HI6008 Business Research Project Online Tutoring

The first stage as part of a research report is identifying a topic, defining the problem, developing a research question, writing approval submission and finalizing team charter.  In my opinion, this is crucial in conducting a business research as there is a need to identify a topic and problem, to which the research will try to find a solution. My personal contribution is to ensure coordination among the team as I recall that during a brainstorming session, there were a lot of arguments among the team members. The intention behind all the arguments by team members was to ensure high-quality work. So, I worked on establishing coordination among the team members. I started with establishing a sequence for how we all will be communicating and I was also taking notes of the discussion. This approach helped us a lot as the quality of our brainstorming session improved drastically. We were able to define the problem precisely as we realized that it is necessary for a research topic and problem to be as specific as possible to enhance the quality of the research. We followed this principle in developing the research question as well and tried to ensure that our research question is as precise as possible. The task of working on approval submission was assigned to an individual team member. The task of working on the team charter was also assigned to an individual team member with other sharing their suggestions before and after the first draft was prepared by the concerned team member.

The second stage as part of a research report is the literature review. In my opinion, a literature review is highly important for any research as it acts as the theoretical framework for any research. Since the topic that we were focusing on is not a novel topic (had it been a novel topic, there would have been no prior literature to refer to), there was a need to review the existing literature on the topic to increase our understanding of the topic and also identify certain research gaps that we can aim to bridge through our research project. With the above intention, we approached conducting the literature review. The first aspect that we needed to focus on was to collect relevant and high-quality literature. One of the team members was good with using keywords for collecting the research. While the obvious approach would have been to assign the literature collection to him, however, we as a team decided that this is a learning opportunity for us, so we asked the team member to share his approach with us. Based on insights from his approach, we all decided to collect literature on an individual basis. To avoid duplication, I suggested that we create a google sheet, where each one of us uploads the details of the article we are reviewing.  This was followed by the screening of the articles by us, where we discarded the old articles as many of the new studies had already included the insights from the earlier studies. This was followed by each of us individually summarizing the articles collected by us. This was followed by me proposing a draft outline along which the literature review could be conducted. Based on the team suggestions, we finalized the outline. Then, based on a discussion, we divided different parts of literature review among ourselves, with me assigned the responsibility of compiling the work and proofreading. As part of a proofreading, I focused on ensuring that there are no grammatical errors. After checking for grammatical errors manually, I also used Grammarly to further enhance the quality of the literature review. I also analyzed the literature review using Turnitin, to check for plagiarism as I understand the importance of any academic work being free from any plagiarism. I recall there were some plagiarism issues with the content written by one team member and plagiarism checker showed similarity with various sources. I realized that had he copied from one source, there would have been high similarity with one source, instead it was a low similarity with various sources, so we asked him to paraphrase to ensure that there is as low as similar as possible. Looking back, I feel that conducting the literature review was a great learning as I am hopeful that this learning will help me to conduct academic projects on my own.

The third stage as part of a research report is the research methodology. In my opinion, research methodology is highly important for any research as it acts as the guiding force for any research. I played a more active role in this area as besides compiling the information and proofreading, I also wrote several sections (discussed later). My role was not confined to just writing as I had to think about the appropriate research design that can help us answer the research question. After discussing with the team, we agreed upon using quantitative methods. While we accepted that method has its own flaws (it covers the broader perspective, however, it does not generate detailed insights), however, we continued with it as we felt that using qualitative or mixed methods would have increased the complexity of the project. This was followed by designing of the questionnaire where all the members were asked to develop their own questionnaires and then we had a discussion session to finalize the questionnaire.  The need for all the team members working on separate questionnaires was to ensure that different relevant aspects were covered. While I understand that the smarter way would have been to assign the questionnaire designing to one person, however, no one among us was comfortable in designing a high-quality questionnaire single-handedly. The insights from the respondents need to be analysis to draw meaningful conclusions, however, I am not much involved in the analytical part.

Looking back, I feel that working on this research project has been of great learning to me as I gained a lot of insights- First of all I gained familiarity with the topic. Second, I learnt from a peer how to search for relevant articles on a topic, which I think will be helpful all throughout my professional life. Third, I learnt how to effectively work in a team setting. As I mentioned earlier, our initial coordination was not good and we argued with each other. However, once I started working on setting-up processes, things were better. This experience made me think that every team needs a letter. I was not the formal leader, however, depending on the situation, I had to assume leadership to a certain extent. All the team members wanted to contribute so there was a need to ensure that their contributions are coordinated, that is what I did.

My contribution (in terms of writing) was majorly focused on the research methodology. I wrote the following sections in the report: Quantitative debate, increasing demand for data, underestimated smartphones vulnerabilities, qualitative debate, hypothesis, Primary data sampling size, approach, questionnaire design factors, Data collection method envisaged analysis and interpretation, and Summary and Conclusion. In my opinion, working on the above sections was really beneficial as it allowed me to understand the literature review and then design the research to fill the gaps as identified by the literature review.