Analysis of scenario

Analysis of scenario

Question #1

Following is the hierarchy of management-research question:

1. What is the current issue that Penton is facing?

2. How can the management of Penton capitalize on the present opportunity?

3. What actions can Penton take for availing the opportunity?

4. Which alternative is best? For this, the manager need to know what is important and what is not?

5. What research questions should be asked from the respondent to get the desired information?

6. What final action should be taken by the manager after the research findings?

Question #2

The main ethical issues that are applicable to this study are respondent's privacy and confidentiality issues. The information of the respondent can be leaked and information can be accessed by other researcher. . A researcher must consider the confidentiality and keep the information of the respondent confidential. The information must not be used anywhere else except the study for which it was obtained. The information will not be accessed by any other person except the primary researcher of the study. Information will not be circulated or passed to any other researcher. Both, qualitative and quantitative approaches focus on the confidentiality issue.

Question #3

The sampling technique used in the survey was Stratified disproportionate random sampling. Stratified sampling falls under the category of probability sampling technique, in which, the entire population is divided into various subgroups and the final subjects are selected randomly fro the different strata. in stratified disproportionate random sampling, the sample size is disproportionate to the stratum's population size it means that each stratum has different sampling fractions. The study selected 4000 managers, engineers, executives, and other purchasing agents from the database of U.S. the strata of seven industries with six job titles.

Castillo (2009) stated that the main weakness of this sampling technique is that the accuracy of this technique depends on the sampling fraction. If the researcher assigns wrongs sampling fractions, the achieved results may form right skewed curve (overrepresented) or left skewed curve (underrepresented). The main strengths of this technique are that it better covers the entire population and the respondents of the same stratum carries almost similar interest.

Question #4

Penton used both qualitative and quantitative research method. The quantitative research method was used in which questionnaires were emailed to the respondents and the obtained data was analyzed by giving weights to the responses and the overall percentage of the responses was calculated. Moreover, the qualitative research method was used by ...