DATA COLLECTION METHODS

DATA COLLECTION METHODS
Data can be defined as facts or information especially when examined and used to find out things or to make decisions.
Sources of data
Primary data
Secondary data
Primary data refer to information obtained firsthand by the researcher on the variables of interest for the specific purpose of the study.
Types of primary data
INTERVIEWS (structured and unstructured)
Face-face interviews
Telephone interviews
Computer based-assisted interview
Interviews from electronic media
Internet
FACE-FACE INTERVIEWS: Advantages;
The main advantage of face-face interviews or direct interviews is that the researcher can adapt the questions as necessary, clarify doubt, and ensure that the responses are properly understood, by repeating or rephrasing the questions. The researcher can also pick up nonverbal cues from the respondent. Any discomfort, stress, or problems that the respondent experiences can be detected. This would be impossible to detect in a telephone interview.
Disadvantages
The main disadvantages of face-face interviews are the geographical limitations they may impose on the surveys and the vast resources needed if such surveys need to be nationally or internationally. Another drawback is that respondents might feel uneasy about the anonymity of their responses when they interact face to face with interviewer.
TELEPHONE INTERVIEWS: Advantages
The main advantages of telephone interviewing, from the researcher’ point of view, is that a number of different people can be reached in a relatively short period of time. From the respondents’ point of view, it would eliminate any discomfort that some of them might feel in facing the interviewer.
Disadvantages
The main disadvantage of telephone interviewing is that the respondent could unilateral terminate the interview. Caller ID might further aggravate the situation.
CUMPUTER-ASSISTED INTERVIEWING
With the modern technology, questions are flashed onto the computer screen and the interviewers can enter the answer of the respondents directly in to the computer. The accuracy of the data collection is considerably enhanced since the software can be programmed to flag the “offbase” or or “out of rage” responces.CAI also prevent the respondents from asking the wrong questions or in the wrong sequence since the questions are automatically flashed to the respondents in an ordered sequence.
Advantages
Computer vastly eases the job of the interviewer.
Fast
Convenient
Disadvantage
Tedious
Sometime time consuming.
QUESTIONAIRES: A questionnaires is a preformulated set of questions to which respondent’s records their answer, usually within rather closely define alternatives.questionaires are efficient data collection mechanisms when the researcher knows exactly what is required and how to measure the variables of interest. Questionnaires can be administered;
Personally
Mail to the respondents
Electronically distributed
OBSERVATIONAL SURVEY:
Whereas interviews and questionnaires elicit responses from the subject; it is possible to gather data without asking questions of respondets.People can be observed in their natural work environment or in the lab setting, and their activities and behaviours or other items of interest can be noted and recorded. Also their movements, work habits ,the statements made and the meeting conducted by them, their facial expressions of joy, anger ,and other emotions, and body language can be observed. The researcher can play one of two roles while gathering field observational data—that of nonparticipant-observer or participant-observer.


Advantages of observational studies
The data are more reliable and free from respondents’ biases.
It is easy to note environmental influences.
Easy to observe certain individuals
Disadvantages
The method is slow, tedious and expensive.
Though mood, feelings, and attitudes can be guess, but the cognitive thought process of individuals cannot be captured.
Because of long period involve, fatigue may set in which might bias the recorded data.
MULTIMETHODS OF DATA COLLECTION
Because almost all data collection methods have some biases associated with them, collecting data through multimethods and from multiple sources lend rigor to research.Likewise, data obtained from several sources bear a great degree of similarity. We would have stronger conviction in the goodness of the data.Therefore; high correlations among data obtained on the same variables from different sources and through different collection methods lend more credibility to the research instrument and to the data obtained through these instruments. Good research entails collection of data from multiple sources and through multiple data collection methods, such research, though, would be more costly and time consuming.
Endnote
Sekaran, Uma. (2003).Research methods for business: A skill-building approach.
(4th Ed) Hoboken, N. J.: Wiley.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS step 6.

THE RESEARCH PROCESSS
STEP6: element of research design
The research design is an activity which involves a series of rational decision-making of choices.specifically, there are six basic aspects of research design, and these are:
PURPOSE OF THE STUDY: exploratory, descriptive, hypothesis testing, and case study analysis.
EXTENT OF THE RESEARCHER INTERFERNCE WITH THE STUDY: minimal, moderate, excessive.
THE STUDY SETTING: field study, field experiments, lab experiments.
THE UNIT OF ANALYSIS: individuals, dyads, groups, organizations, cultures.
TYPES OF INVESTIGATION: casual, correlation.
TIME HORIZON: cross-sectional, longitudinal.
THE MANAGERIAL IMPLICATINS
Knowledge about research issues help the manager to understand what the researcher is attempting to do. the manager also understand why the reports sometimes indicate data analytic results based on small sample size, when a lot of time has been spent in collecting data from several sources of individuals, as in the case of studies involving groups, departments, or branch offices.
Also knowledge about research design help managers to understand the main difference between casual and correlational studies, and afforded the managers the trouble of falling into trap of making implicit assumption when two variables are only associated with each other.Furthemore, it also help managers to be economical in making research study decisions. Knowing that more rigorous research designs consume more resources, the manager is in a position to weigh the gravity of the problem experienced and decide what kind of design would yield acceptable results in an efficient manner.
Lastly, knowledge of design research details help managers to study and intelligently comment on research proposals.
Endnote
Skaran, Uma. (2003). Research methods for business: A skill-building approach.
(4th Ed.) Hoboken, N. J.: Wiley.

ESTABLISHING LEADERSHIP THROUGH STRATEGIC INTERNAL COMMUNICATION

ESTABLISHING LEADERSHIP THROUGH STRATEGIC INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
One of the major responsibilities of an organization leader is communication with the employees. By communicating effectively with the employees, leaders are not simply creating ambassadors of goodwill for their company; they are providing direction, establishing a positive and productive working environment, and influencing their bottom lines. Organizational direction comes from leaders having created and effectively communicated a clear and meaningful vision. Developing and communicating a vision is one of the most important and visible communication tasks of senior management. Employees are motivated when, through words and actions, the leaders carefully translate the vision and strategic goals into terms that are meaningful to all employees. To do so requires analyzing audiences, targeting messages, and creating communicating strategy. Motivating employees also requires listening to them and using emotional intelligence to connect with them.
ESTABLISHING EFFECTIVE INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
Although creating the internal messages that are to be sent to your employees is your primary leadership responsibility, you also need ton pay attention to the other main components of any good communication strategy in your effort to ensure your internal communication supports and assists in accomplishing your company strategy. To ensure your internal communication is comprehensive, you will want to use an analytical approach to developing a communication strategy for your important communication. In establishing an effective internal communication, the strategic employee communication model has been developed to help leaders. At its core, the model shows that effective internal communication consists of the following.
supportive management
targeted messages
effective media
well-positioned staff
ongoing assessment.
USING MISSION AND VISION TO STRENGTHEN INTERNAL COMMUNICATION
The strategic employees communication model provides an analytically rigorous approach to internal communication that works particularly well with the process side of communication, such as media selection, supportive management ,and ongoing assessment.Missions,visions,value, ands guiding principles make up one category of major strategic messages that most organizations convey to their employees. Leadership communication must include how best to create and deliver these core messages to ensure they are strong and meaningful And not simply feeble slogans good only for adoring coffee cups.However,for visions and missions to achieve its goal, the following questions must be asked:
Why are missions and vision important?
What are missions and visions?
When are they most effective?
How do you build them?
MISSIONS:
A mission is a statement of the reason a company exists that is intended primarily for internal use. It should ensure that employees understand the company’s purpose by defining a company’ basic business.
VISSIONS:
A vision statement establishes the company’s aspirations. It describes as inspiring new reality, achievable in a well –understood and reasonable time frame. Companies often use visions for internal and external audiences, although their greatest purpose is usually to guide internal actions.
DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING EFFECTIVE CHANGE COMMUNICATION
Organizational change is inevitable yet rarely easy. Many change efforts fail to deliver the value the company seeks. The greatest difficulty leaders’ face in bringing about change involves the people. For instance, merger and acquisition are one of the most frequent causes of major organizational change, but only few yield the anticipated or hoped results. The organization’s leaders bear the primary responsibility for successfully communicating the rationale for the change, the implementation plans, and the impact on the company as a whole on the individual employees, the leaders will need to decide how much communication will be enough and to establish how to manage the change communication effectively. The following will help leaders in managing change in communication; leaders should:
Determine the scope of the change communication program.
Structure a communication program for major change.
Endnote
Deborah J. Barret.

BUILDING AND LEADING HIGH-PERFORMING TEAMS

BUILDING AND LEADING HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS
Since teams are now so prevalence in all organizations, business leaders need to know how to build and how to manage them to achieve high performance .building an effective team raise both organization and individual leadership issues. Deciding to form a team is a process very similar to deciding to call a meeting. In deciding to use teams across your company, or to form teams individually, you will need to consider certain factors which may include whether a team approach is the best to achieve the organizational goals or a specific objectives or targeted result. Another factor to consider is whether the company provide the necessary training in diversity, team dynamics, problem solving, and process management to ensure team members know how to manage team issues and processes. More so, the employee’s ability to follow team charters, ground rules, and also knows how to manage team conflicts need to be considered. Other factors are whether the current company technology support team communication and collaboration and the ability of the employees to use it, and the compensation and performance measure of the company.
ESTABLISHING THE NECESSARY TEAM WORK PROCESSES
Once a team has been formed, establishing a necessary team work process is the next task for a leader. The following are the necessary team work processes:
Organize or hold an official launch
Lead the team through to the commitment side of the team basic framework which include;
Purpose
Goals
Approach
Creating team charter
Action plan
And, work plan.
MANAGING THE PEOPLE SIDE OF TEAMS
Teams bring together the best talents available to solve problems; however, sometimes these talented people clash. One way to improve the team’s emotional intelligence or ability to work together smoothly is for the team to take time to know something about each other’s current situation, work experiences, personality and cultural differences. This knowledge may not result in team bounding or friendship, which are more the by-product of teams than the goals, but since these softer issues influence how the person behaves as a team member, the knowledge can help the team avoid conflicts and help you as a leader anticipate any problems or performance roadblocks.
Although team members will get to know each other through day-to-day interaction while working together, the team member can shorten the learning curve by discussing the following information at the first team meeting.
1. Position and responsibilities
2. Team experiences
3. Expectation
4. Personality
5. Cultural differences
HANDLING TEAM ISSUE AND COFLICT
Despite all of the best planning and time spent getting to know each other, teams will likely experience conflict. Some of it will be useful and some not, but the odds are that it will occur. As Katzenbach writes, an effective team is “about hard work, conflict, integration, and collective results”. working on a team is not easy, but the benefits can be very rewarding for the team members, and the results can be much better for the company. Obtaining the best results can depend on the team’s ability to manage conflict. Just as individuals, teams disagree in meetings, however, team need to know how to manage conflict in their overall team activities.
TYPES OF TEAM CONFLICT
Internal team conflict will usually be one of the four:
Analytical (team’s constructive disagreement over a project issue or problem)
Task (goal, work process, deliverables)
Interpersonal (personality, diversity, communication style)
Roles (leadership, responsibilities, power struggles)
APPROACHES TO HANDLING TAEM CONFLICT
Most teams will use one of the following three approaches to manage conflict
One on one: individuals involved work it out between themselves.
Facilitation: individuals involved work with a facilitator (mediator)
Team: individuals involved discuss it with the entire team
VIRTUAL TEAMS
Virtual teams are teams whose members are geographically disperse and rely primarily on technology (telephone, computer, video, or some combinations) for communication and to accomplish their work as team. The geographical separation can range from global dispersion to simply being in different location within a single company facility.


ADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL TEAM
Lowering travel and facility costs
Reducing project schedules
Allowing the leveraging of expertise and vertical integration
Improving efficiency
And, positioning to compete globally.
More openness
Flexibility
Diversity
Access to information.
DISADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL TEAM
On the other hand, virtual teams also provide challenges, particularly in communication:
Much of the context of communication, so important in high-context societies, is lost.
Cultural differences can become amplified, and personality conflicts more pronounced.
Connection and trust are difficult to build in a virtual environment which may put the team on a “collision course”
ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGES OF VIRTUAL TEAMS
A virtual team need the following to be successful:
Shared beliefs
A storehouse of credibility and trust
And, a shared work space

PERCEPTION ,COGNITION,AND EMOTION

PERCEPTION, COGNITION, AND EMOTION
Perception, cognition and emotion are the building blocks of all social encounters, including negotiation, in the sense that our social actions are guided by how we perceive and analyze the other party, the situation, and our interests and positions. A working knowledge of how humans perceive and process information is important to understand why people behave the way they do during negotiations.
Perception can be defined as the process by which individuals connect to their environment. The process of ascribing meaning to messages and events is strongly influenced by the perceiver’s current state of mind, role, and comprehension of earlier communications.1 Other parties’ perceptions, the environment, and the perceiver’s disposition are also important influence on one’s ability to interpret with accuracy what the other party is saying and meaning.
PERCEPTION DISTORTION
In any given negotiation, the perceiver’s own needs, desire, motivations, and personal experiences may create a predisposition about the other party. This is cause for concern when it leads to biases and errors in perception and subsequent communication. However, there are four types of perception errors;
Stereotyping
Hallo effects
Selective perception
And, projection.
FRAMING
A key issue in perception and negotiation is framing. A frame is the subjective mechanism through which people evaluate and make sense out of situation, leading them to pursue or avoid subsequent actions.2 Frames are important in negotiation because “people can encounter the same dispute and perceive it in very different ways as a result of their background, professional training or past experiences”3.Aframe is a way of labelling these different individual interpretations of the situation.
Types of frames;
Substantive
Outcome
Aspiration
Process
Identity
Characterization
Loss—gain—low
COGNITIVE BIASES IN NEGOTIATION
A cognitive bias in negotiation is the systematic information processing errors that negotiators make and that may compromise negotiation performance. Thus, rather than being perfect processers of information, it is clear that negotiators have the tendency to make systematic errors when they process information.4 These errors that tend to impede negotiation performance include:
1. Irrational escalation of commitment
2. Mythical fixed-pie beliefs
3. Anchoring and adjustment
4. Isssue framing and risk
5. Availability of information
6. The winner’s curse
7. Overconfidence
8. The laws of small numbers
9. Self-serving biases
10. Endowment effect
11. Ignoring other’s cognitions
12. Reactive devaluation
MANAGING MISPERCEPTIONS AND COGNITIVE BIASES IN NEGOTIATION
Misrepresentations and cognitive biases typically arise out of conscious awareness as negotiators gather and process information. The question of how best to manage perception and cognitive bias is a difficult one. However, the following solutions to these systematic distortions can be observed:
Awareness of the occurrences
Problem definition and problem evaluation
Careful discussion of the issue and preferences of both negotiators
Negotiators awareness of the negative aspects of these distortions
Discuss these problems in structured manner within team and with their counterparts.
Endnotes
1. Babcock, Wang, and Lowenstein, 1996;de Deru and van Lange, 1995; and Thompson, 1995;Thompson and Hastie, 1990a.
2. Bateson, 1972; Goffman, 1974.
3. Roth and Sheppard, 1995, p. 94.
4. Bazerman, 1998; Neale and Bazerman, 1992b.

BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATION

BEST PRACTICES IN NEGOTIATIONS
Best practices in negotiation can simply be regarded as the most usual and expected way of negotiation particularly in an organization or situations. While some people may look like born negotiators, negotiation is fundamentally a skill involving analysis and communication that everyone can learn. However, we will reflect on the broad level ten (10) best practices that negotiators can rely on;
1. Be prepared
2. Diagonose the fundamental structure of the negotiation
3. Identify and work the BANTA
4. Be willing to walk away
5. Master paradoxes
6. Remember the intangibles
7. Actively manage coalitions
8. Savour and protect your reputation
9. Remember that rationality and fairness are relative
10. Continue to learn from the experience
In conclusion, the above point should not be seen as all in all concerning best practices in negotiation, however, a wise negotiator will continue to learn and sharpen his skills in order to cope with emerging challenges.
Endnote;
Roy J. Lewiicki, .Bruce Barry, David M.Sauders; essentials of negotiation (fourth edition)

INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL NEGOTIATION

INTERNATIONAL AND CROSS-CULTURAL NEGOTIATION
For many people and organization, international negotiation has become a norm rather than an exotic activity that only occasionally occurs. In the last 20 years, the frequency of international negotiation has increased rapidly bolstering the interests in international communication. However, there has been numerous inputs, from both academic and practitioner perspectives about the complexities of negotiation across borders, be it with a person from different country, culture, or region. Although the term culture has many possible definitions, we will use it to refer to the shared values and beliefs of a group of people. Country can have more than one culture, and culture can span national borders. As we have examined earlier, negotiation is a social process that is embedded in a much lager context. This context increases in complexity when more than one culture or country is involved, making international negotiation a highly complicated process.1
Phatak and Habib suggest that two overall contexts have an influence on international negotiations:
THE ENVIRONMENT CONTEXTS:
Salacuse identified six factors in the environmental context that make international negotiations more challenging than domestic negotiations: and these include the following;
Political and legal pluralism.
International economics.
Foreign government and bureaucracies.
Instability.
Ideology.
Culture.2
Phatak and Habib have suggested additional factor which is:
External stakeholders.3
IMMEDIATE COTEXTS:
At many points in our discussions, we have discussed aspects of negotiation that relate to immediate contexts factors, but without considering their international implications, at this junction we will list the concepts from the Phatak and Habib model of international negotiation. And the immediate contexts are:
Relative bargaining power.
Level of conflict.
Relationship between negotiators.
Desire outcomes.
Immediate stakeholders.
CONCEPTUALIZING CULTURE AND NEGOTIATION.
The most frequently studied aspect of international negotiation is culture and the amount of research on the effects of culture n negotiation has increased substantially in the last 20 years.4 There are many different meanings of the concept of culture, but all definition share two aspects.5 First, culture is a group-level phenomenon. That means that a defined group of people shares beliefs, values, and behavioural expectations. The second common element of culture is that cultural beliefs, values, and behavioural expectations are learned and passed on to new members of the group.
It is also important to remember that negotiation outcomes, both domestically and internationally, are determined by several different factors. While cultural differences are clearly important, negotiators must guard against assigning too much responsibility to cultural factors.6 Dialdin, Brett, Okumura, and Lytle have labelled the tendency to overlook the importance of the situational factors in favour of cultural explanations the cultural attribution error.7 It is important to recognize that even though culture describes group-level characteristics, it doesn’t mean that every member of a culture will share those characteristics equally.8 In fact, there is likely to be a wide of a variety of behavioural differences within cultures as there is between cultures.9 Although knowledge of the other party’s culture may provide an initial clue about what to expect at the bargaining table, negotiators need to be open to adjusting their view very quickly as new information is gathered.10
The two important ways that culture has been conceptualized are:
Culture as shared value
And, culture as dialectic.11
THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE ON NEGOTIATION:
Managerial perspectives
Cultural differences have been suggested to influence negotiation in several ways. Now let’s examine 10 different ways that culture can influence negotiation.12
Definition of negotiation: the fundamental definition of negotiation, what is negotiable, and what occurs when we negotiate can differ greatly across cultures.13 (i.e.) American way and the Japanese ways of viewing negotiations.
Negotiation opportunity: culture influences the way negotiators perceive an opportunity as distributive versus integrative. Negotiators in North America are predisposed to perceive negotiation as being fundamentally distributive. 14 But this is not the case outside North America.
Selection of negotiators: The criterion used to select who will participate in a negotiation is different across cultures. These criteria can include such subject matter as age, seniority, gender, status, etc.
Protocol: cultures differ in the degree to which protocol, or the formality of the relations between the two negotiating parties, is important.
Communication: cultures influence how people communicate; both verbally and nonverbally. There are also differences in body language across cultures.
Time sensitivity: cultures largely determine what time means and how it affects negotiations.15 For example, comparing North American time consciousness with that of China or Latin Americans.
Risk propensity: Cultures vary in the extent to which they are willing to take risks. Some cultures tend to produce bureaucratic, conservative decision makers who want a great deal of information before making decisions.
Groups versus individuals: cultures differ according to whether they emphasize the individual or the group.eg the United State is very much an individual-oriented culture.
Nature of agreements: culture also has an important effect both on concluding agreements and on what form the negotiated agreement takes.
Emotionalism: culture appears to influence the extent to which negotiators display emotions. 16 These emotions may be use as tactics, or may be a natural response to positive and negative circumstances during negotiation.17
THEN INFLUENCE OF CULTURE ON NEGOTIATION:
Research perspectives
A conceptual model of where culture may influence negotiation has been developed by different scholars, for example Jeanne Brett, suggested that culture will influence, setting of priorities, and strategies, the identification of the potential for integrative agreement, and the pattern of interaction between negotiators. Researchers also explore how intracultural and cross cultural factors will influence the outcome of an agreement. It has also been suggested that overall negotiation process and outcome will be influenced by cultures
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE NEGOTIATING STRATEGIES
Stephen Weiss has proposed a useful way of thinking about the options we have when negotiating with someone from another culture.18 Weiss observes that negotiators may choose from among up to eight different culturally responsive strategies. These strategies may be used individually or sequentially, and the strategies can be switched as the negotiation progresses. Weiss’s culturally responsive strategies can be arranged into three groups, based on the level of familiarity (.low, moderate, high):
LOW FAMLIARITY:
Employ agents or advisers (unilateral strategy)
Bring in a mediator (joint strategy)
Induce the other negotiator to use your approach (joint strategy)

MODERATE FAMILIARITY:
Adapt to the other negotiator’s approach (unilateral strategy)
Coordinate adjustment (joint strategy)
HIGH FAMILIARITY:
Embrace the other negotiator’s approach (unilateral strategy)
Improvise an approach (joint strategy)
Effect symphony (joint strategy)
Lastly, there has been considerate research on the effects of culture on negotiation in the last decade. Findings suggest that culture has important effects on several aspects of negotiations, including planning, the negotiation process, information exchange, negotiation cognition, and negotiator perception of ethical behaviour.
Endnotes
1. Sebenius, 2002a.
2. Salacuse, 1988.
3. Phatak and Habib, 1996.
4. Brett, 2001, and Gelfand and Dyer, 2002.
5. See Avruch, 2000.
6. Rubin and Sanders, 1991; Sebenius, 2002b; Weiss, 2003.
7. Dialdin, Kopelman, Adair, Brett, Okumura, and Lytle, 1999.
8. Avruch, 2000; Sebenius, 2002b.
9. Rubin and Sander, 1991.
10. Adlar, 2002.
11. Janosik, 1987.
12. Foster, 1992; Hendon and Hendon, 1990; Moran and Stripp, 1991; Salacuse, 1998.
13. See Ohanya, 1999; Yook and Albert, 1998.
14. Thompson, 1990.
15. See Mayfield, Mayfield, Martin, and Herbig, 1997.
16. Salacuse, 1998.
17. See Kumar, 2004.

MULTIPLE PARTIES AND TEAMS

MULTIPLE PARTIES AND TEAMS
Multiple parties and teams negotiations can be defined as a situation where we have more than two parties working together to achieve collective goals or objectives. In this paper, we will highlights the nature of multiple parties and also show the dynamics changes that occur when group, teams, and task forces have to present individual views and come to a collective agreement about a problem, plan or future course of action.
THE NATURE OF MULTIPARTY NEGOTIATIONS
More than two parties.
Information and computational complexity.
Procedural complexity.
Strategic complexity.
Diverse opinion and preferences.
Collective decision making.
Conflict of interests.
Deliberations.
Susceptible to breakdown.
Conscious commitment.
Multiparty negotiation looks a lot like group decision making because it involves a group of parties trying to reach common solution in a situation where the parties’ preferences may diverge consequently, understanding multiparty negotiation means, in part, understanding the attributes of an effective group. The effective groups and their members do the following things:
Test assumptions and inferences.
Share all relevant information.
Focus on interests, not positions.
Be specific—use examples.
Agree on what important words mean.
Explain the reasons behind one’s statements, questions, and answer.
Disagree openly with any member of the group.
Make statements, and then invite questions and answer.
Jointly design ways to test disagreements and solutions.
Discuss undiscussable issues.
Keep the discussion focused.
Do not take cheap shots or otherwise distract the group.
Expect to have all members participate in all phases of the process.
Exchange relevant information with nongroup members.
Make decisions by consensus.
Conduct a self-critique.
MANAGING MULTIPARTY NEGOTIATIONS
Given the additional complexity that occurs in a multiparty negotiation, the most effective way to cope is to focus on the three key stages that characterized multiparty negotiations. The three key stages are:
PRENEGOTIATION STAGE:
Actual negotiation
And, managing agreement.
The prenegotiation stage: this stage is characterized by lots of informal contact among the parties. They tend to work on the following issues:
The participants
Coalitions
Defining group member roles
Understanding the costs and consequences of no agreement
Learning the issues and constructing agenda
Abide by a set of ground rules
THE FORMAL NEGOTIATION STAGE:
Appoint an appropriate chair
Use and restructure the agenda
Ensure a diversity of information and perspectives
Ensure consideration of all the available information
Manage conflict effectively
Review and manage the decision rules
Strive for a first agreement
Manage problem team members
MANAGING THE AGREEMENT:
Select the best solution
Develop an action plan
Implement the action
Evaluate the just-completed process
Most negotiation theory has been developed under the assumption that negotiation is a bilateral process—that there are only two focal negotiators or teams of negotiators opposing each other. Yet many negotiations are multilateral or group deliberations—more than two negotiators are involved, each with his or her own interests and positions, and the group must arrive at a collective agreement regarding a plan, decision, or course of action. From the above, we have been able to explore the dynamics of multiparty negotiation, the complex negotiation process, and the critical decision making process.
Endnote
Roy J. Lewicki, Bruce Barry, David M.Saunders: essential of negotiation (fourth edition)

RELATIONSHIP IN NEGOTIATION

RELATIONSHIPS IN NEGOTIATION
Up to this point, we have described the negotiation process as though it occurred between two parties who had no prior relationship or knowledge of each other, came together to do deal, and had no relationship once the deal was done. This is clearly not the way many actual negotiations unfold. Negotiations occur in a rich and complex social context that has a significant impact on how the process evolves. One major way that context affects negotiation is that people are in relationships that have a past, a present, and future.However, our focus will be on the ways these past and the future relationships impact present negotiations.furthermore, we know that negotiation is a discussion intended to produce an agreement relationship is “the meaning assigned by two or more individuals to their connectedness or coexistence.
KEY ELEMENTS IN MANAGING NEGOTIATIONS WITHIN RELATIONSHIPS
Reputation, trust, and justice are the three elements that become more critical and pronounced when they occur within a relationship negotiation.Thus, we will discuss how the effects of these elements become intensified in negotiations within relationships.
REPUTATION:
Your reputation is how other people remember their past experience with you. Reputation is the legacy that negotiators leave behind after a negotiation encounter with another party.” A reputation is a perpetual identity, reflective of the combination of salient personal characteristics and accomplishments, demonstrated behaviour and intended images preserved over time, as observed directly and/or as reported from secondary source.
TRUST:
Many of the scholars who have written about relationships have identified trust as central to any relationship. Daniel McAllister defined the word trust as an individual’s belief in and willingness to act on the words, actions and decisions of another.1 There are three things that contribute to the level of trust one negotiator may have for another: the individual’s chronic disposition toward trust (i.e. individual differences in personality that make some people more trusting than others); situation factors (e.g., the opportunity for the parties to communicate with each other adequately); and the history of the relationship between the parties.
JUSTICE:
The third major issue in relationship is the question of what is fair or just.Again, justice has been a major issue in the organizational sciences; individuals in organizations often debate whether their pay is fair, whether they are being fairly treated, or whether the organization might be maltreating some group of people. Justice can take several forms: and these include,
Distributive justice.
Procedural justice.
Interactional justice.
Finally, systemic justice.
RELATIONSHIPS AMONG REPUTATION, TRUST, AND JUSTICE
Not only are various forms of justice interrelated, but reputation, trust, and justice all interact in shaping expectations of the other’s behaviour. For example, when one party feels the other has acted fairly in the past or will act fairly in the future, he or she is more likely to trust the other. We would also predict that acting fairly leads to being trusted and also enhances a positive reputation. Conversely, when parties are unfairly treated, they often become angry and retaliate against either the injustice itself or those who are seen as having caused it. Unfair treatment is likely to lead to distrust and a bad reputation.6 trust, justice, and reputation are all central to relationship negotiations and feed each other; we cannot understand negotiation within complex relationships without prominently considering how we judge the other (and ourselves) on these dimensions.
Endnote
1. Daniel McAllister.1998.
2. Roy J.Lewicki, .Bruce Barry, David M.Saunders, .Essentials of Negotiation

ETHICS IN NEGOTIATION

ETHICS IN NEGOTIATION
In business negotiations, when is lying acceptable? To what extent should a negotiator withhold or exaggerate information? According to Anne Burr, there is a line fine between ethical and unethical tactics in negotiations.Exsisting law generally provides that the duty of good faith apply to the performance and enforcement of agreement not negotiations. The unscrupulous negotiators might take this as a license to behave unethically during negotiation. For as long as such behaviour is not out-and-out fraudulent; Burr however, argue that there is such a thing as a “reputation effort “and that a bad reputation ultimately deleterious.1 There is a fundamental question of ethical conduct which arises in every negotiation, but let’s examines what ethics in negotiations entails first.
Ethics are broadly applied social standards for what is right or wrong in a particular situation, or a process for setting those standards. They differ from morals which are individual and personal belief about what is right and wrong. Ethics grow out of particular philosophy, which purport to:
A. Define the nature of the world in ethic we live
B. And, prescribe rules for living together.
Different philosophies adopt distinct perspectives on these questions, which means in practice that they may to lead different judgement about what is right and wrong in given situation. The” hard work “of ethics in practice is figuring out how ethical philosophies differ to one and other, deciding which approaches are personally preferable, and applying them to real-world situations at hand. Our goal is to distinguish among different criteria’s or standards, of judging and evaluating a negotiator‘s actions, particularly when questions of ethics might be involved. Although negotiation is our focus, the criteria involved are really no different than what might be used to evaluate ethics in business generally. An ethical dilemma exist for a negotiators when possible actions or strategies put the potential economic benefits of doing a deals in a conflict with one’s social obligations to other involved parties or one’s broader community.
Most of the ethics issues in negotiations are concern with standard of truth telling—how honest, candid, and disclosing a negotiator should be. The attention here is more on what negotiators say, or what they say they will do, than on what they actually do. Some negotiators may cheat (violate formal and informal rules) or steal (break into the others parties database to secure confidential documents, but most of the attention in negotiators ethics has been on lying behaviour. Most negotiators would probably place a high value on a reputation for being truthful. Thus certain questions arise with regards to ethical conduct in negotiations; and these include:
Why do some negotiators choose to use a tactics that may be unethical?
Why you as the negotiators might use the same tactics?
What does being truthful mean?
Do you follow a clear set of rules?
Are deviations lies?
How does one define and classify deviations from the truth?
Is business bluffing ethical?
Questions and debate regarding the ethical standards for truth telling in negotiation are ongoing. As we pointed out earlier when we discussed interdependence, negotiation is based on information dependence—the exchange of information regarding the true preferences and priorities of the other negotiator.2arriving at a clear, precise, effective negotiated agreement depends on the willingness of the other patties to share accurate information about their own preference, priorities, and interests. At the same time, because negotiators may want to maximize their self-interests, they may want to disclose as little as possible about their positions. The dilemma of honesty in negotiation is that a negotiator who tells the other party all of his exact requirements and limits will, inevitably, never do better than his walk-away points.Sustainning the bargaining relationship means choosing a middle course between complete openness and complete deception.3however,as regards the subject of truth telling in negotiation, there is, beyond ethics, the matter of legal obligations to be truthful. Deception in negotiation can rise to the level of legality actionable fraud. The law on this subject is complex and often hard to pin down.4
In the preceding pages we discussed what ethics is and the fundamentals questions that arise concerning proper conduct in negotiations. Now we will turn discussions with regards to categories of marginally ethical negotiating tactics, why the use of deceptive tactics?Motives and consequences.
CATEGORIES OF MARGINALLY ETHICAL NEGOTIATING TACTICS
Traditional competitive
Emotional manipulation
Misrepresentation
Misrepresentation to opponent’s networks
Inappropriate information gathering
Bluffing
WHY DECEPTIVE TACTICS? MOTIVES AND CONSEQUENCES
Let’s start this discussion with motives, and motives inevitably begin with power. The purpose of using ethically ambiguous negotiating tactics is to increase the negotiator’s power in the bargaining environment.However; information is a major source of leverage in negotiation. Information has power because negotiation is intended to be a rational activity involving the exchange of information and the persuasive use of that information. One view of negotiation is that it is primarily an exchange of facts, arguments, and logic between two wholly rational information-processing entities.Often, whoever has better information, or uses it more persuasively, stands to “win” the negotiation. In fact, it has been demonstrated that individuals are more willing to use deceptive tactics when the other party is perceived to be uninformed or unknowledgeable about the situation under negotiation, particularly when the stakes are high.5
The motivation of a negotiator can clearly affect his or her tendency to use deceptive tactics. a person’s” motivational orientation”—whether negotiators are motivated to act cooperatively, or individualistically toward each other—can affect the strategies and tactics they pursue. Individualistic negotiators—those who are willing to maximize their own outcome, regardless of the consequences for the other—were more likely to use misrepresentation as a strategy. Cultural differences may also map onto motivational influences: there is the evidence that individual in highly individualistic culture are more likely to use deception for personal gain than those in a more collectivist culture.6 Other motives to behave unethically are, competitive or a cooperative motivational orientations.
THE CONSEQUENSES OF UNETHICAL CONDUCT
The negotiator who employs an unethical tactics will experience consequences that may be positive or negative, based on three aspects of the situation:
Whether the tactic is effective;
How the other person, his or her constituencies, and the audiences evaluate the tactics; and
How the negotiator evaluate the tactics
Explanations of justifications
When a negotiator has used an ethically ambiguous tactics that may elicit a reaction—as described above—the negotiator must prepare to defend the use of the tactic. The primary purpose of these explanations and justifications is to rationalize, explain, or excuse the behaviour—to verbalise some good, legitimate reason why this tactic was necessary. There is an increasing stream of research on those who employ unethical tactics and the explanations and justifications they may use to rationalize them. Some examples include.7
The tactic was unavoidable.
The tactic was harmless.
The tactic will help to avoid negative consequences.
DEALING WITH DECEPTIVE NEGOTIATOR
Ask probing questions
Force the other party to lie or back off.
“Call” the tactics
Discuss what you see and offer to help the other party change to more honest behaviour
Respond in kind
Ignore the tactics

As self-serving rationalizations for one’s own conduct, explanations allow the negotiator to convince others—particularly the victim—that conducts that would ordinarily be wrong in a given situation is acceptable. Explanations and justifications help people to rationalize the behaviour to them as well. but there is a risk: we surmise that the more frequently negotiators engage in this elf-serving process, the more their judgements about ethical standards and values will become biased, diminishing their ability to see the truth for what it is. The tactics involved may have been used initially to gain power in a negotiatin, but negotiators who use them frequently may experience a loss of power over time. These negotiators will be seen as having low credibility or integrity, and they will be treated accordingly as people who will act exploitatively if the opportunity arises. Good reputations are easier to maintain than to restore once damaged.
Endnotes
1. Ann Burr.M.2001.
2. Kelley and Thibaut, 1969.
3. Rubin and Brown, 1975.
4. ibid.
5. Boles, Croson, and Murnighan, 2000.
6. Sims, 2002.7. Bok, 1978.

LEADING PRODUCTIVE MANAGEMENT TEAMS

LEADING PRODUCTIVE MANAGEMENT TEAMS
As in all communication situations, communication purpose and strategy should come first in planning meetings. Given the dominance of meetings in business and how often people complain about them, leaders need to be able to plan and conduct effective, productive meetings. Doing so requires leadership communication skills, and is important in setting precedent for the rest of the organization.However, deciding whether meeting is the best forum for what a leader need to achieve is a very great task. Meetings need to be carefully planned to meet both your interests and the interests of the participants. The leader should think of the objectives of the meetings in advance and be clear about what the meetings is intended to achieve.
In deciding on a meeting, the company’s culture play a crucial role because this will determine the success or otherwise of the meeting. More so, the purpose for business communications which could be to inform, persuade or instruct will determine how well a meeting will achieve its set out goals.Thus,when there is something to communicate and considering a meeting, the overall purpose and objective of the meeting are the first things to be considered. The needs and preferences of the audience also need to be considered. Above all, the company’s culture will go a long way in determining what pattern to adopt in conducting a successful meeting. With all the above issue settled, then one can determine whether a meeting is the best forum for communication.
For a meeting to be productive, the necessary planning process must be conducted; and these include the following:
Clarify purpose and expected outcome.
Determining topics for the agenda.
Select attendees.
Determine the best setting.
Determine the best timing.
Establish needed meeting information.
CONDUCTING A PRODUCTIVE MEETING
Before the commencement of the meeting, announcement should be made of the decision making approach that the leader plan to adopt, clarify leader and attendee roles and responsibilities, and establish meeting ground rules. In addition, the meeting will be more productive if the attendees know and use common problem-solving tools.
In conducting a productive meeting, the following steps should be considered:
Decide on the decision making approach.
Clarify leader and attendee roles and responsibilities.
Establishing meeting ground rules.
Use common problem solving approach.
The common problem-solving approaches that work well in many types of problem-solving meetings are as follows:
1. Brainstoming.
2. Ranking or rating.
3. Sorting by category (logical grouping)
4. Edward de Bono’s six thinking Hats.
5. Opposition analysis.
6. Decision trees.
7. from/to analysis.
8. Force-field analysis.
9. The matrix.
10. Frameworks.
MANAGING MEETING PROBLEMS AND CONFLICTS
In every human relation, problems and conflict abound. A leader will able to stop or at least minimize most of the usual meeting problems and conflict by careful planning and by developing and enforcing ground rules.However,some issues may arise despite the best planning and meeting processes. All meeting leaders and facilitators must be prepared to handle problems in ways that will not interfere with the meeting objectives or these of the broader organization. The primary responsibilities of a meeting leader are to plan the meeting, provide the content, anticipate problems, and ensure process faciliation.Fulfilling the last responsibility may call for the use of a skilled facilitator facilitator primary’s objective is to ensure process problems do not interfere with the success of the meeting. Facilitators help to keep the meeting focused on the objectives and ensure redirection if it gets off track. Skilled facilitator should be preparing to:
Handle some of the common meeting problems.
Manage meeting conflict.
Deal with issues arising from cultural differences
When the common meeting problems turn into direct conflict, perhaps because of personality or factions within the group, facilitators may need to be more aggressive in their tactics. They must be prepared to manage the conflicts and the people involved before they interrupt meeting progress and in some cases even intrude into the overall working environment. Many approaches have been developed for managing conflict. One popular technique often used by negotiators calls on the individuals involved in the conflict to apply levels of assertiveness and cooperation. They can approach the problem by:
Competing.
Compromising.
Collaborating.
Avoiding.
Or, accommodating.
Any of the five modes may be used to allow a meeting to progress.However, collaborating is usually the best choice to manage meeting conflict because it calls on both sides to work together towards a common goal. Both sides can assert their points of view while still cooperating at a high level. Neither side feel as if it is losing anything; thus both sides feel as though they have won, which results in a much more positive atmosphere for meeting. Though compromising allows the meeting to continue as well, it is usually not a choice to use frequently or for long-term conflict. On the surface, a compromise seems to be a win for both sides, but the ability of both sides to assert their opinion is only moderate and the level of cooperation is moderate as well.Therefore, neither sides is likely to feel satisfied by the resolution; they will just accept it .if, however, a compromise is the only way to reach a resolution and will appease most of the group, it is better than the remaining three modes.
Competing, avoiding, and accommodation may be appropriate in certain situations, but they will usually only work as a short-term fix. In the competing mode one party wins, but the other loses.Thus,it frustrates the loser and even affects the others in the meeting as well since they may side with the loser or at least feel sympathy for his or her position.Avoidingis not an optimal approach since the problem is buried and both sides feel frustrated. Neither a side asserts the problems openly, nor does neither cooperate to achieve a solution. Avoiding the problem may work for a short time since it allow the meeting to continue; but in a longer meeting, or in an organizational cotext,avoiding problems will usually result in an explosion or sabotage somewhere down the line.
Finally, in most organizational contexts, accommodating is not a good approach as a long term solution since the level of assertiveness is so low that the conflicting parties may feel as if their opinion are not of value. This approach will allow a meeting to progress since the level of cooperation is high, which will mean the atmosphere of the meeting will not be negatively affected in the short term.also,in some cultural context, cooperation and avoiding conflict may be preferred. Anyone who has to be accommodating too often, however, will become resentful and may eventually withdraw from the group. Facilitators will find that they need to use all these modes at one or the another to keep the meeting moving toward their goal; however, all but collaboration—and, if manage right, compromise—are short-- term, quick fixes. If used over the long-term, they can lead to dissension within an organization or with teams or any group holding a series of meetings.
When considering the amount of time spent on business meetings, then one should conclude that meetings should be an avenue to solve most of the organizational problems.However,given the level of frustration and complains of attendees, then leaders should make a clear definitions of purpose and objectives of meetings a points importance in order for meetings to accomplish it goals.
Endnote
Deborah J.Barrett.

DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND CULTURAL LITERACY TO STRENGTHEN LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION

DEVELOPING EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND CULTURAL LITERACY TO STRENGHTEN
LEADERSHIP COMMUNICATION
Emotional intelligence and cultural literacy are necessary skills that allow a leader to interact with and lead others effectively, and the key to interacting with others and managing relationships successfully is communication.” the basis of any relationship is communication”. Without communication—be it body language, sign language, e-mail, or face-to-face conversation—there is no connection and hence no relationship. The importance of effective communication to your emotional intelligence is crucial, and its value in the workplace is incalculable”.1The need for keen emotional intelligence and cultural literacy become magnified when you interact with others in an organization, whether one-on-one, in groups, in meetings, or in teams; and it is this interaction that is the focus of the managerial ring of the leaders hip communication spiral. In the same vein, leaders need strong interpersonal skills and an understanding of and appreciation for cultural diversity. Without these skills, leaders cannot communicate with and manage others effectively. Interpersonal skills have gained recent recognition among business leaders under the name of “emotional intelligence”.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capacity to understand your own emotions and those of others. This understanding provides a foundation to understanding and appreciating cultural differences, called cultural literacy. Cultural literacy is referring to being literate and knowledgeable about the fundamental differences across culture. The definition of emotional intelligence suggest that it is begins with the ability to identify and manage emotion in oneself and in others, but it’s extend also to the ability to translate these emotions into actions that show flexibility, personal and social problem—solving ability. It implies that the action should have a positive impact on others.Hence, the first step toward emotional intelligence is self awarenss.According to Hendrie Wesinger, and he calls self awareness” the foundation on which all other emotional intelligence are built”2.And says self awareness is an ongoing process.
What is important to realize is that you can develop your emotional intelligence and by doing so improve your leadership communication ability, but you need to understand your strength and weakness first. To achieve this, psychological testing can be of great help to gain insight into ones behaviour and how you interact with others and also how others interact with you. The benefit from knowing oneself better and identify characteristics that may hinder one ability to interact effectively with others cannot be over emphazise.with this knowledge you can work towards modifying unproductive behaviour and perharps, at aminimum, understand better why others respond to you as they do.
The term”culture”has many meanings, some rather narrow, and others much broader. For instance, some think of culture as associated with levels of society or with nationality, or geography. For anthropologists, culture is much broader: it is “the way of life of people, or the sum of their learned behaviour patterns, attitudes, and material things.”3It is the way people make sense of and give meaning to their world. It is the frame of reference and the behaviour patterns of groups of people. It includes social characteristics as well as physical characteristics, gender, age, profession, organizational function, and company structure and style. Culture is not personality. Culture is learned and shared equally by others of the same culture whereas personality is highly individual and influenced by our genes and our environment.
Realising the value of culture differences is a key component of emotional intelligence. Only by understanding and appreciating cultural diversity can you know how best to communicate with all of the different audiences that form the complexion of most of the world’s corporations today. More and more businesses are international, multinational, or global. Technology has enabled cross-global communication and made working across time zones, geographies, and nationalities a given for most managerial jobs. In addition, companies seek diversity in order to compete, and leaders need to be better educated about culture to take the full advantage of the value diversity cultural literacy:”productive cross-cultural relationships require each individual to embark on a personal journey that initially can be even more frustrating than it is rewarding. Academic learning is useful, of course, but it is the direct knowledge accumulated in the day-to-day act of conducting business across cultures that is ultimately most meaningful. This is the kind of learning that allow people to understand not simply the surface signs of cultural differences...”4Few would argue that to understand culture fully, you must live it—breathing the air, speaking the language,exsisting as one with the people.
A number of frameworks exist to help individuals define and organize the most important cultural differences. It is difficult to cover all of the most universal categories in which to place all the possible cultural differences, but cultural framework can be highly useful to bring insight into cultural differences and to help us approach culture systematically and nonjudgmental. However, this framework shows the interdependence of variables, each crossing and interrelating with the other. These cultural variables are five in number; and they include:
Context.
Information flow.
Time.
Language.
And, power.
The above variables are important to and applicable across culture. They are the variables anthropologist most often use when making distinctions about culture.5Understanding each of them will provide you with a platform on which to begin your audience analysis and determine your strategy for communicating and interact effectively with people of other culture.
Lastly, a leader emotional intelligence and cultural literacy will affect the climate of the organization.tis is because “emotions are contagious”.6The leader’s emotional intelligence determines his or her successes as well as the company’s culture and perfofmance,and understanding cultural difference begins with emotional intelligence.




Endnote:
1. Weisinger, H. (1998).
2. ibid.
3. Morand, D.A. (fall 2001).
4. O’Hara-Devereaux and Johansen, R. (1989).
5. O’Hara-Devereaux and Johansen, R. (1994)
6. Gary, L. (2002): quoting Goleman.

DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING LEADERSHIP PRESENTATION

DEVELOPING AND DELIVERING LEADERSHIP PRESENTATION
The leader’s skills are most noticeable and visible to others when speaking, whether informally, with a few people around a conference room table, or formally, standing before a large group delivering a prepared presentation. Research has shown that most of the time managers spent in communication are spend on conversation or presentation. According to Eccles and Norah in their book beyond the hype: rediscovering the essence of management(1992)”through their speech and presentation, managers establish definition and meaning for their own actions and give others a sense of what the organization is all about,whereit is at, and what it is up to1.As managers move up in their organization, they become even more engaged with the public and they spend greater amount of their time in public speaking, whether internally to their employees or externally to the community. Leaders must master public speaking, becoming comfortable and confident in all kind of presentation situations so that they project a positive ethos for themselves and their companies.
However, with the combination of basic communication tools and techniques—determining the stategy,structuring communication coherently, and using language effectively--to the art of public speaking, managers will excel in the use of language to achieve succsess.furthermore,for managers to perform effectively, the following action steps should be examined. These action steps approach—called the three “p” process will provide the managers with the opportunity to move through each step strategically so that they can deliver any type of presentation with confidence.
PLANNING YOUR PRESENTATION
In planning for effective presentation, the first thing to consider is determining your strategy. These involve clear definition of the purpose of your presentations. Also, this can be supported by developing a communication strategy using the communication framework which include,cotext,messages,spokeperson,media,forum,timing,and audience. In presenting, as in writing, you first need to consider the context of your presentation. This is important because the whole idea of presentation rest on the context of the message. You also need to analyse your audience logically; the more you know about your audience, the more at ease you be in presenting to them. Timing is of great importance in presentation, this will help to determine if feedback is possible and how to obtain it.
In developing a strategy for a presentation, ability to choose from several options for the medium and the delivery method is of paramount. Recognizing the advantages and the disadvantages of each medium and delivery method will help in selecting the right one for each situation. The three commonly types of presentation methods found in business today include:
Round table presentations.
Stand-up extemporaneous presentations.
Impromptu presentations.

ESTABLISHING A LOGICAL AND EFFECTIVE PRESENTATION SRUCTURE
The organization or the structure of a presentation proceeds from the need and interest of the audience, your purpose and the demand of the subject matter. When you start to outline or map out your presentation, you will refer first to the analysis of your audience to determine the most effective structure-direct or indirect approach. As you map out you preliminary plans for the organization of the presesntation, in a speech the audience cannot go back and look at the proceeding message as they might in a document. You this need to make sure that each point is logically related to the ideas that proceed it and the information that follows, and that you use adequate ,even obvious, transitions from point to point.Also,use repetition more than you would in writing, particularly in the body and conclusion since an audience’s memory is short and attention span fleeting
PREPARING YOUR PRESENTATIONS.
After you have analyzed your audience, developed your communication strategy, and determine the overall structure, you are ready to start preparing the actual presentation. The preparation consists of developing the introduction, body, and the conclusion.
Introduction-the introduction to your presentation starts as soon as you stand up and start walking to the podium. Self carriage and confidence is very important because this will affect the audience view of you before you even start to speak. The next step is to arose the interest of the audience and create a positive atmosphere for the presentation. You can start with humour if it is appropriate to the occasion and you are absolutely sure it will not offend anyone. But preferably, you can start with a fact, or a quote. What you not want to do is joke about your subject or apologise for being unprepared, it destroys your credibility and diminishes everything that you say afterward. Above all, make your presentation concise and meaningful.
Body-the body of the presentation which usually account for 80%, should be concise and specifically focused. The effective presenter will follow a storyboard or similar outline or plan, judiciously selecting the main points and being careful not to overwhelm the audience with too much detail. Elaborate each main point with specific examples or explanations accompanied by graphics if appropriate. Care should be taking in graphic selection, know when they are appropriate and effective and when they are not.However, as discussed previously, the organization depends on your audience analysis and your communication strategy.
Presenting-when it come to presenting, you should concentrate on your delivery style. You want to appear confortable, enthusiastic, and professional. You should be prepared to establish your expertise and your value to the audience immediately and maintain that positive ethos throughout. For effective presentation, focus should be on:
Eye contact.
Stance and gesture.
Voice and speech patterns.
Ultimately, your ethos will determine the overall effect of your presentation. A leader must project a srong, positive ethos in all presentation situations. A leader‘s credibility, knowledge, and integrity must be without question or such leader will lose the audience no matter how logical the presentation may be. The best to project a positive ethos is to believe what you are saying and to be fully prepared. In the long run, for effective presentation, it requires poise and confidence.
Endnote
1. Eccles, R., and Nohria, N. (1992), beyond the hype: rediscovering the essence of management:
Boston: Havard Business School, pp 47-48.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS: step 4-5

THE RESEARCH PROCESS
(Theoretical framework and hypothesis development)
Earlier, the subject of our paper focused on the first three steps in research process-the broad problem areas, preliminary data gathering, and problem definition,however,step 4 and 5 which are theoretical framework and hypothesis development are intended to continue where the last 3 steps stopped.
Theoretical framework
The theoretical framework is the foundation on which the entire research project is based. It a logically developed, described, and elaborated network of association among the variables deemed relevant to the problem situation and identified through such processes as interviews, observations, and literature survey. Experience and intuition also guide in developing the theoretical framework. A good theoretical framework identifies and labels the important variables in the situation that are relevant to the problem defined. It logically describes the inter-connections among these variables. The relationships among the independent variables, dependent variables, and if applicable, the moderating intervening variables are elaborated.
The elaboration of the variables in the theoretical framework thus addresses the issue of why or how we expect certain relationship to exsist, and nature and direction of the relationships among the variables of interest. In sum, there are five basic features that should be incorporated in any theoretical framework.
1. The variables consider relevant should be identified and labelled in the discussion.
2. The discussion should state how two or more variables are related to one another. This should be done for the important relationships that are theorized to exist among the variables.
3. If the nature and the direction of the relationship can be theorized on the basis of the findings of previous research, then there should be an indication in the discussion as to whether the relationships would be positive or negative.
4. There should be a clear explanation of why we would expect these relationships to exsist.The argument could be drawn from the previous research findings.
5. A schematic diagram of the theoretical framework should be given so that the reader can see and easily comprehend the theorized relationship.
Since the theoretical framework offers the conceptual foundation to proceed with the research, and since a theoretical framework is none other than identifying the network of relationships among the variables considered important to the study of any given problem situation, it is essential to understand what a variable means and what the different types of variables are.
A variable is anything that can take on differing or varying values. The values can differ at various times for the same object or person, or at the same time for different object and person. Examples of variables are production unit, absenteeism, and motivation.
TYPES OF VARIABLES
Four main types of variables are discussed below:
The dependable variable: this is the variables of primary interest to the researcher.the researcher’ goal to understand and describe the dependent variables, or to explain its variability, or predict it.
The independent variable is one that influences the dependent variable in either positive or negative way. That is, when the independent variable is present, the dependent variable ids also present, and with each unit of increase in the independent variable, there is an increase or decrease in the dependent variable.
The moderating variable is one that has a strong contingent effect on the independent variable-dependent variable relationship. That is, the presence of a third variable (the moderating variable) modifies the original relationship between the dependent and the independent variables.
An intervening variable is one that surfaces between the times the independent variables start operating to influence the dependent variable and time their impact is felt on it. There is thus a temporal quality or time dimension to the intervening variable.
HYPOTHESIS DEVELOPMENT
A hypothesis can be defined as a logically conjectured relationship between two or more variables expressed in the form of testable statement. Relationships are conjectured on the basis of the network of association established in the theoretical framework formulated for the research study. By testing the hypothesis and confirming the conjecture, it is expected that solutions can be found to correct the problem encountered.
Statement of Hypothesis: Formats
As already stated, a hypothesis is a testable statement of the relationship among variables. A hypothesis can also test whether there are differences between two groups or among several groups with respect to any variable or variables. To examine whether or not the conjecture relationship or differences exsist, these hypothesis can be set either as propositions or in the form of if-then statements.
Examlpe: Employees who are healthier will take sick leave less frequently.
Example: If employees are healthier, then they will take sick leave less frequently.

TYPE OF HYPOTHESIS
Null
And, alternative hypothesis.


The managerial advantage of the theoretical framework and the hypothesis development is that it is easy for managers to follow the progression of research from the first stage when managers sense the broad problem areas, to preliminary data gathering, with the aid of experience and intuition. It is also clear that once the problem is identified, a good hold of the four different types of variables enlarges the understanding of managers as to how multiple factors impinge on the organization setting. Knowledge of how and for what purpose the theoretical framework is developed and the hypotheses are generated enables the managers to be an intelligent judge of the research report submitted by the consultant. Likewise, knowledge of what significance means, and why a given hypothesis is either accepted, helps the managers to persist in or desist from following hunches which, while making good senses, do not work. If such knowledge is absent, many of the findings through research will not make much sense to the managers and decision making will bristle confusion.
Endnote:
Uma Sekaran,fourth edition

THE RESEARCH PROCESS: step 1-3

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS RESEARCH
Technology in business refers to all hardware, software, and other communication aids that achieve the desire business result. To run a business, useful, timely, accurate, reliable, and valid data are needed. When data in their raw form are evaluated, analized, and synthesized, useful information becomes available to a manager that helps them make good business decision. Information gerethering, communication, and decision making go hand in hand. The information age has allowed managers to collect even voluminous data in a short time frame and make sound decision base on their analysis and interpretation. Technology has aid business in developing sophisticated methods of gathering, analysing, and synthesizing of information both from internal and external enmvironment.Technology has made it possible for business to make timely and efficient research vital to the survival of the companies. Commonly technologies in business research include the following:
The internet
Electronic mail
The intranet
Browsers
Websites
Some software used in business research include
Groupware
Neutral networks
CAM/CAD
Enterprise resource planning
Data analytic software programs
Emerging applications in technology include:
Handheld devices
Interactive voice technology,CD-ROM,and relational database
Digital whiteboard
Group video conferencing
Visual reality
Linkage of PCs to electronic devices
Information system and managerial decision making.
A s organization take on expanded functions and grow in size, it is important for them to be equipped with a good information system from which data can be accessed for analysis by executives and managers at different levels. Putting effective information system in place require careful architectural planning .computerized information systems enable the efficient operation of different subsystem in the organization inasmuch as information for any area such as finance,budget,plat maintenance,transportations,marketing,human resources, can be readily drawn by any department
TYPES OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Data warehousing
Mining
Operation research
Data warehousing: are aspects of information system. it can be described as a process of,exracting,transferring,and integrating data spread across multiple external data bases and even operating system, with a view to facilitate analysis and decision making
Data mining: This compliment the use of data warehousing. Using algorithms to analyse data in a meaningful way, data mining more effectively leverages the data warehousing by identify hidden relations and pattern in the store in it.
Operating research’s another sophisticated tools used to simplify and thus clarify certain types of complex problems that lend themselves to quantification. It is use s higher mathematics and statistics to identify, analyse, and ultimately solve intricate problems of great complicity faced by the managers. Other information systems include the following:
Management information systems (MIS)
The expert system
Decision support system
Executive information system
All of the above information systems are good decision making aids, but necessarily involved with data collection and analysis in the strict sense.
ETHICS IN HANDLING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
Although technology offers unbounded opportunities for organization and facilitates decision making at various level, it also impose certain obligations on the part of its users.First,it is important that the privacy of all individuals is protected, whether they are consumers,suppliers,employees,or others. In other words, businesses have to balance their information needs against the individual rights of those they come in contact with, and on whom they store data.Second,companies also need to ensure that confidential information relating to individuals is protected does not find its way to unscrupulous vendors and used for nefarious purposes.Third,care should be taking to ensure that incorrect information is not distributed across the many different files of the company.Forth,Those who collect data from the company should be honest, trustworthy and careful in obtaining and recording the data in a timely fashion. The responsibility of the organizations rest s in the fact that technology should go hand in hand with the ethical practices followed by their members as they pursue their daily ongoing business activities.
However, by using the wide variety of technologies available for solving problems of differing magnitude, executives, managers,and other entrusted with responsibility for result at various level of the organization can find solution to various chalengies.In this vain, technology in business is a veritable tool in contemporary business world, without which technology, most of the landslide success in business would not have been possible.
NOTE:
Uma Sekaran.

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS RESEARCH

COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY AND BUSINESS RESEARCH
Technology in business refers to all hardware, software, and other communication aids that achieve the desire business result. To run a business, useful, timely, accurate, reliable, and valid data are needed. When data in their raw form are evaluated, analized, and synthesized, useful information becomes available to a manager that helps them make good business decision. Information gerethering, communication, and decision making go hand in hand. The information age has allowed managers to collect even voluminous data in a short time frame and make sound decision base on their analysis and interpretation. Technology has aid business in developing sophisticated methods of gathering, analysing, and synthesizing of information both from internal and external enmvironment.Technology has made it possible for business to make timely and efficient research vital to the survival of the companies. Commonly technologies in business research include the following:
The internet
Electronic mail
The intranet
Browsers
Websites
Some software used in business research include
Groupware
Neutral networks
CAM/CAD
Enterprise resource planning
Data analytic software programs
Emerging applications in technology include:
Handheld devices
Interactive voice technology,CD-ROM,and relational database
Digital whiteboard
Group video conferencing
Visual reality
Linkage of PCs to electronic devices
Information system and managerial decision making.
A s organization take on expanded functions and grow in size, it is important for them to be equipped with a good information system from which data can be accessed for analysis by executives and managers at different levels. Putting effective information system in place require careful architectural planning .computerized information systems enable the efficient operation of different subsystem in the organization inasmuch as information for any area such as finance,budget,plat maintenance,transportations,marketing,human resources, can be readily drawn by any department
TYPES OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Data warehousing
Mining
Operation research
Data warehousing: are aspects of information system. it can be described as a process of,exracting,transferring,and integrating data spread across multiple external data bases and even operating system, with a view to facilitate analysis and decision making
Data mining: This compliment the use of data warehousing. Using algorithms to analyse data in a meaningful way, data mining more effectively leverages the data warehousing by identify hidden relations and pattern in the store in it.
Operating research’s another sophisticated tools used to simplify and thus clarify certain types of complex problems that lend themselves to quantification. It is use s higher mathematics and statistics to identify, analyse, and ultimately solve intricate problems of great complicity faced by the managers. Other information systems include the following:
Management information systems (MIS)
The expert system
Decision support system
Executive information system
All of the above information systems are good decision making aids, but necessarily involved with data collection and analysis in the strict sense.
ETHICS IN HANDLING INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY.
Although technology offers unbounded opportunities for organization and facilitates decision making at various level, it also impose certain obligations on the part of its users.First,it is important that the privacy of all individuals is protected, whether they are consumers,suppliers,employees,or others. In other words, businesses have to balance their information needs against the individual rights of those they come in contact with, and on whom they store data.Second,companies also need to ensure that confidential information relating to individuals is protected does not find its way to unscrupulous vendors and used for nefarious purposes.Third,care should be taking to ensure that incorrect information is not distributed across the many different files of the company.Forth,Those who collect data from the company should be honest, trustworthy and careful in obtaining and recording the data in a timely fashion. The responsibility of the organizations rest s in the fact that technology should go hand in hand with the ethical practices followed by their members as they pursue their daily ongoing business activities.
However, by using the wide variety of technologies available for solving problems of differing magnitude, executives, managers,and other entrusted with responsibility for result at various level of the organization can find solution to various chalengies.In this vain, technology in business is a veritable tool in contemporary business world, without which technology, most of the landslide success in business would not have been possible.
NOTE:
Uma Sekaran.

SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION

SCIETIFIC INVESTIGATION
Managers frequently face issues that call for critical decision making.thus; managers are responsible for the final outcome by making right decision. As mention earlier that research is an organized, systematic, data-based, critical, objective, scientific inquiry into a specific problem that needs a solution. Science which mean careful and logical approach when combine with research d through step-by-step logical, organized and rigorous method to identify the problem, gather data, analyze them, tend to yield the best desire result. In this manner research is not based on functions, experience and intuition, but is purposive and rigorous.
Scientific research is important and useful in many ways, because of the rigorous ways in which it is done. Scientific research enables all those who are interested in researching and about the same and similar issue to come up with comparable findings when data are analized.Scietific research also help the researchers to state their finding accurately and with confidence.furthemore,scientific research tends to be more objective than subjective, this helps various organization to apply those objective finding and solutions when they encounter problems.Moreso,the term, scientific research applies to both apply and basic research. Applied research may or may not be generalizable to other organization depending on the extent to which h differences exist in such factors as size, nature of work, characteristic of the employees, and structure of the organization. Yet, applied research also have to be an organized and systematic process where problems are carefully identify, data scientifically gathered and conclusion drawn in an objective manner for effective problem solving.However, organization do not always follow the rigorous step-by-step process because the problem may be so simple that it does not call for elaborate research and past experience might offer the necessary solution. Also sometimes, exigencies of time, unwillingness to expand resources needed, lack of knowledge, and other factors might prompt businesses to try to solve problems base on mental intelligence, though the probability of making wrong decision in such cases is high.
THE HALLMARKS OF SCIENTIFIC RESEACH
The hallmarks or the main distinguishing characteristics of scientific research are listed as follows:
Purposiveness
Rigour
Testability
Reliability
Precision and Confidence
Objectivity
Generalizability
Parsimony
I

OBTACLES TO CONDUCTING SCIENTIFIC RESEACH IN THE MANAGEMENT RESEACH
In the management and behavioural areas, it is not always possible to conduct investigations that are 100% scientific, in the sense that, unlike in the science, the results obtained will not be exact, and. This error-free. This primarily because of difficulties likely to be encountered in measurement and collection of data in the subjective areas of feelings, emotions, attitude, and perceptions. These problems occurs whenever we attempt to qualify human bahavior.Other obstacles include, difficulties in obtaining a representation sample, restricting the generalizability of the findings, difficulty in comparability, difficulty in consistency,etc.
DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION IN SCI9ENTIFIC RESEACH
Answers to issues can be found either by the process of deduction or the process of induction or by the combination of the two. Deduction is the process by which we arrive at a reasoned conclusion by logical generalization of a known fact. For example, we know that a reliable is usually trustworthy. If Ken is reliable then we conclude that he is highly trustworthy. Induction on the other hand is the process where we observe that certain phenomena, and on this basis arrive at conclusion. In other words, in induction we logically establish a general proposition based on observed facts. For instance, we see that research processes are important toward solving organization problems. We therefore conclude that research exists for problem solving purpose.
HYPOTHETICAL-DEDUCTIVE METHOD
Theories based on deduction and induction helps us to understand, explain, and or predict business phenomena. When research is design to test some outcome observation, for instance, problem identification, theoretical framework, formulation hypothesis, data, analysing the data, interpreting the data, and logically deducing from the result of the study is known as the hypothetical-deductive method. The seven of hypothetical-deductive methods include;
Observation
Preliminary information gathering
Theory formulation
Hypothesizing
Further scientific data collection
Data analysis
Deduction.
OTHER TYPES OF RESEACH
Action research: this sometimes undertaking by consultants who want to initiate change processes in an organization. In other words, action research methodology is most appropriate while affecting planned changes. Here, researchers begin with that is already identifying, and gather relevant data to provide tentative problem solution. This solution is then implemented, with that knowledge that there may be unintended consequences following such implementation. The results are then evaluated, defined, diagonized,and the research continue on an ongoing basis until the problem is fully resolved. Other types of research are:
Constituted panels
Organized groups
Observation panels
Projective techniques
And, interactive media
In conclusion, scientific investigations when duly employed, with it technologies, problem solving techniques sophisticated software packages, will aid today’s managers to face the ever challenging world and in better decision making.
Endnote
Uma Sekaran