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The Broad Problem Area: Causes and Not Symptoms of These Causes

1. A problem can indicate an area of interest where improving a situation, rather than necessarily rectifying something wrong. It exists when there is a gap between actual and desired states. 2. Managers may encounter problems like high staff turnover, imperfect assessment tools, lack of minority career advancement, underused information systems, and issues with flexible work hours. 3. Identifying the root cause, rather than surface symptoms, is critical to solving problems. The "5 Whys" technique asks why repeatedly to uncover the deepest causes. For example, high turnover may stem from lack of job motivation, which relates to limited work control.

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104 views2 pages

The Broad Problem Area: Causes and Not Symptoms of These Causes

1. A problem can indicate an area of interest where improving a situation, rather than necessarily rectifying something wrong. It exists when there is a gap between actual and desired states. 2. Managers may encounter problems like high staff turnover, imperfect assessment tools, lack of minority career advancement, underused information systems, and issues with flexible work hours. 3. Identifying the root cause, rather than surface symptoms, is critical to solving problems. The "5 Whys" technique asks why repeatedly to uncover the deepest causes. For example, high turnover may stem from lack of job motivation, which relates to limited work control.

Uploaded by

J lodhi
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Lecture 4

The Broad Problem Area


Sekaran and Bougie (2016) contend that a “problem” does not necessarily mean that something is seriously
wrong with a current situation that needs to be rectified immediately. A problem could also indicate an
interest in an issue where finding the right answers might help to improve an existing situation. Thus, it is fruitful
to define a problem as any situation where a gap exists between an actual and a desired ideal state.
Below is a list of problems that a manager might encounter in the work setting.
Examples of Problems
1. Long and frequent delays lead to much frustration among airline passengers. These feelings may
eventually lead to switching behaviour, negative word‐of‐mouth communication, and customer
complaints.
2. Staff turnover is higher than anticipated.
3. The current instrument for the assessment of potential employees for management positions is imperfect.
4. Minority group members in organizations are not advancing in their careers.
5. The newly installed information system is not being used by the managers for whom it was primarily
designed.
6. The introduction of flexible work hours has created more problems than it has solved.
7. Young workers in the organization show low levels of commitment to the organization.

Problems versus symptoms of problems


It is very important that symptoms of problems are not defined as the real problem. For instance, a manager
might have tried to decrease employee turnover (the best people are leaving the organization) by
increasing wages, but with little success. Here the real problem may be something else such as the low
motivation of employees who feel they do not have enough control over their work. The high turnover rate
may merely be a symptom of the deep‐rooted motivational problem. Under these conditions, in the long
run, a higher salary will not affect employees’ intentions to leave. Thus, finding the “right” answer to the
“wrong” problem definition will not help. Hence, it should be recognized that correct problem identification
is extremely critical for finding solutions to vexing issues. Frequently, managers tend to describe the problem
in terms of symptoms. Rather than accepting it as such, the researcher needs to identify the problem more
accurately. One way of determining that the problem, rather than the symptom, is being addressed is a
technique called “5 Whys” or “5 Times Why”. 5 Whys is a fairly straightforward approach that will help you
(the researcher) to get to the root cause (the most basic cause) of a problem (via preliminary research).
Developed by the Japanese industrialist Sakichi Toyada, the idea is to keep asking “Why?” until the most
basic cause is arrived at. Let’s go back to our example to illustrate this approach. My best employees are
leaving the organization.
Why? Because they are not satisfied with their jobs.
Why? Because they do not find a challenge in their jobs.
Why? Because they do not have control over their work.
Why? Because they do not have a lot of influence over planning, executing, and evaluating the work they
do.
Why? Because we have been reluctant to delegate.
Please note that the number of “Why ?” do not have to be exactly five. This is a general guideline for the
number of whys needed to get to the root cause level, but asking “Why?” five times versus three, four, or six
times is not a strict requirement. What matters is that we investigate recurring problems by addressing true
causes and not symptoms of these causes.
What is further required is to transform the broad problem into a feasible topic for research (Sekaran and
Bougie, 2016) by
a) making it more specific and precise and by
b) setting clear boundaries and by selecting a
c) perspective from which we investigate the subject
Bringing clarity and focus to the problem
The “secret” to bringing clarity and focus to your problem is to isolate the key ideas in the first version of the
problem statement. A broad, first statement of the problem often includes several words and/or phrases
that need definition. Check out the following problem statement:
“Minority group members in organizations are not advancing in their careers.”
To identify the key terms in your problem statement, look for the subjects (careers), verbs (advancing), and
objects (minority group members) in your statement.
Definitions of key terms must be precise in order to identify the subject of the research and to gain access to
relevant academic literature. Precise definitions will allow you to explore the literature. The literature review
will help you to refine your research objective(s) and research questions and thus to develop a feasible
topic for research.

How the selection of an academic perspective will help us to narrow down our research
Consider the following problem: “Long and frequent delays lead to much frustration among airline
passengers. These feelings may eventually lead to switching behaviour, negative word-of-mouth
communication, and customer complaints.” Preliminary research on this issue suggests that service waiting
times are typically controlled by two techniques: operations management, to decrease actual, objective
waiting times (perspective 1) and management of perceptions, that will help service providers to manage
the customers' subjective waiting experience (perspective 2). The selection of a particular academic
perspective on the problem (for instance, management of perceptions in the foregoing example of long
and frequent delays) provides us with a vast body of knowledge that will help us to shape our own thinking
and spark valuable insights on the problem under study.
So it is necessary to transform (narrow down) a broad management problem into a feasible topic for
research. Preliminary information gathering (or preliminary research) will help us to make the necessary
transformations. The figure below shows the three initial stages of the research process and illustrates how
we get from a broad management problem to a feasible topic for research. Note that this process is not
linear; in the beginning of our project we will have to move back and forth between preliminary research
and (re)defining the problem.

Figure: Three important first steps in the research process

Defining the Problem


In the early stages of the research process you will have to spend time alternating between preliminary
research (e.g., a first review of the literature) and (re)defining the problem statement. Until you have
developed a first tentative problem statement you cannot decide what information is useful. However, the
awareness and understanding of current work and viewpoints in the subject area may change your
perspective on what the problem is and encourage you to refine the problem statement; a more refined
problem statement may trigger the need to collect further information which may inspire you to reframe the
problem statement again and again.

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