Developing Practical and Valuable Research Questions
Read the Washington Post article on corporate culture at Uber.
Then:
1. Compile a list of between 4 and 6 questions that might flow from your interest in the issues raised in this article.
2. Refine and evaluate your questions to see if you can narrow them down to two or three that would underpin a study you might want to undertake that originated from issues raised in this article.
3. Post these questions to the Discussion Board with a brief explanation of why you are interested in studying them.
4. Respond to at least 2 of your classmates and provide feedback on the feasibility of the research questions and help them envision how a study addressing these questions would have to be designed (e.g. who would have to be studied? how?):
1. Hunt and Leary mention in their book that a good place to start workplace research is examining organizational materials, which can provide historical data, and grey literature, which includes unpublished materials which can be a good source of new ideas and current trends. The article focused more on David Bondermans actions than on the issues at hand that required their discussion. It made me wonder if they had started any workplace research involving employees positions or if this was a quick meeting to just acknowledge the need for change within the company. After reading the Washington Posts article regarding the Uber situation, a few questions arose for me that I would be interested in researching further.
The board meeting aimed to discuss implementing a new company culture at Uber was in response to harassment of women and other unprofessional conduct within the company. Were the employees consulted about these incidents or did the board determine on their own that the company needed to make changes in response to recent backlash? The issues prompting this meeting were not explicitly stated but I think that employees should be consulted on their views and feelings about the company and whether or not theyve experience or witnessed any episodes of unprofessional conduct within their respective departments. This is important and worth studying because employee perception and input must be considered when a company decides to make changes to policies and practices that will affect them. A good strategy would be to implement change that benefits employees at all levels of the company and sets the precedent for who makes a good fit for their positions going forward.
How many women actually work for Uber across the different levels of the organization and how do they feel about the companys current culture? Arianna Huffington mentioned the importance of female representation and cited data that showed when theres one woman on a board, therell likely be a second woman on the board as well. Are they considering diversifying the staff, in terms of hiring more women, at the company at every level? If so, I think their use of the Rooney Rule would be a good start to implement into their hiring practices. Id be interested in studying the demographics at the company because in doing so, the data may show which departments are less diversified than others which can lead to more targeted efforts of change within the company.
I feel that the interpretivist research approach would be appropriate for this study. A variation of interpretivism is phenomenology which is described as the philosophical tradition that seeks to understand the world through directly experiencing the phenomena (Littlejohn & Foss, 2009). So before changing the company culture, Uber must first understand the current company culture as perceived by employees currently working in the culture. A good way to collect this data is via anonymous polls or surveys (to accord with confidentiality) that list questions but also has a section for the employee to input their own concerns or suggestions that also need to be addressed. By pitching some questions related to the plans management may want to implement, they will also be able to gauge responsiveness or pushback to practices they might think are beneficial to employees. Sometimes the perception may different between the policy makers and those who have to adopt the policy.
2. What kind of follow up will happen with managers once they complete mandated leadership training and how will UBER track improved performance from these leaders?
Did Uber use all 47 of the recommendations that they were advised to implement to improve the culture and what has been the improvement since measures were implemented?
I am interested in these specific questions because these are tangible things that UBER is doing to obviously increase the egregious culture that exist. Also both of these things can be measured and we can determine if they were effective at improving the overall culture at the organization. These are both questions that can be researched and determined if they were done or not.
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Your initial post must be a minimum of 150 words. Make sure your post shows evidence that you have completed and understood the readings for this week by using the theories/concepts that were covered and by adding quotes and examples from the text that help you answer the question.
