Ethical Decision Making & Cases, Research Paper Example

There is a dilemma occurring at an organization which opens up the opportunity for a research study to be conducted. This research study will address the problem and after a thoroughly conducted analysis of the data collected, the research team will be able to assess what caused the problem as well as how it may be fixed. The issue appears to be a lack of understanding of the organization’s code of ethics amongst the employees and executives (Ferrell & Fraedrich, 2014).

It is also possible that there is simply negligence towards the code of ethics, particularly from the executives and superiors of the organization. This problem was discovered in the recent reports of sexual harassment occurring in the organization’s work environment. The sexual harassment claims are generally victimizing for female workers. In order to gather the required data to conduct a research analysis of this problem, a questionnaire will be distributed to randomly selected employees (DesJardins & McCall, 2014).

The data that is gathered from the questionnaire study will be analyzed based on the research study objectives, as well as the variables that affect the study. The questions which comprise the questionnaire survey will contain a pre-coded fixing of alternative responses. What this means is that the categories of the questionnaire will contain pre-coded answers in the form of fixed alternative responses for the participants of the study to select as their best possible answer (Zikmund, Babin, Carr & Griffin, 2013).

For the purposes of appearance and simplicity, the pre-coding will not actually appear on the questionnaire itself. Doing this might confuse the participants with excessive text that they are not required to view in selecting their answers. The coding will only be visible and made available to the research team as they use it to organize the data collected from the questionnaire. This coding will be automated through the third party software that is being used to conduct the questionnaire. Once the questionnaire are distributed and submitted the research team will be able to receive the data as a file via the third party software (Zikmund, 2013).

This categorical question allows for clarification of the participant’s individual score. Each question on the questionnaire will come with its own set of pre-coded fixed responses depending on the question that is being asked. Once this data is collected, it will be considered inferential statistics. This is because the data collected will be used as an analysis of a sample population and their personal responses to the questionnaire (Jaffee, Strait, & Odgers, 2012).

This type of statistic is more complex than a descriptive statistic because it provides more detail about the data such as how many participants there are, how many questions were asked, and what the responses were from each individual (Zikmund, 2013).

Following the analysis of the collected data, all data will be organized into easily readable graphs using a histogram as well as a pie chart. This will give the research team as well as other interested parties readily available data based on this specific research study (Jaffee, 2012).

References

DesJardins, J. R., & McCall, J. J. (2014). Contemporary issues in business ethics. Cengage Learning.

Ferrell, O. C., & Fraedrich, J. (2014). Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Cengage learning.

Jaffee, S. R., Strait, L. B., & Odgers, C. L. (2012). From correlates to causes: can quasi-experimental studies and statistical innovations bring us closer to identifying the causes of antisocial behavior?. Psychological bulletin,138(2), 272.

Zikmund, W. G., Babin, B. J., Carr, J. C., & Griffin, M. (2013). Business research methods (9^th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western.