Current Events in Business Research
Current Events in Business Research
People make decisions every day in the work place, but what they may not realize is that whether they admit to it or not, or they may not even do it without knowing, the steps in the research process must and should be followed in order to come to a decision. Thinking back to even the simplest issues in the laboratory where I worked, we used the same process to solve a problem.
While working in the laboratory, the floor manager came to us with an issue that had to do with turnaround times for the completion of our STAT testing. STAT tests were to be completed in 60 minutes or less, however in the chemistry section, they were often taking too long to process. That was the first step in clarifying the research question. A team of techs got together and analyzed data while observing the procedures in the sample collection section and processing sections in order to propose different solutions. We narrowed it down to the simplest and most cost efficient proposal and decided to put it together. The team proposed that a different colored label could be placed on the STAT samples in the drawing room in order for the processing technician to easily identify the STAT samples to expedite processing and deliver them to their appropriate sections. A temporary label was designed specifically for those samples and then distributed to the specimen collection department. Two weeks later, we ran a report to compare turnaround times in all sections in order to compare them to the previous two weeks before the labels were created, and found that they had improved dramatically.
By clarifying what the research question was, we were able to accurately pinpoint what the problem was in order for our team to research different solutions. Once we narrowed down the best possible solution, we researched the design strategy and developed the instrument necessary to execute this idea. Once the plan was executed, we compared the data (data
People make decisions every day in the work place, but what they may not realize is that whether they admit to it or not, or they may not even do it without knowing, the steps in the research process must and should be followed in order to come to a decision. Thinking back to even the simplest issues in the laboratory where I worked, we used the same process to solve a problem.
While working in the laboratory, the floor manager came to us with an issue that had to do with turnaround times for the completion of our STAT testing. STAT tests were to be completed in 60 minutes or less, however in the chemistry section, they were often taking too long to process. That was the first step in clarifying the research question. A team of techs got together and analyzed data while observing the procedures in the sample collection section and processing sections in order to propose different solutions. We narrowed it down to the simplest and most cost efficient proposal and decided to put it together. The team proposed that a different colored label could be placed on the STAT samples in the drawing room in order for the processing technician to easily identify the STAT samples to expedite processing and deliver them to their appropriate sections. A temporary label was designed specifically for those samples and then distributed to the specimen collection department. Two weeks later, we ran a report to compare turnaround times in all sections in order to compare them to the previous two weeks before the labels were created, and found that they had improved dramatically.
By clarifying what the research question was, we were able to accurately pinpoint what the problem was in order for our team to research different solutions. Once we narrowed down the best possible solution, we researched the design strategy and developed the instrument necessary to execute this idea. Once the plan was executed, we compared the data (data
References: Cooper, D., & Schindler, P. (2011). Business Research Methods (11th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Irwin.