Research Design

The objective of this study is to trace the mediating effect of Chinese community relationships in the development and adoption of the learning organisation paradigm and practice in the interests of a diverse and enhanced business performance at the Kunshan factory. The bricolage research methodology was chosen. The investigation involves many interactive and iterative people activities. Political issues are also presented.

There are two types of research orientation. One is social research, aiming to

understand the underlying social world, hoping to contribute to current knowledge and literature. Such knowledge and understanding is well reflected in associated academic disciplines. Another perspective is applied research, with the objective of providing expertise to sort out problems and improve matters. It has an intended practical orientation and is often seen in industry practitioners in the resolution of identified problems and situation improvement (Sekaran and Bougie, 2010, p. 97). Singleton and Straits (2005, pp. 57-67) contrast the characteristics of these two research

Table 3-3: Basic versus applied research

Attributes for consideration

Basic research Applied research

Intrinsic motivation for researchers:

Curiosity and satisfaction when advancing intellect and knowledge

Excitement of resolving a problem or issue resolved Fundamental goal: The identified knowledge

can be generalised

Settling problems cost- effectively

Employed methods’ rigour and flexibility:

Scholarly protocols and norms of scholarship

Uses to which results may be put

Preoccupied with: Internal validity External validity Ideal research arena

tends to be:

Laboratory Real-world setting or ‘the field’.

(adapted from Singleton and Straits, 2005, pp. 57–67)

An applied research orientation suits this dissertation, working well in constructivism and pragmatism.

This research takes an ethnographic starting point through my role as one of three founding directors. The family-based structure creates a unique environment to reveal the deterministic contribution of Chinese community relationships to corporate change management, such as the learning organisation exercise and boosting commercial achievement through divestment from textile printing to five operational units. Nonetheless, the research targets are my fellow factory members. Following sound ethical practice, they were informed of, and their consensus solicited for, voluntary participation in this guanxi research. A few dropped out at the start of the programme, but the majority of the founding factory members stayed and contributed

wholeheartedly to nurture the business capability of the group of companies.

3.5.1 Research methods

There are several guanxi characteristics and elements, learning organisation attributes and business performance to be examined with the key managers of my company. Instead of frame-based questioning, an ethnographic approach was most beneficial in that I, as an insider–researcher, could participate in open dialogue with key managers. Having no boundaries and being free from pressure are the key factors of successful unstructured qualitative interviewing, and this method was appropriate to explore factory representatives’ perception of learning organisations at large. The delicate influence of Chinese community relationships is also discussed in the qualitative interviews; the strong family relationships among staff might lend a different

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perspective to the establishment of learning organisation routines, and this open dialogue with key managers might provide another channel through which to observe concerns on the part of the community of factory workers. This could help the

management team to design action plans adapted to the existing corporate members and to cater for emerging group ideas on enhancing organisational routines and

building up foresight to locate new business opportunities. The research design for this research in is shown in Table 3-4. Most methods and tools are selected to the best achieve the goals of the research.

Table 3-4: Research design

Actions Activities Bricolage methods

and tools Timing 1st action - Engagement Analysis Precaution Learning organisation introduction

Insider research articulation Managers’ promotion to shareholder role

Debrief the adoption of research methodology to solicit all staff members’ participation Case studies on external learning organisation programmes Brainstorm and reflection sessions on learning organisation Open dialogue on concerns September– December 2012 Scenario analysis

Complex business issues examination

Caution money for business ethics

Establish internal structure to operate learning organisation

SSM, such as rich picture and CATWOE (Flood, 2010)

Establish financial asset to raise reciprocity level in company guanxi trust

January– June 2013

Interim evaluation

Develop scouting capacity for opportunity and risk

Identify draft constructs on the relationship between guanxi and learning organisation paradigm

Unstructured interviewing Computerised content analysis (Leximancer) August– November 2013 2nd action - Business expansion - Constructs refinement - Quantitative analysis

Divestment of factory into five business units

Weekly all-level group meetings

Weekly knowledge sharing session within/ across business units Group evaluative inquiry and correction

November 2013–June 2014

Cross-evaluation on divestment performance and mistakes Refining constructs between

guanxi and learning organisation

paradigm

Focus group discussion April 2014

Identifying core influential factors Internal survey Partial least square regression analysis

June– August 2014

Within the bricolage approach, repeated action is a key. The iterative nature and the full participation of all stakeholders and factory members are embraced in the research design (Table 3-4). SSM (Flood, 2010, pp. 278-279) is an adaptive method providing a systematic orientation to the execution of iterations of research steps and is a variant of a classic approach (Graham, 2003, p. 4). Action relies on participants’ existing

knowledge to evaluate and comment, leading to correction and change. In the case of complex situations such as cut-throat competition in the current consumer market in China, it will be a ‘trial and error’ situation. Maqsood, Finegan and Walker (2001, pp. 998-1000) illustrate the application of SSM in the construction industry, representing a complex and fast-moving commercial scenario. It shows the versatility of SSM

structured tools in facilitating the perception by all stakeholders of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats in the dynamic and complex business world. Unstructured qualitative evaluative inquiry can explore how company members receive the paradigm of a learning organisation. Fundamentally, the focus of this research is to detect variables and correlations during the transfer of learning organisation practices to my factory staff.

Content analysis such as categorisation, text matching and clustering was used to analysis all reports from the qualitative inquiry. The syntactic clustering and semantic interpretation was anticipated to reflect the mentality of key managers towards the company’s foresight and exploration of new opportunities under the auspices of learning organisation routines, and content analysis of the unstructured qualitative interviews gives a straightforward outcome.

An approximation of the relationship between guanxi and learning organisation operation was achieved after the unstructured qualitative interviews and the

computerised content analysis. This developed the first set of research constructs for evaluation in the next action. Divestment action was scheduled to transform the company, leading to high commercial growth through the shared mentality characteristic of Chinese community relationships and the learning organisation.

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The focus group was a collective evaluative inquiry session undertaken to examine the performance of the divestment. Research constructs were refined to identify the core variables connecting guanxi and the learning organisation.

The aim of this study’s research questions is the formulation of a quantitative relationship of Chinese community relationship (guanxi) and learning organisation practices directed at high business growth. While the population at the Kunshan factory is small, just 150 members, it was worth performing an internal survey using existing questionnaires to evaluate the learning organisation (Marsick and Watkins, 2003, pp. 137-140).