sample tests: t and F tests, Large sample test: Z test, Chi-Square tests: Goodness of fit and test of association. Non-parametric tests: Sign test, Wilcoxon signed rank test, Run test, Man-
Whitney U test, Randomness test; Analysis of Variance: One way and two-way Classifications.






CASE ANALYSIS COMPULSORY

Recommended Books:

1.    Business Research Methods, Cooper, Schindler, TMH
2.    Management Research Methodology,  Krishnaswamy, Sir Kumar, Pearson
3.    Research Methodology, C. R. Kothari, Newage Publication
4.    Research Methodology, Zeikmund, Cengage
5.    Research Methodology, Paneer Selvam, PHI
6.    Research Methodology, Prasanta Sarangi, Taxmann
7.    A Text Book of Research Methodology, AKPC Swain, Kalyani
8.    SPSS for Windows, Step; George and Mallery, Pearson
Data Analysis with SPSS, Carver and Nash, Cengage.



MBA 211: Research Methodology and SPSS – LAB


Assignment-1
Learning the Basics of SPSS
Assignment-2
Looking at Frequency Distributions and Descriptive Statistics.
Assignment-3
Presenting Data in Graphic Form.
Assignment-4
Testing Research Hypotheses for Two Independent Samples.
Assignment-5
Testing Research Hypotheses about Two Related Sampled.
Assignment-6
Comparing Independent Samples with One-way ANOVA.
Assignment-7
Comparing related Samples with One-way ANOVA
Assignment-8
Measuring the Simple Relationship between Two Variables
Assignment-9
Describing the Linear Relationship between Two Variables
Assignment-10
Assessing the Association between Two Categorical Variables.
Assingment-11
Entering Data using Programs other than SPSS.

Recommended Books:
1)      Ready, Set, Go! A Student Guide to SPSS, Thomas Pavkov, Kent Pierce, TMH.
2)      SPSS for Windows step by step, George and Mallery, Pearson