This chapter presents the research framework and procedure applied in this study, followed by the most appropriate research design to test the research hypotheses. The research design contains the research approach, data collection method, research sample, survey design, and data analyzing methods. Eventually, the summary of the selected research approaches of this study was introduced briefly to readers in Table 3.2.
Research Framework
This research framework was derived from a review of the previous competency models and studies that have been done in HR field, and with the generous advice and guidance from two professors at IHRD program. Following the model (Figure 3.1) depicts the framework of this research developed in order to reveal current competencies of HR professionals and their employees’ perceived effectiveness in the private sector in Mongolia. While HR managers evaluated their competencies themselves, their overall effectiveness was rated by three employees in their organizations through how they deliver HR services, play different HR roles, and make contributions to an organization.
Furthermore, this study also intended to reveal how two different types of stressors at work influence the performance and outcomes of HR managers. In practice, HR professionals seem to be abandoned to get the attention of top management because the feature and scope of their job require them to take care of each employee in organizations, not themselves. Also, they directly or indirectly link to any positive and negative incidents happen in organizations regarding workforce involvement. Probably, this type of working environment itself can create various kinds of work-related stresses which may affect the productivity of HR managers differently. Based on the above concept in mind, the researcher purposed as the independent variable of this research model is HR competencies whereas the dependent variable is HR effectiveness. Challenge and Hindrance stressors are the moderators on the relationship between HR competencies and HR effectiveness.
35 Figure 3.1. Research framework
Research Approach
Quantitative Research
Researchers in the social science can use two approaches to examine or build a theory with two different directions, namely deductive and inductive approach (Neuman, 2014). The principal objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between HR competencies and HR effectiveness, and also how Challenge and Hindrance stressors moderate the relationship between independent and dependent variable. Based on a review of the previous studies, three main hypotheses and nine small sub-hypotheses were built directly from existing literature. Moreover, the purpose of this study is also the emphasis on testing the HRCS model 2012 in Mongolian context instead of focusing on developing a new model or theory. Thus, it is probably clear that deductive approach is supported to apply in this study.
Moreover, there are two research approaches named quantitative and qualitative (Neuman, 2014). The quantitative approach is used in this study. Generally speaking about the quantitative approach in brief: firstly, in accordance to Neuman (2014), there are two sorts of data (hard and
HR COMPETENCIES Strategic Positioner Credible Activist Capability builder Change champion HR innovator
Technology proponent
H1
H2 H3 HR EFFECTIVENESS
HR service HR role
HR contribution Challenge
stressors
Hindrance stressors
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soft) that can be applied in research: hard data (in the form of numbers) represent a quantitative approach. Secondly, it is a language of study ("variable and hypothesis" or "cases and contexts") in the quantitative approach variable and hypotheses are utilized. Thirdly, a way of creating hypotheses in a study, for example, in quantitative research, researchers try to verify a relationship or hypotheses they already have in their mind. In qualitative research, researchers often generate new hypotheses after or during their research process. Finally, in quantitative research, investigators need to follow a linear research path (Neuman, 2014).
A quantitative research entails a deductive approach and can be seen as a strategy that emphasizes quantitative in gathering and analyzing of data (Bryman & Bell, 2007). In specific, for the quantitative approach, there is a chance to collect a large number of data to see the general trend of the phenomenon. In other words, the quantitative method usually generalizes the findings through the broader population.
The research approach as stated earlier in this chapter, the quantitative research was chosen as a research approach since this study attempted to gather data from a certain number of HR practitioners as well as employees in the private sector in Mongolia using two separate questionnaires.
Research Procedure
The following research flow chart (Figure 3.2) was developed in order to reach the proposed outcome of this study. Each step is briefly described as follows.
Research Idea
In this stage, the general research framework of this study has been formed and finalized based on the researcher’s previous working experience and guidance from the thesis advisor and a professor at IHRD program.
Review of Literature
After the research framework was approved by the thesis advisor, the previous studies, topic relevant books, and statistic information were reviewed by the researcher in order to support the
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theoretical framework and to provide the precise and concrete background information to the research topic.
Identify Research Questions and Hypotheses
Once the research framework and literature review were constructed, the researcher developed the study questions about the literature had been reviewed. After forming the research questions, the research hypotheses were built in order to examine the proposed relationship between variables.
Design the Research Questionnaire
Based on the existing validated questionnaires in previous studies, two separate surveys (HR professional's questionnaire and Employee's questionnaire) were selected from three different articles. In order to finalize the research questionnaires, four steps have been carried out namely:
a translation from English to Mongolia, a back translation from Mongolia to English, a peer review as well as a expert review. In this research, the expert review played a significant role to finalize questionnaires for distribution.
Collect Data
Since the researcher finalized the questionnaires after the evaluation of the peer and expert review, the official data collection has been conducted in Mongolia.
Analyze Data
After officially collecting data in Mongolia, the data analysis process has been performed by using SPSS 22 in order to test the purposed hypotheses.
Conclusion and Implication
Based on research findings, conclusion and the implication have been delivered to readers.
38 Figure 3.2. Research procedure
Data Collection
Since the quantitative approach has fulfilled with the general requirements of this research, a survey is a quantitative method, and the most widely used social science data-gathering technique to compile the standardized data from a selected sample of a particular group of people who can represent the whole population was employed in this study. According to Neuman (2014), if researchers put more efforts and thoughts on surveys, they can get accurate, reliable and valid data.
A survey also provides researchers an opportunity to test multiple hypotheses by a single survey.
Develop research framework
Review literature
Identify research questions and
hypotheses Design the research
questionnaire
Collect data
Analyze Data
Make conclusion and Implication
Develop the questionnaire based on
the literature review The questionnaire is
translated from English to Mongolia by the
researcher
The peer review is accomplished by two
Mongolian graduate students at IHRD
program The back translation version is completed by
two English reviewers
The HR expert review is fulfilled by two Mongolian two senior
HR practitioners
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In order to reach the objectives of this study, it was vital to determine the target population specifically. This study aimed to get involved the exactly precise number of an HR practitioner and employees from the same company in different private sectors in Mongolia.
Furthermore, the survey of this research consists of two separated questionnaires in order to prevent single-response bias and ensure more reliable measurements by drawing data from multiple respondents in an organization (Gerhart, Wright, McMahan, & Snell, 2000). Also, Khatri and Budhwar (2002) clearly pointed out that the majority of the previous studies has been conducted data from only HR professionals, which could be biased and inadequate. Therefore, multiple sampling populations (HR professionals and employees) has been applied in this study.
More specifically, an HR manager was asked to evaluate her/his own HR competencies by using an HR questionnaire, whereas three employees from the same organization were requested to assess the effectiveness of their HR manager by using an employee’s questionnaire at the same time.
The researcher found the research population through her network connections in Mongolia, which could be divided into two channels: the first channel was her former colleagues, and their connections as well. The researcher worked as a Human resource manager in two different companies (Altain chowder LLC-Mining and Ensada Tractron LLC-Agricultural company) in Mongolia. In particular, her ex-colleagues carefully invited their counterparts with providing a brief instruction about the survey then only after getting permission from their friends to participate in this survey; they forwarded the questionnaire to the final respondents. The second channel was to use the network of young HR professional association named "HR club" that is the widely functioning professional club in Mongolia. Since 2015 the researcher has been a member of this club and has built some connection among their members. Using this network, the researcher contacted and invited some of the HR professionals to take part in her survey. After the participants accepted the survey invitation, the researcher shared the online survey link with them or passed the hard copy of her questionnaire in hand to hand.
In general, a paper-based or online questionnaire was distributed to HR professionals to fill out in the first place. At the same time, three employees in the organization were requested to complete the employee’s questionnaire as well. As for employee's questionnaire, one way of restricting the biases of being selected HR professional's favorite employees for the survey within a company
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was to provide HR managers clear instructions about the employee's questionnaire verbally or by email.
With regard to HR professional's questionnaire that was printed out on A3 paper contains three parts including the measurements of HR competencies and Challenge and Hindrance stressors as well as the demographic questions to be filled in by HR professionals. Likewise, an employee's questionnaire was published on A4 paper requests to be rated by three employees who work in the same company as the HR professional does. The employee's questionnaire aimed to evaluate HR effectiveness of their employees. It has four parts including HR service, role, and contributes as well as the demographic questions.
Overall, snowball and convenience approaches were applied to compile data since the researcher has utilized her network to access the research population. The data collection was organized from August 2017, until April 2018.
Sample and Sampling Plan
The initial target of the sample size in this research was to collect 50 pairs of data in private sectors in Mongolia, however, the number has been extended from 50 to 90 due to the fact that very weak and limited correlations were found between independent and dependent variables after running the correlation analysis with the dataset of 50 private sectors. In order to increase the number of sample size, the small cash incentive was offered to respondents at the second round of the data collection between January 2018 to April of the same year.
With regard to the sampling criteria for HR respondents, who have to serve for a private company in Mongolia, with at least one year of working experience as an HR manager in their current organizations. Likewise, employees who are required to have over one year of seniority in the same company where HR professionals work for.
As for the demographic section that was developed and arranged based on the importance of each question along with the research purposes. The seniority was included to help the researcher check whether the respondents meet the basic requirement to participate in the survey. Also, accumulating at least one year of working experience in the current organization makes participants respond to each survey question more objectively.
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All operational fields are accepted in this study cause every HR professionals must possess necessary and general HR competencies in order to be effective managers in their firms ( Han et al., 2006).
Survey Design and Measurements
Two separate questionnaires contain the measurements of four variables, namely: HR competencies, HR effectiveness, and the challenge and hindrance stressors. All validated scales were collected from the previous investigations in the existing literature. The scales are summarized and illustrated in Table 3.1 below.
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Table 3.1.
The Review of Survey Scales
Variables Subdomains Cronbach’s
Alpha
43 Table 3.1. (continued)
Variables Subdomains Cronbach’s
Alpha
Type of scale and its
construction Adapted from
Number of items included HR effectiveness HR Services .87 for Line
managers and .79 for HR
managers
7-point Likert scale anchored by (1) Very Ineffective
(7) Very Effective
The scales generated by
Wright et al., (2001). 15
HR role .87 for Line managers and
.89 for HR managers
10-point Likert scale anchored by (1) No meeting needs
(10) All needs met
The scales developed by McMahan et al., (1996)
5
HR contribution .91 for line managers and
.90 for HR managers
7-point Likert scale anchored by (1) Not at all (7) To a very great extent
The scales generated by Wright et al., (2001)
10
Note. The summary of the survey scales
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The sample population was targeted in Mongolia. Its official language is Mongolian. As a result, the questionnaires had to be translated from English to Mongolian. Also, the peer and expert validity were adopted in this study.
In particular, after the questionnaires were translated by the researcher, two English reviewers who use English every day at their work (a movie translator at Mongol TV, and a certified lawyer with master degree from India) were invited to do the back translation from Mongolia to English and brought substantial significant corrections such as paraphrasing, reversing, adding and eliminating some words, for instance, "Ensure that line managers spend time developing their staff” was translated by the researcher into “Дунд шатны менежерүүд өөрсдийн ажилтнуудаа хөгжүүлэхэд цаг гаргаж ажиллаж байгаа эсэхийг баталгаажуулах", but one of the reviewers recommended to modify the sentence into “Дунд шатны менежерүүд хэлтсийнхээ ажилтнуудыг хөгжүүлэхэд цаг гарган ажилладаг эсэхийг хянадаг”. After that, the researcher carefully examined the difference between the original version and the back-translated version and refined all the necessary changes for two questionnaires.
When the back translation part was finalized by the researcher, two Mongolian graduate students were invited to review and check the content of the Mongolian questionnaires. The reviewers all had some working experience in the HR field in Mongolia. One of them is recently holding an HR specialist position at a mining company in Mongolia after graduating from the International Human Resource Development which is an English taught degree program at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in 2017. The other one is currently studying at the IHRD program. Based on the reviewers' comments, the researcher did some arrangements and adaptations for improvement.
Lastly, the final version of the translated questionnaires was examined by two senior HR practitioners who have over 15 years of working experience in HR field and worked for two highly prestigious organizations in Mongolia (Ulaanbaatar BUK and Mongolian customer).
Although all the items used for this study have been previously validated, it was the most significant step for the researcher to conduct an expert review in order to verify the content validity of the questionnaires. After checking whether both questionnaires were still corresponding and consistent by two HR expert, the researcher looked over once more and finalized the questionnaires in order to send out for the real data collection.
A pair study design and complexity of data collection from 90 different organizations made this study challenging and complicated for the researcher, therefore, in order to save actual
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respondents for an official data collection, the peer and expert review conducted to validate the consistency and accuracy of the questionnaires in this study.
Data Analysis
Since the research method of this research is a quantitative approach, the statistical package for the social cience (SPSS) was employed to analyze the gathered data. There were two separate questionnaires utilized to measure the variables in this research. The HR questionnaire was measured using 5 point Likert scales. On the other hand, the employee's questionnaire was assessed by using 7 and 10 points Likert-scales. After the raw quantitative data were collected, all purposed statistical analyses, shown in Table 3.2 were carried out in order to reveal the results of this study.
Table 3.2.
The Review of Research Methodology
Research methodology Selected research design and method in the study
Data coding and input SPSS 22.0
Research approach Quantitative
Data gathering technique Survey
Data gathering method Paper-based and online questionnaire
Data gathering, sampling Snowball sampling
Convenience sampling Statistical data analysis method Descriptive statistics
Confirmatory factor analysis Cronbach’s alpha analysis Pearson Correlation analysis Simple Linear Regression analysis
Hierarchical regression analysis Note. The summary of selected research approach
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