Qualitative Research Plan For Woolworths

Question

Task: In this Journal entry, you are asked to apply the simple research model set out in Module 1 to a research article. Please perform the following tasks for the identified research article (see below):
1. Apply the simple research model to the research article listed below by answering the following four questions: i) where are we now? ii) where are we going? iii) how do we get there? iv) how do we know when we have finished?
2. What challenges did you experience in undertaking this activity? You will need to create a private journal entry using the journal tool available from the subject interact site. Your journal should be at least 800 words in length, but no more! You may use a table to summarize your answer; but it is also important that you provide a narrative discussion using sentences and paragraphs.
Apply the simple research model to the following article:
Adams, P., Farrell, M., Dalgarno, B. and Oczkowski, E. (2017). Household Adoption of Technology: The Case of High-Speed Broadband Adoption in Australia. Technology in Society, 49, 37-47.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X15300191
Feedback on this assessment item will be provided by way of a reply to your journal posted by the lecturer. The mark for this journal activity will be available on Gradebook.

Answer

Introduction
This assignment presents a qualitative research plan by choosing appropriate business problems in the company. In this case, Woolworths is selected as the concerned workplace at which high-stress working environment is creating major problems among staff members and the management. This business problem can help to develop decision-making capacity. The aim of this assignment is to identify qualitative research plan that can precisely facilitate suitable research planning.

Providing background data of the company
In 1924, Percy Christmas started a small company known as Woolworths. This company delivers various types of products among various numbers of people at an affordable price. By gaining a huge support from customers, the company started to expand its business operations in 1927. Woolworths delivers a better form of quality control on products or service delivered among customers (Govender, 2017). The company has opened an initial form of sponsorship and regional centre for shopping to tap a large number of customers. Woolworths has around 990 stores across Australia, which relies on 110,000 staff members to support office related work and carry out distribution centres by better convenience, values and range. Woolworths tries to meet the demands of customers by delivering suitable quality products from the stores. The company tries to get fresh products directly from farmers and growers present in regions of Australia, making it easy for the company to have these products conveniently reach its consumers. Customers can purchase products from both online and offline platforms of the company.

 Identification of business problems
In the case of qualitative research plan, a high-stress working environment is one of the; primary business problems faced by the company Woolworth. Such business problems need to be study properly so that better decision-making capabilities can be developed among staff members. The excess amount of stress level in the working environment creates major issues and hampers the business performance. Workplace stress creates new types of challenges among the staff members and management. At Woolworths, there is always a high demand for better quality products by customers (Humayun, 2016). This kind of stress creates various other problems in the company, such as lack of required services or inefficiency to meet the demands of consumers. This high-stress in working environment develops pressure among staff members. There will be an excessive amount of pressure developing from work on every employee with a high optimum level. This business problem in the workplace of Woolworths can able to make a better form of decisions for reducing the excess amount of stress level developing among staff members (Flax, Bick & Abratt, 2016).

Brief literature review
Effects of a working environment, job satisfaction, stress on staff members turnover
As opined by Kurniawaty, Ramly and Ramlawati (2019), the presence of appropriate leadership style helps to reduce working stress that helps employees to meet set targets easily. The stress level from working environment in a company can create uncomfortable conditions or tensions among staff members. A suitable working environment can help divert excess stress levels among the staff members in the workplace. The excess amount of stress level leads to negative impacts on staff members, resulting in lower job satisfaction on that particular allocated work. The readings of Tongchaiprasit and Ariyabuddhiphongs (2016) discuss that excess stress levels cause various negative impacts in the company, one of them being low work performance caused by workplace stress. The high stress level might occur among staff members that can be developed from pressure generated by leader at the time of achieving of targets. The high-stress from working environment creates pressure in mental state of employee at the time of working in the firm. The working stress creates pressure that can be experienced among staff members at the time of facing particular allocated work. The management of company needs to develop different form of ideas that helps to reduce this high-stress generated from working environment.

Job stress, support received from co-workers and work-life balance
A study by Duong, Hussain & Subramaniam (2020) considered in the qualitative research plan study, sheds lights on how women are increasingly facing stress from both areas of life, which includes organizational stress and family stress. In a multinational company, female staff members are constantly facing problems in striking work-life balance. Excessive job stress needs to be conceptualized regarding the suitable form of a state upon which work can be easily relate with certain form of variables that lie among individual to make the change on physiological conditions. The working pressure in an organization is a regular form of problems that can occur at any times. As opined by Bradley, McDonald and Cox (2019), staff members cannot avoid experiencing this excessive amount of job stress arising in the company. The stress of work can be determined through unfriendly form of responses developing among individuals. The job stress might arise from various sources, which includes inappropriate form of working relationships, improper equipment or inadequate tools, job insecurity, problems managing balancing work and limited chances of career advancement (Kurniawaty, Ramly & Ramlawati, 2019).

Influence arising from job satisfaction, working environment, compensation and individual characteristics
Riyadi (2019) suggests a high form of influence from job satisfaction that helps to reduce stress level and increase staff performance. The company’s structure lies with a better form of supervision that helps to increase the performance of employees and improve working standards, which helps to run properly in the company with enhanced employee’s duty having better efforts in working. A suitable workplace environment and increased job satisfaction help to create better results through high performance for the company. Compensation benefits for performance, suitable working environment and job satisfaction helps to reduce stress amongst employees. High-stress levels are often a result of challenges in the working environment such as time management, competition of characteristics and greater/complex demands regarding particular products or services from working environment. The excess form of job stress introduces a partial type of mediation between influence of job satisfaction and staff member compensation on performance. As stated by George & Zakkariya (2018), high stress impacts the mental state of staff members as it reduces concentration level when focusing on and completing different tasks. The management of the company needs to consider factors of excessive job stress factors among staff members.

Effects among staff members from working stress, working values and work satisfaction
As refereed by Pi, Chiu and Lin (2016), work stress can affect organizational, personal and job-related factors. Considering the qualitative research plan, it can be stated that the high stress levels at the workplace might be due to inefficiency in allocating tasks that can result in unpleasant types of working conditions. Further, stress results in certain kinds of reactions and responses that lead to other experiences affecting behavioural, physical and emotional or psychological conditions. Stress may result from the vaius problems that employees face at the workplace, which eventually causes subjective feelings that go beyond an individual’ beliefs and capacity. The staff members can directly cause physiological and behavioural changes. The working stress creates negative impacts among individual and deleterious effects on organization economic conditions. Hassan, Bin Nadeem and Akhter (2016) mention that cost indulges in stress can become enormous, with reduced rate of production and performance, increased accidents and lost time becomes important factors in the work place. Lack of commitment among staff members becomes a negative consequence of workplace stress levels.

Quality analysis of job stress and work-life
Work stress sometimes becomes associated with a better form of understanding in stress factors that might be occurred in the work environment (Budiarti & Setiawan 2018). Stress results in dynamic conditions and negative consequences for professionals. The job stress is associated by understanding stress that might occur in the working environment on interaction process between staff members and work. Stress is often said as dynamic conditions upon which an individual is faced with obstacles, opportunity and desirable things. The job stress can easily affect employee’s working performance towards the company. When staff member have excess stress levels, then motivation of work becomes low and affect working performance. As referred by Kaffashpoor, Navabi Zand and Hosseini (2018) job stress is formed as an emotional state among employees who becomes influence regarding various factors. These factors includes with workload, individual conflict factors, working hours and fulfilment of work.

Defining of research questions
The research questions based on the qualitative research plan illustrate the areas upon which the research work will be based. Based on identified business problems, the following research questions have been formulated:

• How high-stress is creating workplace problems in the Woolworths Company?
• What happens to the mental conditions of staff members after being affected by high-stress in the workplace?
• What is the reason behind increasing stress levels in the workplace?

Identifying qualitative research plan
Qualitative research plan provide a suitable methodology to gather and present non-numerical data and seek a better form of interpretation. Qualitative research plan include in-depth interviews, open-ended survey process, observations and oral history, focusing on groups as well as contents analysis (Hassan, Bin Nadeem & Akhter, 2016)

From the above, survey and in-depth interviews are found to be the most effective for this research on qualitative research plan. Surveys and in-depth interviews will help to address the identified issues that include in the high-stress working environment. In-depth interviews will be conducted among Woolworth’s staff members by developing a standard set of questions (Snelson, 2019). Another type of qualitative research plan, i.e. open-ended survey process will be conducted among managers and the higher authority of Woolworths. The open-ended survey process will comprise of a set of questions developed by the researcher regarding the problems being faced in a stressful working environment.

Can you developing a qualitative research plan?
The qualitative research plan lies with certain steps that includes with types of issues, which needs to be explored. In this case, high-stress in working environment is the major issue in the company of Woolworth that need to be explored. This faced problem can be solved by conducting interview process. Interview guide can prepare in-depth interview process. The interview guide can be prepared by listing of appropriate questions that need to be asked among participants through interview process. The order of questions and level of degree might vary with conducted interview process. The researcher needs to prepare an interview guide that helps to allow entire conversation to carry out naturally. This delivers opportunity among researcher to go off-script and make additional questions among participants to gain greater form of details in responses. There is a necessity to think critically on certain points that helps participants to address related questions (Duran & Jones, 2019).

There will be a set of five questions developed by the researcher and asked by interviewer among the three staff members regarding the high-stress in the working environment.

A sample size of 20 Woolworth staff members will be selected for interview and 5 managers for survey process. The selection of participants will be based on following:

1. Step 1: There is a necessity to develop a list regarding the participant's characteristics, which include age, income, religion, gender and geographical regions.
2. Step 2: An identifying sample that meets the given criteria is required, which works with a sample form of characteristics on based target.
3. Step 3: The interview and survey process can be carried out in locations near to Woolworth stores.
4. Step 4: The participants need to deliver appropriate answer from delivers questions from interview guide.
5. Step 5: Proper way of co with necessary people for giving suggestions on participants that can easily fit on required profile.
6. Step 6: There is a necessity to the refining of the sample that can able to eliminate from results or research work carried out by participants.

The collected data can be analysed by defining on problem-generated questions, setting up of a clear form of measurement priorities that helps to decide on what needs to be measured and the selected process based on which data will be measured. Data analysis can be conducted through the collecting of necessary information through interviews and surveys. Another important aspect lies in analysing of data that can be through generated interview transcripts or survey results. Appropriate tools and software can be used for data analysis like Visio, Stata and Minitab that facilitates statistical data analysis. Data interpretation will be done by focussing on key areas that can be easily considered on formulated questions. The data analysis helps to make decisions on behaviour prediction and consumer trends. This help to increase profitability of business and drive effective form of decision-making. The data analysis helps company to make informed decisions at the time of running of business successfully. This delivers better areas of information that helps to cope up high-stress working environment faced in Woolworths (Kyngäs, 2020). 

Ethical considerations in qualitative research plan needs to be carried out by gaining suitable consent of participants, protecting suitable form of identity and maintain anonymity. Permission of participants needs to be taken by researcher so that ethics can be maintained properly. The suitable form of answer can be easily achieved from the participants that help to make better decision to mitigate this issue. The researcher also needs to focus on maintaining anonymity of selected respondents. The entire qualitative research plan needs to be followed with ethics that helps to promote on research aims for expanding knowledge. This knowledge helps to reduce faced problems by the organization. The researcher needs to focus on following appropriate Codes of Ethics. The proper permission needs to be taken and make respondents inform regarding in-depth interview process for selected 30 staff members of Woolworths..The interview process conducted by researcher helps to understand the exact cause of problems from high-stress working environment in the firm of Woolworths. The suitable form of answer can be easily achieved from the participants that help to make better decision to mitigate this issue (Hassan, Bin Nadeem and Akhter , 2016).

The qualitative research plan might lie in following ethical consideration that delivers important areas in the research work. The research participants might not be subjected to harm in any ways. There is a necessity to give priority and respect for the participants. The proper form of protection in research participants privacy needs to be ensured by researcher. The entire research work is carried out by maintaining integrity and ethical nature of conducted survey and interview process. The researcher has arranged proper questionnaires for the interview and survey process so that research integrity can be maintained. Relevant information must be implemented for the research to increase its accuracy and usefulness. All respondents need to participate in both processes by maintaining ethics. The researcher will gather information through primary as well as secondary methods by maintaining research ethics properly (Thomas, 2017).

Conclusion
It has been concluded that this qualitative research plan helps to make better decisions in the company of Woolworths by reducing the problem that is high-stress in working environment. The in-depth interview and survey process will help the management to take appropriate action for reducing stress from working environment. The interview and survey process needs to be maintained properly by following ethical rules and considerations. However, this will help company to reduce faced issues from high-stress of working environment in the firm of Woolworths.

References
Bradley, L., McDonald, P., & Cox, S. (2019). The critical role of co-worker involvement: An extended measure of the workplace environment to support work–life balance. Journal of Management & Organization, 1-22.

Budiarti, I., & Setiawan, D. (2018, November). Quality Analysis of Work Life and Job Stress in Effect on The Performance of Employees. Qualitative research plan In International Conference on Business, Economic, Social Science and Humanities (ICOBEST 2018). Atlantis Press.

Duong, M. T., Hussain, I. A., & Subramaniam, A. (2020). Job Stress, Co-Worker Support, Role Expectation Conflict and Work-Life Balance Among Working Women: A Quantitative study on Multinational Companies in Vietnam.

Duran, A., & Jones, S. R. (2019). Using intersectionality in qualitative research on college student identity development: Considerations, tensions, and possibilities. Journal of College Student Development, 60(4), 455-471.

Flax, J., Bick, G., & Abratt, R. (2016). The perceptions of supplier-buyer relations and its affect on the corporate brand. Journal of Brand Management, 23(1), 22-37.

George, E., & Zakkariya, K. A. (2018). Job Satisfaction and Job-Related Stress. In Psychological Empowerment and Job Satisfaction in the Banking Sector (pp. 87-126). Palgrave Pivot, Cham.

Govender, S. (2017). How social media can be used to engage and interact with consumers in the retail industry: an analysis on Woolworths' online strategies (Doctoral dissertation, The IIE).

Hassan, M., Bin Nadeem, A., & Akhter, A. (2016). Impact of workplace spirituality on job satisfaction: Mediating effect of trust. Qualitative research plan Cogent Business & Management, 3(1), 1189808.

Humayun, S. H. (2016). Merchandising operation of Woolworths Global Sourcing.

Kaffashpoor, A., Navabi Zand, K., & Hosseini, S. H. (2018). The Effect of Psychological Capital on Quality of Work life given the Modifying Role of Job Stress. Journal of Patient Safety and Quality Improvement.

Kurniawaty, K., Ramly, M., & Ramlawati, R. (2019). The effect of work environment, stress, and job satisfaction on employee turnover intention. Management Science Letters, 9(6), 877-886.

Kyngäs, H. (2020). Qualitative Research and Content Analysis. In The Application of Content Analysis in Nursing Science Research (pp. 3-11). Springer, Cham.

Pi, C. T., Chiu, S. K., & Lin, J. Y. (2016). Effect of Employee Work Stress, Work Satisfaction and Work Values on Organizational Commitment. Business & Entrepreneurship Journal, 5(1), 1-3.

Riyadi, S. (2019). The Influence of Job Satisfaction, Work Environment, Individual Characteristics and Compensation toward Job Stress and Employee Performance. International Review of Management and Marketing, 9(3), 93.

Snelson, C. (2019). Teaching Qualitative Research Methods Online: A Scoping Review of the Literature. The Qualitative Report, 24(11), 2799-2814.

Thomas, D. R. (2017). Feedback from research participants: are member checks useful in qualitative research?. Qualitative research plan Qualitative Research in Psychology, 14(1), 23-41.

Tongchaiprasit, P., & Ariyabuddhiphongs, V. (2016). Creativity and turnover intention among hotel chefs: The mediating effects of job satisfaction and job stress. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 55, 33-40.