Substantiating the Research

All inputs made during the second phase of the research process were attempts to justify the pending research by providing evidence that confirmed the need for and urgency of scientific studies that investigated the executive effectiveness of top managers from the private and public sectors.

6.4.1 Formulating the research question

The literature review did not identify a single comparative study of effective executive performance in the private and public sectors, nor any other study that investigated differential leadership traits that could be associated with or contributed to executive effectiveness among top-level managers from the two sectors (refer to Section 3.4 of Chapter 3). The lack of scientific knowledge within the chosen phenomenon, study topic and subdiscipline would ensure that the outcomes of the forthcoming study indeed would be innovative by nature.

6.4.2 Formulating the practical question

Private and public sector institutions continuously undergo comprehensive and rapid organisational transformation in their core functions and institutional cultures. The acute shortage of top-managers, globally and in South Africa, was common concern. With this in mind, would cost-effective training, early identification and recruiting of younger managers with executive potential as well as timely replacement of aging executives ease the critical shortage of top-managers? What innovative and essential scientific information can the outcomes of the pending study contribute in this respect? Also refer to Section 3.5 of Chapter 3.

6.4.3 Statement of scientific objectives

The researcher formulated six proximal and five distal scientific outcomes. These aims appear in Section 3.6 of Chapter 3. Psychometric interventions and statistical analysis were applied to realize proximal outcome 1, namely the construction of two

103 measuring instruments that assesses aspects of executive performance. Realization of proximal outcome 2 required specific sampling procedures aimed at locating, identifying and recruiting executives from the public and private sectors for potential participation in the forthcoming study (refer to Section 6.14 of Chapter 6). Proximal outcome 3 was intended to reconfirm the realization of proximal outcome 2, or major purpose of the study. Realization of proximal outcomes 4 to 6 would yield scientific information on psychosocial and workplace dynamic patterns that underlie effective and ineffective behaviours of executives from the two sectors. Realization of distal outcomes 1 to 5 was intended to produce scientific spin-offs or results of secondary importance for the study’s objectives.

6.4.4 Statement of research objectives

The contents of Section 6.4.3 describe the type of scientific data that the researcher intends to generate. The statement of research objectives (refer to Section 3.7 of Chapter 3) broadly outlined applications of methodology, actions and interventions that would be required to achieve the proximal and distal scientific outcomes.

6.4.5 Purpose of the study

The current researcher, assuming that executives from the public and private sectors operated in independent but interdependent spheres of South Africa’s statehood, described the purpose of the prospective study as a comparison of the effect of varying length of employment contract term on the effective job performance by executives from the nation state’s two economic sectors and an assessment of the psychosocial and workplace dynamics that underlay their executive effectiveness. 6.4.6 Ethical considerations

The University of Johannesburg set four prerequisites to counter and eliminate possible ethical dilemmas that might arise during academic research that it has sanctioned. Approval of research proposals for Master’s and doctoral studies is subject to: (a) voluntary participation in academic research that it has sanctioned; (b) fully informing the participants of the research objectives; (c) restraint of any action

104 that can assist third parties to identify and expose participants in public; and (d) confidential handling of participants’ personal information.

Researchers assume responsibility for the ethical treatment of research participants. This critical assignment requires diligent action. Whitley, Jr. (2002, p. 57) pointed out that researchers had to consider crucial matters such as risk of harm or deprivation, voluntary participation, informed consent, deception, avoidance of harm, withdrawal of consent, alleviating adverse effects, debriefing, compensation for control groups and confidentiality of data. Dooley (1995, pp. 24-26) reiterated Whitley, Jr.’s concerns but added considerations such as compliance with law and professional standards, dispensing with confirmed consent, informed consent in filming or recording research, sharing and utilizing data, minimizing invasiveness, and honouring commitments. 6.4.7 Quality control

Researchers, who intend to conduct research of excellence, take deliberate steps to promote quality control. The current researcher, accordingly, built-in six measures to ensure research of quality: (a) statement of the researcher’s resolve that committed him to undertake the prospective research as he had foreseen it (refer to Section 1.3 of Chapter 1); (b) ensuring standards of excellence in planning and executing the academic endeavour, using advanced research methods and clear but systematic science reporting; (c) providing detailed scientific information in the dissertation that would provide fellow-researches with two opportunities, one to judge the professional conduct of the current researcher and the second to replicate the study if permission to access the base data set was given; (d) quality control of fieldwork by means of back-checks on interviewers; (e) revisiting the researcher’s resolve at the termination of the study (refer to Section 10.4 of Chapter 10) to determine to what extent the researcher had met his original scientific commitments; and (f) benchmarking of the prospective research against ongoing national and international studies by renowned researchers elsewhere (refer to Section 6..4..8 of the current Chapter).

6.4.8 Benchmarking the study

As was stated in Section 6.4.1, the research question of the current study was based on a lack of research elsewhere that evaluated the outcome of variation in length of employees’ employment contract terms on the effectiveness of their job performance,

105 by means of a comparative study of executives from the private and public sectors. Benchmarking, in other words, was impossible. The researcher thus had to rely on measure (b) in Section 6.4.7: realizing standards of excellence by conducting high- level research by applying advanced research methods as well as diligent, clear and systematic science reporting.