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Formal Research and Business Proposals
The essential point of difference between business proposals and formal research lies in the “modicum of proof” for the premises that lead up to the Conclusions and Recommendations. In the case of business research, the standard of proof needed only has to be what will convince an internal group of decision-makers, external supply or value-chain partners, an investor or financing source that the proposed course of action is sound. On the other hand, formal research always hews to the precepts of the scientific method for reliability, validity, replication and generalizability to the relevant population.
A second key difference lies with data access. A business proposal may rest solely on shared anecdotal evidence, case studies (by definition, an exploratory research method and, owing to the requirement of specificity, few), proprietary or in-house data gathered either for the background or principal analysis phase (PRISM Leadership Consulting & Research Group, 2009). The findings from all three data sources may differ from those available to a competitor but the audience for a Business Proposal is not overly concerned with generalizing to the universe of similar enterprises. With formal research, on the other hand, the requirements for reliability and replication emphasized peer-reviewed professional journals as preferred source for theory-building and hypothesis formulation. For the main information-gathering stage, scientific rigor means limiting research methods to those that others can precisely replicate with similar subjects/respondents, with variations on the independent variable, and in other times and settings.
For the rest, there are differences between the two in point of how research problems are defined, the kinds of research questions, research purposes and decision applications addressed, the emphasis on analysis versus experimentation, and the priority given the most recent peer-reviewed professional literature to constitute the acceptable context for formal research.
Literature Review: The Relationship between Job Stress and Performance
On doing a brief review of the literature around the fifth null hypothesis, “There is no relationship between job stress and performance,” it is striking how the alternative is always the concluding finding. However, the effect is contingent on the level of stress experienced: low to low-average levels of stress are associated with measurable increases in performance on the job but heightened and sustained stress becomes counterproductive.
In more theoretical terms, this differential effect is referred to as “challenge versus “threat” or “hindrance”. Challenge leads one to expect a positive correlation with job performance while threat or hindrance drags both qualitative and quantitative work output lower. Several mechanisms explain this hindering effect (Jex, 1998; Lazarus, 1999):
- On learning about a new demand made on them, employees divert energy, time and effort to cope with their anxiety, dismay and discomfort instead of devoting their whole being to objectively productive activity.
- In an echo of the “fight or flight” syndrome, the “endangered” worker manifests involuntary physiological responses that immediately take away attention and focused work on the job.
- High stressor levels generate information overload that in turn generates a self-protectively narrower attention span. Now less attentive to performance-related feedback and cues, the employee is increasingly unaware that job performance has been degraded.
On the other hand, the positive linear model explains the favorable effect of challenge-type stressors in terms of internal arousal and accordingly appreciatively better performance outcomes (LePine et al., 2005).
On the matter of whether the relationship between stressors and job performance (as measured by supervisor ratings) is similarly positively linear, curvilinear/U-shaped, or negative linear, Jamal (1985) proposes from a self-report survey of both middle managers and blue-collar workers in a large Quebec enterprise and after application of bivariate multiple regression and hierarchical multiple regression analyses that the overall relationship (before accounting for intervening/moderating variables) is in the theoretically expected direction, negatively linear relationship. The most important moderator, accounting for more than half the total variance in the case of both managerial and blue-collar sub-samples, was in this case organizational commitment.
Stress is, of course, by no means one-dimensional. Gilboa, Shirom, Fried, and Cooper coalesced the published findings of 169 related studies to test the consistency of the relationship between job performance on one hand and seven sources of work-related stress: role ambiguity, role conflict, role overload, job insecurity, work-family conflict, environmental uncertainty, and situational constraints (2008). The meta-analysis yielded the overall finding of a negative-signed mean correlation between every single stressor and job performance. In particular, the extent of the inverse relationship was relatively great for role ambiguity and situational constraints (more about the latter below). As to job performance itself, the meta-analysis covered solely those referring to quantity done (ratings of output volume or sheer output against some relevant criterion) and quality delivered, operationalized as measures of how well core tasks were accomplished.
Perhaps the significant inverse effect between job performance and role ambiguity is to be expected, given how literally dozens of studies concerning paid employment and included in the meta-analysis investigated the correlation between the dependent variable (DV) of job performance and the influential variable (IV) of ambiguity. This is also likely a common topic of concern in the business management and organizational analysis literature. It also comes as no great surprise that Gilboa et al. (2008) reveal that the moderating variable of rank in the corporate hierarchy is at work, i.e. managers evince more role ambiguity and overload than the rank and file do. With higher rank comes the imperative to accommodate interdepartmental concerns, enterprise vision and strategy, and the many intangibles of leadership in human organizations. And yet, there is no single rulebook that eliminates role ambiguity. In trying to coping with a rank that de-emphasizes pure technical expertise, managers at all levels may try to be all things, run up plenty of dead ends, heighten their sense of role overload and ultimately spur themselves to greater stress.
But it is also true that threat and challenge can coexist, if one pauses to think about it. What matters is whether a given situation provokes low perceived challenge and high perceived threat. Then one can anticipate more prominent negative effects and more seriously diminished performance.
Considering the bigger picture, the stress-performance paradigm is moderated by, among others, occupation type, whether family life is a concomitant stressor, and may or may not be mitigated by extraneous situational variables.
In the military, for example, the triple stresses of war zone dangers, separation from spouses (family-life stress), and low rank combined aggravate the impact of occupational stress on productivity and vigilance. An analysis of the 2002 Department of Defense Survey of Health-Related Behaviors among Military Personnel based on 12,756 active-status personnel in all service branches and including those posted overseas (e.g. Okinawa, Afghanistan, Iraq) suggested that: a) Self-reported occupational stress was usually higher compared to family stress; b) Bore an inverse relationship with age; c) Was greater among female active-duty personnel, married spouses whose duty assignments took them away from their spouses; d) Had adverse mental health effects (e.g. higher odds of stress in a war zone coupled with the prevalence of, say, post-traumatic stress disorder); and, e) Drives productivity downwards (Hourani, Williams, and Kress, 2006).
In a southeastern U.S.A. public hospital setting, for example, Park, Wilson, and Lee (2004) found that work-based social support correlated directly with reduced depression, improved levels of job control and performance.
In the case of a white-collar occupation set in another culture, Chen and Silverthorne (2008) report that organizational commitment and whether the significant locus of control originates internally are significant intervening variables for the stress-productivity paradigm. Put succinctly, a higher internal locus of control was associated with lower self-reported job stress and, conversely, improved job performance and satisfaction. In a related vein, among external auditors but employees of Big 6 accounting firms in New Zealand this time, Fisher (2001) suggests that both the role conflict and ambiguity stressors adversely impact job performance and job satisfaction.
References
Chen, J.-C. & Silverthorne, C. (2008). The impact of locus of control on job stress, job performance and job satisfaction in Taiwan. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 29(7), 572-582.
Fisher, R. T. (2001). Role stress, the Type A behaviour pattern, and external auditor job satisfaction and performance. Behavioral Research in Accounting, 13: 143-170.
Gilboa, S., Shirom, A., Fried, Y., & Cooper, C. (2008). A meta-analysis of work demand stressors and job performance: Examining main and moderating effects. Personnel Psychology, 61(2), 227-271.
Hourani, L. L., Williams, T. V, & Kress, A. M. (2006). Stress, mental health, and job performance among active duty military personnel: Findings from the 2002 Department of Defense Health-Related Behaviors Survey. Military Medicine, 171(9), 849-56.
Jamal, M. (1985). Relationship of job stress to job performance: A study of managers and blue-collar workers. Human Relations, 38 (5), 409-424.
Jex, S. M. (1998). Stress and job performance: Theory, research, and implications for management practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lazarus RS. (1999). Stress and emotion. New York: Springer.
LePine, J. A., LePine M. A., & Jackson, C. L. (2004). Challenge and hindrance stress: Relationships with exhaustion, motivation to learn, and learning performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 883-891.
Park, K.-O., Wilson, M. G. & Lee, M. S. (2004). Effects of social support at work on depression and organizational productivity. American Journal of Health Behavior, 28(5), 444-55.
PRISM Leadership Consulting & Research Group (2009). Differences between a business proposal and formal research. Web.
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