Introduction to research

What is business?

• Anything done to maximize profit

• Not alone profit ----- ????
• Then maximizing wealth??
• Managing competition
• Sustaining the pressure
• Enhancing competitiveness
• Continously innovative
• Be in the fray for ever---???
 What is research

• Careful and systematic study in some field of

knowledge undertaken to establish some
facts or principles ( Grinnell,1997)

• Data gathering to enable us answer

questions about social world ( Bailey,1994)
 Business Research

• Systematic inquiry that provides

information to guide managerial decisions
• Process and tools to reduce risk in
managerial decisions
• A process of planning, acquiring, analyzing
and disseminating relevant data,
information and insights to decision
makers
 Forms

• Market research

• Operational research

• Motivational research
 Categories

• Pure/ Basic

• Applied

• Casual studies
 According to the objective

• Exploratory

• Descriptive

• Cause and effect

 Exploratory research
• Literature study

• Survey

• Case studies

• Focus group

• Flexible

• Hypothesis formulation but not testing

• Involves selecting people who have sufficient knowledge

and not testing a sample
 Descriptive
• More rigid
• Steps to be decided earlier
 Longitudinal
 Cross – sectional

• Decisions to be taken on all grounds

• Later change not permitted
 Why popularity ???

• Information explosion
• Competition
• Mushroom effect
• Globalization
 Sources of knowledge

• Tradition
• Common sense
• Authority
• Experiential
• Intuition
• Logic/ Rationalism
• Science
 Management dilemma

• The problem or opportunity that requires

a management decision ---

The main factor for popularity

 A few dilemma
• Explosive growth and • Quality and credibility
influence of internet questionable
• Stakeholders • They are more
demanding sensitive to self-
information as right interest than ever
before
• More vigorous • Customer becoming
competition “advocates”

More government intervention

Decisions becoming more complex
Variables to be considered ever increased
 Planning the main driver

• Mission

• Goals

• Strategy

• Tactics
Types of business
 Logic / Rationalism

• Uses reasoning alone to understand things

• Rules of logic applies

• Sound premises lead to Proper reasoning

Yields truth
 Discourse

• Exposition – statements that describe

without attempting to explain

• Argument – allows us to explain, defend,

challenge, and explore
 Types of argument

• Deduction

• Induction
 Deductive reasoning

• Premises sound

• Reasoning made from premises

• Credibility of premises holds importance

 Induction

• Radically different from deduction

• Draws conclusion from pieces of

information and evidence
Theory of science – Walter (1971)
Deduction

Induction
Combined usage in Research