what is a set of methods and techniques which stresses the need for scientific study and organisations of work at the operational level.
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Answer:
Students of management often complain about “theoretical” or “abstract” approaches to a subject; they argue instead in favor of “relevant” and “applied” approaches. The feeling is that there usually exist two distinct ways to study a topic, and from a managerial standpoint, a focus on application is the preferred way. Serious reflection about this problem may suggest a somewhat different approach, however. Consider the following situation.
As a personnel manager for a medium-sized firm, you have been asked to discover why employee turnover in your firm is so high. Your boss has told you that it is your responsibility to assess this problem and then to offer suggestions aimed at reducing turnover. What will you do? Several possible strategies come to mind:
Talk with those who have quit the organization.
Talk with those who remain.
Talk to the employees’ supervisors.
Consult with personnel managers in other companies.
Measure job satisfaction.
Examine company policies and practices.
Examine the jobs where most turnover occurs.
None of these actions will likely be very successful in helping you arrive at sound conclusions, however. Talking with those who have left usually yields a variety of biased responses by those who either want to “get back at” the company or who fear that criticism will negatively affect their chances for future recommendations. Talking with those still employed has similar problems: why should they be candid and jeopardize their jobs? Talking with supervisors will not help if they themselves are the problem. Asking other personnel managers, while comforting, ignores major differences between organizations. Measuring job satisfaction, examining company policies, or examining the jobs themselves may help if one is fortunate enough to hit upon the right problem, but the probability of doing so is minimal. In short, many of the most obvious ways a manager can choose to solve a problem may yield biased results at best, and possibly no results at all.
A more viable approach would be to view the situation from a research standpoint and to use accepted methods of scientific inquiry to arrive at a solution that minimizes biased results. Most of what we know about organizational behavior results from efforts to apply such methods in solving organizational problems (e.g., How do we motivate employees? How do we develop effective leaders? How do we reduce stress at work?). An awareness of the nature of scientific inquiry is useful for understanding how we learned what we know about organizations as well as in facilitating efforts to solve behavioral problems at work.