The Scenario

People spend a considerable part of their lives at work, so it's not surprising that they expect to be rewarded and satisfied with the job that they do.

Motivation is concerned with why people do things as well as what drives them to behave in a particular way. Understanding what motivates people in the workplace is important, as research suggests that motivated employees are happier at work. They get more satisfaction from their work, are absent less often, tend to be more loyal, and work with more enthusiasm. This, in turn, encourages them to contribute more to the ongoing development and success of an organisation.

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is a multinational professional services network. It is the worlds largest professional services network firm, and is one of the Big Four auditors, along with Deloitte, Ernst & Young, and KPMG. In New Zealand, PwC employs more than 1,300 people and has offices in the Auckland, Waikato, Hawkes Bay, Taranaki, Wellington, Canterbury and Otago regions.

Given the strong customer focus of PwC, the human resource director wishes to begin to understand what motivates staff at all levels of the organisation. In addition to this, she also wishes to understand how happy staff are in PwC, and how their feelings about the company are linked to outcomes such as workplace satisfaction, absenteeism, and the likelihood that staff would leave PwC for another employer.

Her feeling is that there are some elements of employee dissatisfaction, which has recently manifested itself through increasing levels of absenteeism, and an increasing number of staff leaving PwC for other employers. Her preliminary feeling is that this behaviour may be isolated to those employees in the early stages of their careers, although this belief is based upon anecdotal information only.

You have been asked to undertake a research project with PwC to understand these issues. Including the development of your research proposal, you will have approximately six weeks to complete your proposed research. Due to this time constraint, you have been asked to outline and discuss your ideas for: (1) a qualitative research project, (2) a quantitative research project, and then (3) state your preferred project approach and provide justification for this approach. In terms of costs, PwC have said they can cover any reasonable expenses as a part of the project work you will be undertaking.

When discussing how your research project could be undertaken using both qualitative and quantitative approaches, issues you should address include: your research questions, research design and data requirements, sampling technique and sample size, data collection method, the question topics and/or types of measures to be used, and how you intend to analyse the data that you collect.

You must outline and discuss your proposed qualitative approach in no more than 600 words. Then, you must also outline and discuss your proposed quantitative approach in no more than 600 words.

After doing this, you then need to state your preferred approach (qualitative or quantitative) and the reasons / justification as to why this is your preferred approach. You must outline and justify the reasons for your preferred approach in no more than 300 words.

Problem Statement:

Qualitative: 

Are the employees at the organization motivated and satisfied or not?

Quantitative:

Which are the motivational factors which have the highest impact on the motivation or satisfaction levels of the employees at the organization under study? 

Qualitative Research:

Design Methodology: 

In this case to understand the different aspects of people from different cultural backgrounds and ethnicity, a mix of methods with ethnicity and different hierarchy levels being the key areas of research will be done (Devadass, 2011). This method will help in understanding the motivation factors at different hierarchy levels and cultural backgrounds separately.

Sampling of Participants for Survey and Informed Consent:

In this context we will be using the intranet listing of employees. For this study, the participants will be chosen by purposeful, ethnic and hierarchical non-proportional quota, criterion sampling with the following criteria: (1) at least one member from each ethnic background; (2) only salaried employees will be taken; (3) only full time employees will be considered; (4) at least one member will be selected from each of the hierarchy level and from each of the divisions across the organization (Flynn, 2013). 

(Some parts of the solution has been blurred due to privacy protection policy)