Report R3.11 Experiences of Doctoral Research at IIT, Delhi Seminar Leader: Meenakshi Khemka, Globsyn Business School, Kolkata meenakshichy[at]yahoo.co.in Doctoral research often leads one to hitherto unexplored areas and thus calls for definition of new concepts. The seminar leader presented her doctoral work and threw light on the various facets of her research. Under the guidance of Prof.Vinayshil Gautam, she attempted to understand the growth of organisations from a perspective called "longitudinal thinking." Organisations pass through various phases in the process of their development. Each phase is defined by the organisation's structure, processes, and various growth factors. Identifying the distinct phases in the evolution process helps us understand the organisational dynamics. Every phase begins with a set of givens. The present state of an organisation is an accumulated product of the experiences of the past states. The process of identifying and understanding the givens is defined as longitudinal thinking. A study of the historical data related to an organisation's growth gives insight into its legacy factors and structural stability. This also helps to locate the factors which contributed to the continuity and discontinuity in its growth path. Developing a research approach to define and measure a new concept calls for diligence. A judicious use of quantitative and qualitative methods available would have to be made. The variables constituting organisational structure were taken to be "bureaucracy," "span of control," "job satisfaction," and "work design." The variables defining organisational process were defined as "organisational policies," "information processing factors" (such as "environment scanning," "freedom of working," and "communication"), "knowledge management," "change management," and "organisational factors" (such as "top management support"). The variables defining growth were taken to be "technology" and "innovative capabilitiy." In order to understand the growth of an organisation from this new persective the seminar leader had selected two organisations from the pharmaceutical industry. Since the study involved the collection and analysis of data corresponding to the organisational structure, processes, and growth over a period of time, the questionnaire method was used to study the present state of the organisation and the interview method to understand the past phases of the organisation. Developing a questionnaire to measure the constructs of organisational structure, processes, and growth using the concept of longitudinal thinking was difficult. A study of information available with the organisation in the form of newsletters and annual reports helped to frame the questions. Collection of data from the personnel who were spread across the country was an uphill task that took about a year. The data collected were analysed using SPSS. A content analysis of the data collected from the interviews was done using ATLAS.ti 4.1 (http://www.atlasti.com/index.php). From the analysis it was evident that the structural variables, autonomy of work design, and job satisfaction had a significant correlation with the dependent variables, innovation and R&D. From the analysis of the variables related to organisational processes, the organisational policies and top management support had a significant correlation with innovation and R&D. The findings from the qualitative analysis were found to corroborate the findings from the quantitative analysis. It was thus concluded that the elements of continuity for the organisational structure were autonomy and job satisfaction, and the elements for continuity of the organisational processes were organisational policies, environmental scanning, and top management support. The research lent support to the idea that an organisation's growth depend on its ability to understand and leverage the strengths of its heritage. Reported by C. D. Kuruvilla, with inputs from Jacob D. Vakkayil and A. G. Menon (15 March 2006). Copyleft Xavier Institute of Management, Xavier Square, Bhubaneswar 751013, India Research World (ISSN 0974-2379) http://www1.ximb.ac.in/RW.nsf/pages/Home |
