METHODOLOGY - Role on Knowledge Transfer of the Mining Sector in Mongolia

CHAPTER III. METHODOLOGY

Chapter Overview

This chapter will introduce to readers research method, research procedure, research sample, measurement instrument, data collection and data analysis approach. The chapter further describes the research procedure and the research sample which will assist the reader to have a clear understanding of the research findings. In the end of the chapter the measurement instrument, data collection, and data analysis methods are presented. The chapter deliberately presents each research method procedure.

Research Framework

With advice and assistance of the knowledge management professor research framework was structured by researcher based on the literature review. The role of the expatriate in knowledge transferring across multinational companies has emerged as a new area of inquiry in the international human resource management HRM literature, and organization practices of expatriation have become a subject of recent debate (Bonance & Brester, 2001; Delios

&Bjorkman, 2000; Dowes & Thomas 2000; Tsag 1999). People are the heart of knowledge management and knowledge transfer. The success of the organizations depends on the ability to effectively manage source of the knowledge/expatriates/. Organization must create friendly and safe environment in order to encourage and fully utilize knowledge of the expatriates. In order to create such environment organizations must understand basic factors which are affecting expatriates on knowledge transfer. Therefore purpose of the research is to identify role of expatriate on knowledge transfer, what type of knowledge are transferred, what are the main factors and obstacles are affecting to knowledge transfer process. Researcher created following framework to address above questions into framework. All factors which were included in framework selected by researcher because those factors were most repeatedly emphasized by previous studies and considered as most influential.

Figure 3.1 Research framework

Source: by Dr. Cheng Ping Shih

Detailed Explanation of the Framework

Internalization

Expatriate‟s competency and willingness

The ability of an organization to transfer knowledge depends on the skill of the individuals who are directly involved in the transfer process, because ultimately it is the individuals imparting and receiving knowledge (Argyris and Schon, 1978). Therefore expatriates must have high competence and professionalism in order to transfer knowledge to organization.

Additionally expatriates must have a genuine desire to contribute in knowledge transfer process.

Knowledge transfer requires the willingness of a group or individual to work with others and share knowledge to their mutual benefit.

20 Socialization

Personal contacts and friendship

Knowledge transfer process might occur anywhere if transferor and receipt are willing to it. Personal contacts and friendships outside of the organization are affecting sharing and transferring process greatly.

Organization

In order to encourage knowledge transfer organizations must have friendly and supportive environment. This study aims four main organizational factors that affect knowledge transfer process: leadership, technical support, team support and rewards.

Leadership support

Leaders will have to play an important role in establishing some of the key condition required to facilitate knowledge transfer (Goh, 2002). As role models trough their action leaders can trigger and encourage willingness to share and transfer knowledge.

Technical support

One of the popular mechanisms of the knowledge transfer is Information Communication Technology. Email, tele-conference, fax, video-conference, internet and different soft wares are the essential tools used in by the organizations in order to transfer and share knowledge. Under the right policy and appropriate utilization, ICT is the major contributor to organization knowledge management system.

Team support

Expatriates were required to fill the gap in the skill and knowledge where locals lack of experience. Therefore in order to complete successful knowledge transfer local staff or local team must create friendly environment, be enthusiastic and willing to learn and absorb new knowledge contributed by the expatriates. Additionally local staff asked to help expatriates feel accepted, provide support in new culture and assist them in adjustment process. By creating such positive environment for expatriates team or local staff directly contributing to successful knowledge management.

21 Rewards and incentives

Even though it is very difficult to measure, observe and keep a track of knowledge transfer process, organization must do their best to reward and support expatriate who are successfully transferring and delivering new knowledge to the belonging organization.

Barlet and Ghoshal (1998) suggest that one way to encourage knowledge transfer is to base rewards to groups. According to previous studies a lack of incentives and rewards has been suggested to be a major barrier to knowledge management (Yao, Kam, & Chan, 2007).

Combination

Proof of knowledge value

In order to trigger openness and willingness of expatriates and recipients, organization must emphasis and deliver clear message that right knowledge makes positive changes in the organization. Within a successful knowledge transfer all the participating sides can benefit.

Research has shown that knowledge management is positively related to the reductions in production costs, faster completion of new product development projects, team performance, firm innovation capabilities, and firm performance including sales growth and revenue from the new products and services (Arthur & Huntley, 2005).

Culture

Multinational organizations has international working environment which involving employees with different nations, cultures and languages. This can pose challenges for knowledge management (Ford & Chan, 2003). When communicating with people from different culture, it is important to remember that culture and communication are strongly connected. An Ernest and Young study identified culture as the biggest impediment to knowledge transfer, citing the inability to change people‟s behaviors as the biggest hindrance to managing knowledge (Warson, 1998). For example from the previous study by Jarvenpaa and Staples (2001) determined that organizational culture rating in solidarity (tendency to pursue shared objectives) will result in a perception of knowledge as being owned by the organization, which, in turn,

leads to greater levels of knowledge sharing. Therefore culture in the different level will directly impact expatriates on the knowledge transfer process

Expatriate’s knowledge

Knowledge transfer is a process of systematically organized exchange of information and skills between entities (Wang, 2004). Management of knowledge in organization consists from diverse fragments: managerial skills, marketing skills, HRM skills, corporate culture and values, business strategy thinking, techniques and technological knowledge, manufacturing and exploitation knowledge and product-related knowledge. Main focuses of this study are the three main knowledge of the organization: business strategy and policy, managerial skill and technical skill.

Difficulties

Knowledge is a power.

One major inhibitor of knowledge sharing is that knowledge can be considered a source of power and superiority (Gupta & Govindarajan, 2000). Owing specific knowledge makes individuals valuable to organization and they have some invisible priority and protection. But after successful knowledge transfer that specific knowledge becomes common and individuals lose their priority and protection compared to others. Fear to lose their power individuals might be passive and can refrain knowledge transfer.

Employee ability

Knowledge may be freely available or accessible in the organizations but the recipients of that knowledge has to be able to use it (Sluzanski, 1996). Employees with low motivation, absorptive capacity and retentive capacity results poor transfer of knowledge.

Employee attitude

Knowledge transfer requires the willingness of a group or individual to work with others and share knowledge to their mutual benefit (Goh, 2002). It means that employee must have willingness and openness in order to make knowledge transfer possible.

Research Procedure

In the following section procedure of the research is described in details. Figure 3.2 shows procedure. Each step is explained as follows:

1. Identified the research subject: Based on the need of the current economic development which relies on the mining sector researcher decided to address related issues like Human Resource and Knowledge Management in mining sector of Mongolia on current thesis research under the support of thesis advisor.

2. Discussed the literature review: Previous studies and published papers on issues like:

expatriate role, knowledge management, mining industry and specifically mining sector in Mongolia was reviewed by the researcher to provide concrete background to the current topic. By reviewing literature researcher tried to present to a reader that current topic is important to study, what are the causing problems and why it must be addressed as research topic.

3. Established research questions: The current research questions were addressed based on the research purpose. Based on the literature review framework was established.

4. Designated the research methods: Qualitative research approach based on the interview has been chosen on order to fulfill research purpose. Open ended questions asked from the participant expatriates.

5. Constructed interview questions: Based on the existing literature researcher constructed open ended interview questions to reveal expatriate perception on knowledge transfer issue.

6. Conducted pilot interview: Pilot interview held to determine whether there are double barred questions or bias confusing questions in the interview.

7. Interviewed actual participants: The participant expatriate selected by convenience and snowballing and quota sampling method.

8. Transcribed result: The process of coding and analyzing the interview data, like the data collection itself, is something of a selective process in terms of a determination of what to add in and what to leave out. Coding provides an efficient method for data-labeling and retrieval, the process is eclectic and there is no right way (Tesch, 1990).

9. Research Findings: As mentioned earlier research finding identified role of the expatriates in knowledge transfer, defined difficulties and main factors which are affecting knowledge transfer process.

10. Conclusions and Suggestions. Based on the findings of the research, conclusions and suggestions provided to reader. Conclusion and suggestion will help mining companies to better utilize knowledge of the expatriates by creating safe and friendly environment.

Figure 3.2. Research procedure Identified research subject

Discussed literature review

Established research questions

Designed of research methods

Constructed interview questions

Conducted pilot interview

Interviewed actual participants

Transcribed interview result

Reflect all the result and summarize Conclusions and suggestion

Research Method

Qualitative research method was chosen to implement current thesis study. Qualitative research method is used in research that is designed to provide an in-depth description of a specific, practice or setting (Mertens, 2005). Current research objectives itself has some difficulty to conduct large scale quantitative research. Because knowledge management, human resource researches related to mining sector specially to Mongolian mining sector almost not existing, it is one of the new research trend and doesn‟t have prosperous understanding therefore qualitative research approach is most appropriate to interpret new practice (Bogdan & Taylor, 1975). In order to clearly respond to research questions first we must consider nature of the research objects. Nature of the knowledge transfer and expatriate issues are very complicated itself many external and internal factors affecting to it. Therefore to avoid bias result with lurking variable researcher will address specific issue by conducting interview with open ended questions in order to fulfill the research objectives. After reviewing literature researcher found out that there are almost no quantitative researches about expatriate‟s role on knowledge transfer issue, which means there are no appropriate quantitative measurements available for the desired result. The other reason why the researcher chooses a qualitative research approach is because access to the sample is complicated. Six to fifteen units of analysis, which provides reliability in qualitative research, is very convenient for the researcher to implement research (Mertens, 2005).

Researcher would like to understand knowledge transfer in Mongolian mining company from the perspective of the expatriates. To describe and analyze expatriate role on knowledge transfer ethnographic strategy based on interview were chosen, because ethnography methods is considered to understand the culture, phenomena from and insider and outsider perspective (Patton, 2002). Tedlock (2000) noted that ethnographic strategy is the suitable to reach a better understanding of beliefs, motivations and behaviors of the people in the study. Qualitative research approach with use of open ended interviewing and ethnographic data collection to focus on interpretation, allow the immersion of the researchers in the social setting, and facilitate intersubjective understanding between researcher and participants (Mertents, 2005)

Research Participants

For current thesis study researcher target participants based on the following criteria:

1. Be an English speaking expatriate

2. Have working experience in Mongolian mining company

3. Position of the expatriate must be managerial or technical ( not a blue collar expatriate) 4. Willing to participate in this study as a participant

Researcher introduced purpose of the thesis study by sending invitation letter. For the better participation researcher highlighted participants‟ contribution and clearly explained outcomes of the thesis study.

To involve expatriates to the interview researcher used nonprobability sampling like:

purposive, snowballing sampling and quota samplings method. Purposive sampling a type of the nonprobability sampling in which the units to be observed are selected on the basic of the researcher‟s judgment about which ones will be the most useful or representative. Also it called judgmental sampling. Snowballing sampling a nonprobability sampling methods often employed in field research, whereby each person interviewing may be asked to suggest additional people for interview. Quota sampling a type of nonprobability sampling in which units are selected into sample on the basic of pre-specified characteristics, so that the total sample will have the same distribution of characteristics assumed to exist in the population being studied (Babbie, 2011).Researcher introduced purpose of the research and explain contribution of each participant and after appoint the interview time.

Instrument

Main instrument to accomplish data collection of the current research is interview. In qualitative research interviewing is the major source of the qualitative data needed for understanding the phenomenon under the study (Merriam, 2000). DeMarrais (2004) defined interview as process in which a researcher and participants engage in a conversation focused on the questions related to a research study. The main purpose of interview is to obtain a special kind of information. The researcher wants to find out what is: in and on someone else mind (Patton, 2002). Open ended interview questions will be asked to understand knowledge transfer

phenomena from the perspective of participant expatriates itself. Interview questions designed based on the research framework in order to respond to main research questions:

1) What are the roles of the expatriates on knowledge transfer?

2) What type of knowledge is transferred by the expatriates?

3) What are the main factors and obstacles which impacting to expatriate on transfer knowledge?

Patton (2002) suggested six types of questions to concern in interview question designing process: experience and behavior, opinion and value, feeling, knowledge, sensory and background. All above mentioned questions types concerned in interview questions design.

Different questions assist researcher to have an in- depth understating about participants perception.

Data Collection

Four steps followed to in order to conduct interview.

1. Conducted pilot interview. After constructing interview questions researcher conducted pilot interview with two actual participants in order to check are the double barred questions or bias confusing questions asked from interviewee.

2. Corrected interview questions according to the pilot interview result.

3 .Contacted and introduced purpose of research, explained contribution of the expatriates to the study

4. Made appointments with all participant expatriates through email

From April-May researcher contacted with fifteen expatriates through email and send official invitation letter and interview questions. From fifteen expatriates researcher conducted ten interviews; five expatriates could not participate due to different reasons, two expatriates belonged to same company rest belonged to different mining companies of Mongolia. During the interview researcher used recorder after each interview transcription was made. Researcher read all the transcription and highlighted responds and tagged to each related research questions and it

was coded. Each respond which was used in findings has coding I#7_page36,number of the interview and page number with actual respond.

Table 3.1.

Interview Details

Stages Contents

Before the interview/preparation

 Presentation of the researcher, the research itself and related information

 Explain purpose of the interview

 Underline the importance of the interviewee‟s contribution to the research

 Explain reason why interview will be recorded

 Explain that the interviewees response will be kept anonymous

Stage#1 Introduction

 How long have been employed by your hosting organization?

 Which department do you work?

 What is your current position?

Internalization

 Do you often voluntarily assist local co-workers when it is necessary?

 Do you enjoy assisting to local co-workers?

 Do you regret about time and effort that you spent to share knowledge with local co-workers?

 How your leadership does support you when you share knowledge?

 Do you receive any positive feedback and comment from leadership when you share

knowledge with local co-workers?

 Does your office provide all the necessary Information

 How willing are your co-workers to learn new knowledge and

 How do co-workers support you when you share knowledge with

Stage #4

Expatriate Knowledge

 What is your specialty?

 What is your responsibility in host organizations? and in the future will not need your assistance?

 Do co- workers have an ability to absorb knowledge and experience that you are sharing with them?

 What ability lack most local co-workers in order to receive

Data Analysis

Data analysis is the process of making sense out of the data. Data analysis is a complex process which involves moving back and forth between concrete bits of data and abstract concepts, between inductive and deductive reasoning (Merriam, 2000). The process of coding and analyzing the interview data, like the data collection itself, is something of a selective process in terms of a determination of what to add in and what to leave out. Coding provides an efficient method for data-labeling and retrieval, the process is eclectic and there is no right way (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).

An ethnographic strategy of qualitative approach will be chosen as method to analyze role of the expatriates in knowledge transfer in Mongolian mining companies. Ethnographic strategy designed to describe and analyze practice and beliefs of culture and communities (Patton, 2002). Researcher believes that knowledge transfer process associated with organizations and individual‟s culture. Without creating culture in the organization where every member values each other contribution it is impossible to implement knowledge management. Therefore researcher assumes that most suitable strategy to analyze data for current study is ethnographic strategy. A key assumption is that by entering into first hand interaction with people in their everyday lives, ethnographers can reach a better understanding of the beliefs, motivation and behaviors of the people in the study (Tedlock, 2000). The focus of the ethnography is to understand the culture from insider and outsider perspective (Mertens, 1992).

Data Analysis Procedure

In following section data analysis procedure described step by step.

1. Recorded interview respond transcribed manually.

2. Transcribed interview respond carefully readied by researcher.

3. Categorized interview respond into three main research subunits in order to respond to research questions.

4. Send back to participants actual responds used as result in order to make sure that researcher did not add his/her perspective

5. Ethnographic strategy used to analyze data. (Inductive and comparative strategies).

6. Draw out the result from the main subunits in order to fulfill the research purpose.

In order to answer research questions all the participant respond categorized in to main three categories:

1. Role of the expatriate on knowledge transfer 2. Type of knowledge is transferred by the expatriates

3. Main factors and obstacles are which impacting to expatriate on transfer knowledge.

Figure 3.3. Data analysis procedure

Data Coding Process

All the recorded interview responds were transcribed by the researcher manually. In order to present to a reader clear logical procedure of data coding, researcher took following steps. All the interview questions were divided into stages between one to five, each stage included

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