Research Methods S5 - Research Framework

welcome once again to research methods the last time we met we talked about literature referencing and previously we have also talked about how to select a topic and how to do ler review today we step into something a little bit more complex in trying to discuss the role of theory in research so we'll talk about theoretical Frameworks and conceptual Frameworks which together form a research framework for every researcher that every research that you are going to carry out okay now one thing that we all know about research is the fact that research is a systematic and organized way of finding answers to questions and interestingly we have discussed these things over the past U few sessions that we have done today we'll go into details and try to understand how we use theorist and conceptual Frameworks to be able to establish certain relationships in the phenomenon we are trying to study and able to collect data on them so we are going to discuss the role of research Frameworks in research so what are the topics will be covering defining research framework types of research Frameworks building blocks of a theory examples of theories and a level of theory this session is actually linked to the chapter five of the book research Made Easy which you can also get on Google books so defining research Frameworks a research framework presents a way of studying variables concerning a phenomenon in order to investigate the solution for a research problem we usually call it research framework because it frames the research by what I mean by frames the research it outlines certain variables or concepts in a manner which explains or predict the research um the specific social phenomenon within a research problem for example you are trying to do a study on unemployment you can think about or postulate economic factors that lead to unemployment and you may mention inflation you may mention um something like lack of setup Capital you also mention another thing as maybe um lack of low interest rates if these three factors together interact in a manner to produce or have an effect in society which lead to unemployment then you may be postulating your research that these three factors are either independently or they interact together to be to create unemployment in the society hence you may go to a community or a particular society to test whether these three factors independently or interact together to predict unemployment in that particular society so that's why we call it a research framework so for that particular research those three questions become or determine the variables that you are going to study they also determine what goes onto your questionnaire so it frame the researches the research you are carrying out for you you're not going to ask questions outside those three variables it doesn't mean you may not find out that there may be other variables yes you could find out that they may be other variables causing unemployment but you may even find out a social cultural variable Maybe the culture of the Town say certain social cultural practices could prevent women from working or men from working on specific days and maybe lead to certain effects that may lead to um generate unemployment however because you have said that these three economic factors is what you are studying those three factors will guide the research questions that you have hence we say that it frames the research that's why we have research framework so it's called a research framework because it frames the research it outlines relationships how Concepts and variables relate to explain or predict a particular social phenomena now a research framework forms part of your literature review or for a simple outline of a long essay can look or thesis can look like this an abstract introduction liter review context of study chap um chapter four being research methodology results and discussion and then conclusion what in this you use the introduction to establish why you are doing the research so you present your research gaps there which will be discussed within your research problem then you talk about the significance of your research but when you get your lit review what will you do is that you explain the concepts behind the research topic so if you're doing something about unemployment you may Define what you mean by unemployment you may Define what you mean by poverty and then you review lure to see what has lure said concerning unemployment what are the causes of unemployment because of that you use your chapter 2 to explain a potential set of fact the potential set of factors that could lead to un employment and out of that if you find out about seven factors that literature says that these factors predict unemployment in your Society you could choose four or three of them for your study and then once you choose for your study then becomes your research framework so your research framew can come or emerge out of your literature review but if you are doing a research based Theses like mfil or like a PhD you may have a separate chapter for research framework because that one the depth of contribution is quite rigorous than that of an MBA program of an MNC program of undergraduate program so your supervisor May encourage you to have a chapter three called theoretical framework or research framework but now that you just I'm just giving a generic example here a research framework will form part of your liter review an outcome liter review which provides direction for data collection and analysis so it will end up informing what will be in the methodology end up informing what will be in the methodology so let's look at let's just look at an example this is a research that was done on impact of mobiles on microt trading activities or Traders so the key question was what is the impact of mobiles on microt trading activities of Market Traders and the questions that were being asked are are three sub questions how do Market Traders use mobiles one what benefits do Market Traders obtain from mobiles two what is the impact or benefits of using mobile microt trading activities of Market Traders so these three questions were going to be used to collect data to be able to answer the under opinion research question to be able to do this the researcher had to come up with the research framework those variables Concepts or those variables that will help the researcher collect data in order to answer each of the sub resarch questions so if you read the paper which is it's easy for you to find in Emerald a conceptual framework was developed and it was titled conceptual framework of the impact of mobes of microtrading and the conceptual framework was bringing those variables that need to be steud to to answer the research question and it emerged out of Lal review so the author said that a a Trader will adopt mobile phone and after dting mobile phone use it in three ways in pre-trade activities during trade activities and post trade activities and it will generate three types of benefit strategic benefits relational benefits and operational benefits and to lead to three types of impact incremental impact transformational impact and then production effects now or incremental effects transformational effects and production effects now what you see here is each part of the research questions sub research questions you saw in the previous slide has a contributes or has a relationship with the conceptual framework so the pre-trade the during trade and post trade answers the first question what do they use it for they apply to these three areas but the actual activities they use them for will come out of the research but if you if you look at it this is the stages of trading which is in economics so the what the researcher did is that he took the stages of trading from economics and then said If the mobile phone is applied to Trading it will affect pre-trade post trade and then during trade then in terms of benefits literature has already discussed in a number of different papers that Technologies like mobiles when you apply them to Commerce or trading you can have three interrelated benefits operational relational and strategic and there are three types of effects that you can also lead to incremental transformational and production all these are coming from different authors this one the impact can be read from um Hicks and jaguan paper in 2008 and then you can also look at the benefits from other um ICT based papers I've actually written a paper on the use of mobiles and um and trading and the benefits you can gain from mobiles and I also use the same strategic benefits relational benefits and operational benefits even ICT application to Commerce you can have strategic benefits relational benefits operational benefits so by putting them together he has a conceptual framework and each of them each of the questions is addressed here so we say that a research framework helps you to be able to postulate how potential or observed variables from the literature come together to explain what you are trying to study and that is why we call it a research it frames a research so me that researcher is will be within the limits of these variables with the within the limits of these variable now it means that if if a person is doing just give an example if you are preparing cake and you put the cake into a round bowl a round cast what you said you have a round CI but if you put it in a square box by time you you come out of the OV you get a square box square Ki of a square size what I'm trying to say here is that the variables guide you to be able to collect data it means that by the time you finish sometimes the variables can limit you what you can report it doesn't also mean that you might not find out new things you can find out new things but the variables kind of lead and direct the path of the research so the questions in the on your questionnaire is Guided by the variables which you select to do your research in in the same way if a person is doing research and says that social cultural factors that affect unemployment you tell you realize all the factors will be social cultural factors if it says economic factors all the factors will be economic factors that is what a research framework does now there are different types of research framework now to make it simple a research framework can be viewed in two parts first there is you could go into Theory now theory is an observed pattern about how things work in society how variables come together to explain um social phenomena now one thing about theorist is that they have been tested over time and become established so they look like a given truth one example is you find the area of a circle is it p r s or the area of a triangle have base times height now it has been established in literature and by science that this is how it is done so after some time we all accept that that is what we are going to use but if you realize that sometimes in life it's not everything that comes in a circle or it comes in a a triangle there are some OD shapes in in all shapes of of different actif In societ Like A Stone it might not have it not be round perfectly round or perfectly in a triangle format so how will you find the area of a stone or it doesn't fit one of the shapes that you want it means that you have to adapt different equations or different types of um areas that you have established in literature for example if if you have a rectangle and you you're looking for the area to be breath time height however if you have another shape it's not a rectangle but has some parts which looks like a rectangle what you can do is to divide it in different sections and find the each of the areas and then add them up so for each of the things you have to improvise you have to try to find a way of adapting the existing formal for finding the area of a rectangle to what you are trying to do in other words sometimes a person carrying out a research C either go from the theory and then use the theory adapt it or modify it to be able to explain or study the social phenomenon that sometimes the theories are not sufficient what the issue you trying to study there seems to be no theory that exist however there may be factors that can people have found in different types of research that could affect what you're trying to study for example there may not be one specific theory that explains unemployment or why somebody becomes an entrepreneur so one of the things that you can try to see is that you may read the literature and you find several factors out of the you may put it together and then develop what we call a conceptual framework and that conceptual framework can be developed from a review of the literature for example let me go back this is a conceptual framework on the impact of mobiles on microt trading there was no model like this in the literature this was a different model in the literature this was a different model in the literature this is a different model in the literature so what you see here is that the author then read and put them together to conceptualize how these variables should come together to to explain the social phenomenon of the impact of mobiles on microtrading so we call that one a conceptual framework now a conceptual framework is is usually suggested nobody you have not yet tested them so it's suggested whil theories have been observed and established empirically conceptual FR try to suggest how relationships will cre be created within a particular social phenomenon theorist will look at observed relationships among a particular set of factors to predict or explain something this will suggest but sometimes we can pick a theory adapt it and modify it and by time we modify it now does not it looks like something different so now becomes also conceptual either from a modified Theory or conceptual from a review of literature so you can either have a conceptual framework or a theoretical framework for your research but both of them form your research framework okay I'm going to show you some example let's say a theory is a set of General propositions used as principles of explanation understanding and prediction of apparent or observed relationships of set observe phenomenon so apparent relationship of set observe phenomenon every theory has been empirically tested and verified before we Ty as a theory and one interesting thing about theories is that they can either be shown the schematic form as a diagram or in a mathematical equation like pi r s like half based I'm sight good so from the childhood when we were in high school we have actually been exposed to theories of life but sometimes when you mention the word theory others may think that it's quite farfetch but it's something that we actually use in society to be able to understand how social systems work or how things work in the in the world so let's take this one example a research framework or or a theoretical framework now this is a theory of plan Behavior which was developed by aan in 1991 it talks about certain factors that can predict somebody's intention to perform a behavior and then the actual performance of the behavior he says that attitude towards the behavior the degree to which you have a good or a favorable attitude towards the behavior Can inform your intention to perform it then the subjective Norm the Norms in society that influences you it can peer influence it can be societal influence or if it can even be pressure coming from other PS or coming from other external reference systems for example you go to a school and everybody is using iPhone and you feel pressure to also buy an iPhone so you have got subjective Norms then you said we according to the theory attitude and subjective nor influence intention however there's another Factor called perceive behal control which can also influence intention by per Boral control means that your own assessment of the individual impediment or situational impediments that can influence or limit the performance the intention to perform the behavior or the performance of the behavior what do I mean by that let's take an example you want to go to sleep in a very nice hotel like the Four Seasons in the US or moving pick in Ghana you enjoy you have heard about them you want to go there and have a good time now so you have a favorable attitude towards that intention of going to the hotel because you have read about it on the internet reference people have even recommended so you are even happy about it number two subjective know it's likely that maybe a friend has slept in moving P before or visited moving pck hotel or had the wedding in moving pck hotel and has told you about it so now you are pressured by your friends or by your peers or it could also Al be that there's so much noise about the adverse on TV so you are kind of drawn to it so some societal influence you are drawn to it in going to mve imp pic to have a good time now if you go to mve imp pic whether you can spend one day two days 3 days 4 days or whether you can eat lunch buffet um evening um supper buffet or dinner buffet and spend the rest of the time having fun there for a week or two or three to a month depends on what is in your pocket is that not true depends on how much cash you may have be able to pay your ability for you to pay for that services that you're going to get from moving page so we say that perceive behal control are the situational impediment or individual impediment that can limit your intention to perform the behavior or even if you intend it can actually affect your performance yes you have intended to go to moving but how long can you stay in moving Pi one week this is will determine that now it's very interesting that you can relate the to this particular Theory because it's a theory it explains you see I didn't say attitude toward going to moveing pick in here the theor atude toward the behavior so it means that this Theory can be applied to different behavorial um phenomenon in society so why do some nurses use computer and some nurses don't use computers you could use a CH like this to maybe explain individual behaviors why do some um students like this saving in a particular bank and then avoid the other bank it could be the same thing so every type of behavior social behavior that has been observed this Theory can be able to give you some understanding about it and because you can apply it it means that it's it's an abstract form it doesn't have specifics that are are only defined for a particular Behavior it's in an abstract form so it can be applied to different scenarios that it and it helps you to understand plan Behavior good now be I also said the theory can be expressed as what an schematic form and then an equation this is an example of an equation this is a theory of rising action it is out of this that the theory of plan Behavior was built so you see that here we have interation is equal to or it's a function of a person's attitude plus a person's subjective Norm which the weights being put the derived weights being put there so in that in form is an equation and that equation can be have base times height which is the area of a triangle or bre time weight will give you the area of a rectangle or Pi R square will give you the area of a circle so you have different types of equations in which a theory can be expressed as now the other type of thing that we mentioned as a research framework is a research framework can also exist as a conceptual framework meaning that the current theories are not sufficient in explaining what you are trying to do so you read the literature and find some factors and put them together or you tend to extend or modify a theory so that now becomes adapted to your study that makes it conceptual so you are suggesting that this is how it to work now let's take an example this is a conceptual framework about factors which influ contribute or cause unemployment develop out the literature review someone is arguing that four variables lead to unemployment so you see H1 H2 H3 H4 these are hypothesis so you see that he's trying to emphasize here that low wages can lead to unemployment political instability lack of start capital and high interest rates so when he doing researches research will be framed by these questions all these are independent variables leading to one outcome a dependent variable so the ability for unemployment to occur is a function of low wages political instability that capital and what high interest ratees so that's how it's a factor based model factors leading to one particular outcome and it's conceptual he's developing outter literature he's here to test and prove it and after it's been tested and proved empirically for several times in several scenarios you can then be able to come up with maybe a theory of unemployment but that's a little bit far fish okay now another person can also build a conceptual framework on students visit to the mall student attitude to or visit to the mall what is he doing what is he doing here he's trying to modify or adapt the theory of plan Behavior to studing the behavior of going to the mall so what he has done here is that he has now enchanged the individual items about going to the mall with what with elements that try to or variables that try to explain behavior of students in going to the mall so he said knowledge about the mall is the first one peer influence and then income of the student in writing behavioral control write income of the student so it said knowledge per influence income will inform what intention but the ability to stay in the mo for a longer time will be what informed by income somehow he's also arguing that the knowledge about the mo will be mediated by age in fact it's supposed to be moderated if I'm right so maybe should come here now whichever way for this particular look like Med you can say that somehow there could be age can be a factor that can mediate the relationship between um in fact should be moderate so should moderate the relationship between knowledge and intention that means that people of a higher age May are more likely to be found the more or not which can be tested so you can say that age has an influence on the relationship between the knowledge about the mo and the intention and it's true one thing that you see in Ghana is quite a particular age group I always found on the mall esec especially during the vacations when the schools are on break you see a lot of Youth between 30 and 14 years old to about 18 years spending so much time at the mall so and an age group which is 60 you you barely see them in the mall so you can see that age has an influence on the knowledge about the mall or the intention to even go into the mall go to the mall so that's what can be somebody steuding now this just factors put together doesn't mean that they are actually working so he's he's suggesting them he may go to the mall and find out that for a particular Mall this mall is for the elderly and you may never find any youth there so there could be other outcomes that could come up based on this particular model but at least you can appreciate that this is a person trying to do a study on the Imp students visit to the mall so he has been able to come up with this conceptual framework good now conceptual Frameworks are in their form analytical schemes why why they try to they try to simplify religion to make it easier to discuss and analyze or research on so students going to the mall how can you break it down for people to understand I can break it down by trying to say that there could be factors that could lead to students going to the mall which are inter related the knowledge about the mall peer influence and income that's all now so they simply simplify Reality by selecting certain phenomenal phenomena or variables and suggesting set relationship between the suggesting you see a theory has observed or a theory talks about apparent relationship which have been observed however a conceptual framework talks about certain [Music] suggested okay so let's look at different types of conceptual Frameworks now the different types of constru framework can help you to even understand the different type of theor because a constru framework after a lot of research getting empirical grounding then becomes a theory in the future so a conceptual framework cause and effect cause and effect are usually characterized by factors that lead to a particular phenomenon so you see a set of factor that pointing to one outcome usually say causes and effect so we said that's a cause and effect framework or cause and effect model so this a factor based model is usually of cause and effect model there are some causes that are leading to a particular effect so sometimes from reading your research your literature you can actually develop a conal framework which is built out of factors leading to a particular effect or a cause and effect model causes leading to an effect which is very very simple and it's easy for students to be able to develop that within their or researchers a to develop that out of literary review and conception framework can sometime come in stages in the process means that there are steps stage one of faces phase one phase 2 phase three and the sequence can be linear or cyclical for example this is done by Dixon 1994 in his book in a book that she wrote about learning organizational learning and she talked about the organization learning cycle which talks about the fact that there are certain for steps that you if you want to be able to increase knowledge or disseminate knowledge in organizations you have generating of knowledge of information from different sources integrating the information within the organization context interpreting it and giving employees the ability to act on the information so these are the four steps that you see in going up and down out of it you has what call the theory of meaning structures it was used to modify it was modified to get this organization learning cycle now the theory of meaning structure says that there are several meanings in society or in any particular Community now there are private meanings that things that individuals like to keep for s and they will not share or they would like to share it only when they feel like they want to share it so that there are no threats around them or they may not share here but they may share in another place so they are private me they hold to themselves and then there is what we call um Collective meaning Collective meaning is what as a group we hold collectively so like minutes in a meeting a company can have minutes means that what we generally agree happened at the Mee the meeting that occur last week or last two weeks so you call them Collective meaning structures culture of an organization is a collective meaning structure as for this organization every Thursday we wear pink and that's our meaning structure our colors are gold and red those are meaning structur so they are part of it then according to the theory of meaning structures through which we build the organization learning cycle learning occurs when we put in measures to allow people to have confidence in sharing their private meaning or allow people to have confidence in challenging the collective so learning occurs in accessibility of meaning structures accessibility so when you make it accessible and how do you make it accessible through this four steps when you make more meaning accessible people can learn which is true I make my meaning accessible by giving you a book or this video for you to listen to so learning lies in the accessibility of what meaning or knowledge so according to the meaning structures the more you make learning um make meanings accessible to others learning can occur but for it to become accessible it means that you should be able to generate the information from different sources within your organization integrate it within the specific content should work it's not all the information that's relevant to somebody give them ability to interpret it because what a manager may see out of a report a subordinate may not see and then give them the ability to act on that meaning so we have generation integration interpreting and acting that helps to make meanings more accessible and this is what you is term as organizational learning cycle now that is a a very good um research framework which you can use now it's conceptual in nature he built it from the theor of structure but now it's a conceptional that others have been testing good so meaning um Dix postulated it through her book on um on organizational learning now this research framework which is also in stages stage one Mo adapt mobile phones stage two apply it to a particular activity stage three what benefits will you get stage four impact so you see is moving in phases phase one phase two phase three so we call it a stage based model so sometimes a person or a researcher can express a particular set of factors in society or trying to use them to predict a particular phenomenon in a stage wise form or a stepwise form that this is how they occur now sometimes others Bas based on hierarchy and one of the most popular ones is musos hierarchy of needs which some of us have known about since when high school physiological safety belonging self-esteem and self actualization different phases of um different phases of needs that at every point in time in an organization not everybody will be at the same level and we can have evenin a a group we can all have we may working together but we all have different levels of needs or different meanings that we may bring to our what we may say as being important to us so for someone within the group he's all he's looking for belonging but another person within the same group is looking for self-esteem so all these different needs may as employees can influence their motivation to work in an an office context so if if you as a manager are not able to appreciate that all these employees have different sets of needs what you think is that because you think that everybody needs safety you may increase salary and might it may not still give somebody belonging I hope you understand what I'm trying to say maybe the person who is getting belonging needs more time off to go and get married and because of the nature of the work you not giving that time off so no matter how much happy he is no matter how much money you are paying the person TR letting the person travel over the country his relationship is in trouble and he's not able to build a good relationship with his family or with his fiance and because of that he's still not happy or satisfied and he's still putting a reation letter however for another person it's about self-esteem he wants more responsibility to feel empowered in his workplace and that person is about self-actualization he has achieved self-esteem he want to feel actualized he wants to go beyond the company and start imparting knowledge outside the company so that he can feel actual ized now everybody has different sets of needs at every point of time in their life so at one point of time in your life you can be a selfesteem but another point in time in in your life you could actually come down to safety especially a person like a father who has a newborn maybe think more about safety concern on anytime he's thinking leaving office he's thinking about the safety of his child yeah so at that time the child has been born maybe first three months so much much of his needs are on Safety and Security and then Freedom From Fear that stability that he can so that he can have some confidence in working when it comes to work and that person may be thinking of something else for example A lady could go to in some African contest a lady can go and achieve all her master's education finish it and because she's not married she still doesn't have self-esteem she may have two degrees but still doesn't have self-esteem because in that Community self-esteem is built by being married not being having a degree and a different Community it may be about having a degree so you can have 10 children and you still don't feel have any self-esteem you still think you have to go back to school to build some self-esteem for yourself good so mus hierarchy of needs helps us to understand that even in an organizational context employees could have different set of needs and it's good for the a supervisor to or a manager to identify these needs and address them in appropriate ways now maps and coordinates sometimes conceptual Frameworks may be shown as maps and coordinates which shows how they relate together a very common example is the demand and Supply C which you all know about in economics so quantity is here and price is here and you have a equilibrium at this point you have a demand and supply curve which is used to understand um how Market systems work so this is one way and you can see there's the XY AIS and then there there's a y AIS so at least you can appreciate that there's some maps and coordinates working here okay then you can also have other conceptual Frameworks that are built on Gap analysis Gap analysis try to show a discrepancy between one thing and the other good so you may see like this particular model is called the squ model which is used in marketing a lot the squ model is a service quality model it's a multi item skill developed to assess customer perceptions of service quality now it talks about the fact that um service quality is a discrepancy between a customer's expectation for a service offering and the customer's perceptions of the service he receives so what you expected and what you receive the gap between it helps you to be able to establish the service quality of that particular service that you are evaluating and it has a number of variables and components postulated in lric to be able to study every type of service some of this this particular conceptual model has been applied to Med medical in the health sector has been applied in business has been applied even in teaching and education for all of them for each of them they have different variables that they you can come up with good service quality is evaluated by answering a number of questions about your expectations and about what you received good now sometimes there are other forms of quality that are discussed in literature there technical quality and functional Quality Technical quality means that the technical quality of the item that you actually receive for for example you go to a restaurant and you given a meal to eat good now the functional quality may have to do with the packaging of the food and the function of the service that has been given to you so you look at it oh this is interesting it was served well and a neat plate there was um it was served on time and and what you requested was what was brought to you what I was was given to you and the waiter was cous but if you start eating and the food is not good the technical quality has failed I hope you understand what I'm trying to say so in Ghana there's a joke that talks that goes on that you can see sometimes on Sunday afternoons by you see some um eating joints or or what we may call local restaurants we call them chop bars in Ghana and some of them are Su treated by unsanitary places by a G an open G and the place may have a stinking smell but you see people with uh Range Rovers BMWs Benes have packed there and they are going to eat in this particular joint and you ask why are they going to still eat there and they'll tell you that the functional quality may not be good but the technical quality of the food there is very good so they go there for the technical quality not for the functional quality of the service anyway good now what are the building blocks of a t every theory has components so let's go into Theory a little bit we talk about conceptual Frameworks let's talk about theories now we said that a theory is an organized or co coherent and systematic articulation of set of issues communicated as a meaningful whole it means that there are certain components that come together to explain the phenomenon and the so that the phenomenon will better understood in society or can be predicted now theories provide complex and comprehensive conceptual understanding of things that cannot be pinned down for example how societies work how organizations operate or why people interact or act in a particular way you don't know why people go to the mall and behave in a particular way but by showing you the theory of plan Behavior you can use it to be able to understand why they acting that way that's what we mean by that now every theory that we use in research whether um it help it helps us to be able to design a research question if the same thing applies to conceptual Frameworks they both help us to be able to design a research question or select which particular data you need to collect we I showed an example of unemployment and I mentioned that low wages so if you are trying to study on unemployment you can ask questions on low wages or political instability good helps you to interpret the data and propose explanations of causes of influences of the phenomenon you are studying so without a theory sometimes in research you are open to too many ifs and possibilities because you didn't get get a the to guide you to frame what you are doing so that you can have the limits of the research because if you are studying an issue like poverty and you just jump into the field there could be so many dimensions of issue multiple factors that could influence poverty and even depends on which discipline you are originating from an economist definition of what causes poverty may could be something different from what a social scientist may say or or an anthropologist may say so we always have to have an open mind that as we are doing research let us ask our what discipline are you coming from and from what theoretical lens are you using to evaluate the issue good now every Theory to be able to be applicable to other issues of life and explain them has a number of components the first thing is that a theory always has abstract Concepts specified at a high level abstraction chosen to specifically explain the phenomenon of interest you say here the ter of plan Behavior we didn't say attitude towards going to the mall we attit toward a behavior so an abstract concept like attitude per behavioral control like intention like subjective Norm without the specifics in them they Li at the abstract when it's more abstract you can make it more you can apply to different scenarios to be able to make meaning good every theory has propositions means that associations between the constructs so the theorist don't just leave the construct just lying there they have associations attitude can influence intention subjective Norm can influence intention perceive pral control can influence intention but can also influence the actual performance of the behavior so there are relationships you see because theor should talk about the factors or the variables or conscious and how they interact or relate in explaining the phenomenon you are studying so every theory has relationships in them and theorist have logic they a relationship should make sense they should explain something logic logic acts as a group that connect the theoretical constructs and provides meaning and relevance to the relationships between these constructs they should act as a group come together to explain something so a theorist should seek to explain something so we have the the of plan Behavior seeks to predict a person's Behavior I hope you understand what I'm trying to say so theorist should seek to explain something when we say um area of a triangle is p is half base times height it means that the half of the base times the height come together to make what the area of the triangle so they should seek to explain something otherwise the fact the constructs are there the propositions are there but what are they leading to and the last part is that all theories are constrained by assumptions and have about values time and space and boundary conditions that govern where the the can be applied and where it cannot be applied a theory canot EXP exp everything the the of plan Behavior canot explain area of a circle so a theorist always theorist always have boundaries where we apply them and at what level we apply them the of plan behavior is for understanding individuals not for understanding a nation you can't use it to study a nation but it can use to study a president and who is an individual it can you can use it to understand individual Behavior not that of a Nation so the act at different levels and they have assumptions theor assume that this and this is like this before this will work so whenever you applying a theory you have to understand the boundary conditions of the theory the assumptions of the theory so that you can be able to look at the logic and the propositions these propositions are sometimes called hypothesis because you see me putting H1 H2 and H3 another thing that is not written here but also important is that theories are parimon now when say Pimon means that they explain a lot of things with few things so most of the time the variables within your theory are very few but they're trying to explain a very large concept they don't try to put so many variables in it becomes confusing so you try to use a few things to explain a very big thing okay so let's see examples of theories in a where can we find theories there are different databases of theories so you can use use this URLs ww. tinyurl.com buus theories or/ Finance theories you could also ask your supervisor and it can give you a direction to where you can find theories but let's look at examples in economics there are different types of theories arage a um pricing Theory rational Choice Theory prospect theory Garden model so most of them some Finance students have come across them then you also have modern portfolio Theory which propos how rational investors should use diversification in order to optimize their portfolios discussing how a risky asset should be apprised and then there are certain types of theories which are comes from things of school of thoughts economic Cycles or systems growth and economic systems as you see there for example you may find out that you have classical Marxism casian new classical synthesis Australian school this are School of to explain economic systems for example you cannot go you see I said theorist act at different levels so when you look at a system of thinking or economic system like capitalism I cannot go and say you are capitalism you as an individual can be say you are you exhibit capitalism nature so you have got um you're capitalist but you as an indivual cannot become capitalism capitalism is more of an economic system but you can being a person in it and practicing what the economic system requires you to do then we can say you are a capitalist hope you get the two different things so you got growth economic cycle schools of thought economic systems then global trade Choice and then markets and then tax and spend policies there are so much of them for economics and finance then when you go to accounting there are different types of approaches that have been used in accounting Theory events approach behavoral approach human information processing approach predictive approach positive approach and quite a number of accounting students will come across them throughout their cost of work or throughout their learning that an example is financial statements reporting there are two approaches there's a value approach and events approach each of them have a different different definition of what the relevance of an income statement for example in the value approach an income statement is perceived as an indicator of financial performance of The Firm for a given period however in the events approach an income statement is seen as a direct communication of operating invest that occur over a different a given period so these are different approaches to and means that they may in terms of evaluating or or doing your financial statements reporting person from value value approach may have a different view than a person from invents approach for example in another words an event relevance an event relevance rather than it output on cash flow determines reporting of an event in the statement of cash flow for an event approach so the event relevance if it's not relevant may not show on the financial statement not more about its output or impact on the cash flow then there is a mon normative events theory of accounting which which is also quite different and quite a number of accounting students also come across it now I'm just giving overviews so I'll mention other ones in marketing too marketing has got hierarchy of effect Theory that's a series of steps a consumer goes through so you see this [Music] stepwise and it's based on a hierarchy so hierarchal you see think fil do you have awareness knowledge liking preference conviction and PES so what what steps do what hierarchy of steps do a consumer go to order to make a choice or a decision to purchase a product this is what the theory says then there's a self model which we talked about earlier marketing also tends to borrow from other forms of management there's structure conduct performance model efficiency perspective pest models which are in Strategic Management can also sometimes apply to marketing the resource based view Strategic Management also applied to marketing intution Theory from social systems also appli to marketing see the marketing borrows from everybody then the generational Theory I think some of you have heard about Generation Y Generation X this called it comes from generational Theory which holds consumers the the theory holds that consumers born of the same generation defined as a 20e period have common attitudes and behaviors like we say there's a millenials those born after 1979 then there's Generation Y the Baby Boomers then Generation X good now most of the generational Theory are done by type of research are done by pure research which if you go to their website you can find much more about what they say concerning the different generation per what social phenomenon they are studying then there's the almighty or very popular game theory which is a mathematical concept actually that analyzes how strategic interactions between individuals or agents produce outcome based on agent choices and this is actually applied in finance too and other forms of um other other knowledge disciplines within management marketing too sometimes can have theories which are more specific to a particular knowledge area so there are theories in consumer Behavior there are theories in relationship marketing like commitment TR Theory there are theories in corporate social responsibility like the stakeholder Theory can been used to study Corporate social responsibility a lot and there's service marketing self call model and there's entrepreneurship which are the theory the theories of Entrepreneurship like necessity is something that is there and then um you can also have theorist in management theorist in management most of the popular ones are musos the theories of M motivation terorism which talks about how managers should break down production to Ser or small tax so that people can enjoy what they do and can be given some sense of relevance in what they do so they put for Taylor put forward the idea that workers are motivated mainly by pay so how does it inform how you you do your job design then there is HB HB talks about how do we influence or motivate employees and he look looks at two factors the motivators and the hygiene factors that there are certain Factor the business could do or introduce to motivate employees to work harder so motivators are concerned with the actual job itself for instance how interesting the work and how much opportunity is given for extra responsibility recognition and promotion Hing factors are more about the factors that surround the work that have you been giv a computer laptop you're laughing have you been giving reasonable pay so irres of the responsibility you giv to the person if you not giv the conducive environment to work he may not be happy so there are two Factor model for um looking at J and for motivation according to HB then you also have okay HB talks about motivating employees by adopting a democratic approach to management and by improving the nature and content of actual job two certain methods some of them are job enlargement job Arrangement and empowerment okay then there's maso School of school of um needs where he talks about the physiological needs of employees and that are five levels of human needs which needs to be fulfilled at work a business should therefore offer different incentive to workers in order to help them fulfill each need in turn and in turn and progress up the hierarchy managers should recognize that workers are not all motivated the same way I emphasized that earlier so this is it we talked about it earlier then in public adist administration we have new public management which talks about ways of modernizing the public sector so and some of them talks about the fact that some of the tools or some of the hypothesis within public new public management school of thought talks about the fact that should Market orientation of management trying to make sure that the public sector now become a place that is much more customer Centric and decentralized not that large one big item that trying to do everything by itself so much of the characteristics of mpm is that you see that in public sectors that have ad mpm you see budget cuts accountability for performance privatization um user charges separation of politics from Administration and if you reflect back in Ghana we have gone through that especially when we're doing a lot of diversication see privatization being there and even some people even argue the argue about introduction of Technology as ways or means of achieving the ideals of new public management good but this is in the those who are doing public administration Information Systems to has an number of different theories but it tends to originate from social science and other disciplines for example you have the theory of of plan Behavior which we borrow from social science you have technology acceptance model that talks about the fact that there are two things that help to inform a person's acceptance of a technology the perceive ease of use and the perceive usefulness we can inform a person's attitude to perform a particular adop a particular technology then there diffusion of innovation transaction cost theory which I've actually used myself and then from the Strategic perspective you have the resource based Theory now there every Theory acts at different levels we mentioned that there's the micro level the Meso Level and the macro level the micro level meaning that at the L level you have individual so some theories are more on a micro level like the theory of plan Behavior looks at individual Behavior then you have the mesal level that looks at organizations theories of organizations for example one of the interesting things interesting ones that resour based theory of a firm that looks at how organizations gain Competitive Edge or advantage in their business sector or in their Market by by use of their resources so the resource based theory is one of the interesting ones that talks about how firms gain competition by the use of their resources so vable resources and then you also have rare resources and then resources which are imperfectly mobile they cannot be substituted and they cannot be perfectly copied good then you have got macro level theories which looks at more of the national level or the country level or economic systems like modernization Theory which look at Society you cannot use modernization Theory to study organization it can study a society so whenever you applying a theory ask yourself are the constructs there even a mod if the of own conceptual model ask yourself are the constructs there are the propositions there the hypothesis or the relationship between the constructs there does it have a logic something that PS all these elements together what are the boundary consumption what assumptions have you made for that particular conceptual framework or what are the assumptions of that particular Theory at what level are you applying it at the micro level mesro level or macro level if your research question is about factors that influence child trafficking evidence from victims then you know you're actually looking at individual level so you have to know what kind of factors that you you point out there could be interaction of different factors that can be inform what is happening in the at the lower level but you have to be very careful in the choice of your factors so that's how the level of the theory at what level does the theory work micro level mesro level and macro level good so we have come to the end of theories and research Frameworks theories and conceptual Frameworks which together comes out to become a research framework in summary we mentioned that research Frameworks are frame research they give us the variables for which we can use to explain or study our social phenomenon and then it helps us to to come up with our research questions and inform our resarch design you can either use a theory or you can use a conceptual framework or you can even modify a the to even form a conceptual framework means that your conceptual framework can be built out of a theory or can be built out of literature or a combination or maybe both or you can pick a theory as is and use in your research but whatever you are doing each of them so for because whether it's conceptual or thetical they all framing your research so we call them a research framework so don't be so much confused some can confuse where's your research framework where's your conal framework where is this but sometimes you need to understand what he actually asking for it's your research framework is asking for so understand that for every research you are doing try to find out what research framework is guiding them some research are done with that research framework like exploration research can start without any research framework but just Guided by questions and then to step in it's not necessarily wrong but you should always understand what is the objective of research what is a research seeking to contribute and why is the person using this framework why is what why is he not using this other framework and whenever you're applying a research framework whether theoretically or conceptually ask yourself does it really answer the research question does it really have the variables that address the research question if not you change them or introduce those necessary variables to address the research question thank you for listen list to me and I hope you have enjoyed the session the next time we meet we'll talk about methodology