Qualitative & Quantitative Designs - Essay Example

Qualitative and Quantitative Designs Introduction The dynamic nature of the business world has had a significant impact on organizational leadership roles. More specific, the objectives of non-profit organizations have been inhibited by problems that prevail across the entire business world. Business problems associated with leadership roles stem from the personnel in the highest level of the leadership hierarchy. The main problem affecting non-profit organizations is lack of proper communication.

However, all hope is not lost for such organizations. Implementing qualitative, quantitative, or both research designs enable the business problem to be dealt with in a pragmatic manner. Qualitative and Quantitative Research Design Both research designs are suitable for establishing how lack of communication is increasingly becoming a business problem within non-profit organizations. However, each approach has inherent strengths and weaknesses that make them suitable or not to solve the business problem.

Establishing the issue of miscommunication in non-profit organizations can be successful due to the strengths associated with the qualitative research design. Such a design gives insight and explores the significance of miscommunication as a business problem. For example, the article uses the grounded theory approach, which is a qualitative research design. It is evident that qualitative research design is holistic as it approaches the issue right from its stem to its effect on business performance.

It involves interviewing and reviewing the records held by the non-profit organization. The results are supported by the data obtained from interviews and observations. However, the method is quite broad. It covers a wide area and even includes items that have not been affected by the business problem. It takes a lot of time to research the issue at hand because the researcher had to formulate, test, and establish propositions until the problem is established. On the other hand, the quantitative research design successfully establishes the problem and dissects is cause and effect relationship.

In addition, the method allows relationships to be tested, hence it is objective. The method is time saving or reductionistic as it only test items that are affected. The aspects of business performance affected by miscommunication include high staff turnover and reduced corporate social responsibility functions. The method tests theories and employs statistical analysis of figures. However, the method is limited by the fact that it generalizes items in an attempt to establish the cause and effect relationship.

It might not be prudent to assume that miscommunication has a cause and effect relationship on all aspects of business performance. The two methods can be used in a combined approach to successfully deal with the business problem at hand. For example, the qualitative research design may precede the problem solving process because it adopts a holistic approach. Alternatively, the qualitative research design may be used to derive data to be scrutinized using the quantitative research design. However, the quantitative research design should never precede the problem solving process because some items critical to the business problem may be left out.