How Is the Internet and Social Media Changing the Way We Learn in Work Place - Research Proposal Example

Research Proposal: How is the internet and social media changing the way we learn in work place? This research proposal is based on the study of the influencing factor of internet and social media on the work place learning. This proposal contains the detailed literature review on the past studies and findings on the impact of internet and social media. The literature review will give a clear idea about the background of the research and the studies made and conclusions made so far relating to the research topic. This proposal also covers the research methodology that gives a clear insight on how the researcher will make his approach on the research work and how it is relevant for answering the research questions. Table of Contents Research Aims and Objectives 4 Literature Review 4 Research Methodology 7 Research Design 7 Sampling 8 Data Collection 8 Ethical issues 9 Implications of the Research and its Relevance 9 Time Scale 11 Reference List 12 Research Question The advent of internet and social media has drastically changed the way we interact with people and the way we gather information. The gradual rise of internet usage has made it easier for us to have access to critical information, which otherwise would take much longer to gather (Vitez, 2015). The internet and social media has also influenced our work culture and workplace learning. The research question pertaining to this research work is stated below. How the internet and the social media have changed the way we learn in work place? In which direction is the trend of social media and internet heading in terms of workplace learning? Research Aims and Objectives The aims and objectives concerning this research work are to unearth the influence of internet and social media on work place learning. This research work also try and find out the determining factors behind the changing trend of organizational behaviour under the influence of internet and social media along with the future trends of the work culture relating to internet and social media. It will also find out how the employees respond to the changing trend of learning in work place and whether or not there are any changes that need to be made within the organizational practices. The aims also include providing a generic recommendation for the firms on how to redirect the usage of internet and social media in favour of the organization and its employees. Literature Review According to the reports of Internet World Stats (2015), the global internet usage has increased drastically over the last decade. This as a result has changed the way people used to access information and connect to peers. The way we interact with others has also been influenced largely by the advent of the internet and social media. It has virtually reduced the distance between people and has made the world a more open place. These evolutions in technology have also influenced the way we work. Internet has drastically changed the organizational policies and the way the activities are conducted. According to (Manyika and Charles Roxburgh, 2011), the internet is widely used among almost all the organizations to seamlessly commence business activities. It has changed the way the employees communicate with each other and with the employer. Internet has virtually changed the way the organizational communication takes place. It has made communication across the hierarchy easier thereby allowing the firms to seamlessly monitor and guide the employees. Simultaneously, it has also allowed the employees to easily give feedback and communicate issues with his supervisors. Murphy and Levy (2006) stated that the extensive usage of email communication has brought several positive changes in the organization. The rise of email communication among the firms has allowed the employer to extend the working premises beyond the traditional organizational boundaries. Hyder, (2014) have added that internet has enabled the employees to gain easy access to organizational data while not being at his work place. Internet has also made it possible for several organizations to successfully implement knowledge management system (KMS) within the firms. The KMS has revolutionized the way an employee learns in an organization. Unlike tradition methods of face-to-face knowledge dissemination, the online KMS allows the employees to have access to the organizational data by accessing the knowledge database of the company (Copperman et al, 2004). This as a result, allows the employees to learn at his convenience and the same time it also save the precious time of the organization. Hart (2015) have mentioned that the rise of social media has largely changed the way formal communication takes place. Social media websites has allowed the employees to easily connect to each other at a personal level which in turn makes knowledge sharing easier. Several organizations maintain their own social media portal which allows the employees to create community of practice where the users can discuss and share their experiences with fellow colleagues. This as a result, helps the employees in their learning process, thereby improving their individual productivity. Organizational portals also help the managers to guide their subordinates in a more time and resource efficient way and at the same time it also helps them to make proper monitoring of the employees’ activities in the organization (Wallace, 2004). According to Hyder (2014), social media has helped to build strong relationships among employees. They can easily communicate with each other at a personal level, which as result improves team building and sharing organizational knowledge. The social media has helped the organizations to foster collective intelligence where it is capable of harnessing the experience and skills of the entire workforce to address certain issues. It also increases the transparency within the organizations and helps the employees to get a clear image of the fellow colleagues’ contribution. Social media also acts as a medium of fostering public relations. Social media has helped the employees to gather data on consumer behaviour and design marketing strategies accordingly (Hart, 2015). Awolusi (2012) have mentioned that a lot of organizations have developed the Enterprise Social Networks that act as an informal network that allows the employees to work collaboratively. The high levels of collaboration and employee engagement allows the individuals to increase their efficiency and reduce the room for errors. Enterprise Social Networks also enhances the knowledge management of the company, where increase in communication level among the employees helps them to conduct knowledge sharing in a wide range. However, Dabbish and Kraut, (2006) have contrasted that the high levels of integration of internet and social media have also put certain negative influences on the employees and their learning process. The widespread use of email communication has reportedly increased the stress level of the employees. The ability of the supervisors of being able to communicate with the subordinates at any time of the day has virtually increased their working hours. This is responsible for disrupting the work life balance of the employees thereby increasing the work related stress. Work place learning through knowledge management system often leads to poor knowledge dissemination. The KMS is mostly dependent on its users to share organizational data with the colleagues (King and Marks, 2008). In most cases, the employees are busy with their daily work schedule and do not feel the necessity to share information with others. Thus, being completely dependent on the KMS for employee learning may not be a viable idea for the firms. Moreover, informal social media sites like Facebook may give the employer access to information of the personal life of the employees. This can be easily exploited by the higher authority. Awolusi (2012) further mentioned that the utility of the Enterprise social networks in terms of organizational benefits is quite ambiguous. Although it allows the employees to collaborate with each other, but at the same time it also gives a platform to them for engaging in grapevine. Hart (2015) have stated that the social media has the ability to change the organizational culture of a firm. Before the inception of the internet and social media, the employees in an organizations need to sit together to discuss on a particular topic or issues. The nitration internet has reduced the face to face communication of the employees. Tardanico (2012) opined that the reduction of face to face communication has also reduced the level of personal communication among the employees. The employees working together on a project may have hardly met with each other. This as a result decreases the team spirit thereby leading to reduced organizational productivity. Thus, the advent of internet communication may have made it easier to interact between individuals at workplace but it has also reduced the team spirit due to the severe lack of face to face communication. Research Methodology The research methodology gives a clear insight on how the particular research work will be conducted. It will highlight the details of the steps and processes taken by the researcher for completing the research work. The steps include research design, sampling technique, data collection and handling ethical issues. The research methodology also gives a clear idea about how the research objectives are met by answering the research questions (Kothari, 2008). Research Design The research design is focused on the steps that the researcher has followed to answer the research questions. It covers the data collection procedures and the sources from where they will be collected. This research work will be based on both secondary and primary data. The secondary data will help the researcher to gather case studies on the impact of social media and internet on our daily lives. Researcher will be able to gather historical data and the past trends of the work culture and learning in workplace. It will also give a clear insight on how the internet and the social media have changed the work culture in the past five years. The primary data will help the researcher to get information about the current trend of work place learning and organizational culture influenced by the rapid growth of internet and social media. This will help the researcher to make a contrasting study and find out the current pattern of changes in the organizational culture pertaining to work place learning. By comparing the secondary data with the primary data, the researcher will be able to clearly point out the future implications of social media and internet. Moreover, it will also help to justify and ensure the validity of the primary data and find out any loopholes in the existing perceptions of the influence of internet and social media. This research work will be conducted by using a deductive approach, where the researcher will try to deduce a conclusive statement from the gathered data which is in line with the research objectives (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009). The researcher will also ensure that all the final statements made in this research work have been properly justified by the gathered data, thereby ensuring the research work’s authenticity and legitimacy. Finally, the information gathered from the data analysis will be used to design a recommendation that can be utilized by firms so that they can make desired changes in their firms and from the academic perspective as well. Sampling The sampling is selecting a group of people from the population from whom the primary data is collected (Roger, 2009). The sampling conducted for this research work will be based on convenience sampling. This will allow the researcher to focus on the desired group of the population so that the relevance of the gathered data can be increased. The data will be collected from 40 respondents. Data Collection The data collection acts as the foundation on which the entire research work is based on. The data collection process can be divided based on the data sources into two types, primary and secondary data collection. The primary data can be collected directly from the respondents either by using a questionnaire or by conducting a face to face interview. The secondary data on the other hand is collected from previously published data of other authors. The data collected from their study is utilized to conduct a study on a different perspective. The necessary information required for the research work is gathered by the process of data collection. It is imperative to ensure that the data collection has been done properly to maintain the authenticity of the research work (Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, 2009; Leavy and Hesse-Biber, 2010). The researcher will gather both primary and secondary data for this research work. The primary data will be collected from 40 respondents by using an online questionnaire. The researcher will approach different professional individuals working on multinational or domestic firms. He will also ensure that the sample group is as homogenous as possible. This will be achieved by approaching individuals from different industries. This as a result will give the researcher clear information on whether or not the influence of internet and social media varies across different industries. The secondary data will be collected from relevant journal articles, books and internet publication. The researcher will make sure that the sources of the data are authentic and that the journals are peer reviewed. The internet articles will be collected from authentic websites. All the data will be collected based on the research topic and it will be ensured that all the data collected are not older than the year 2005. This will maintain the relevance of the gathered data. The collected data will be qualitative in nature and will be measured in a Likert scale. This will help the researcher to easily analyse the perception of the respondents regarding the influence of internet and social media on work place learning. Ethical issues Almost every academic researcher is faced with certain degree of ethical barriers (Leedy and Ormrod, 2012). However, the researcher will ensure that this research work has been conducted in an ethical manner. He will make sure that it has been conducted by following all the rules and regulations of the university and that there will be no plagiarism involved. The entire research work will be conducted by the researcher himself and he will not take any unethical help. Moreover, during the data collection procedure the researcher will not force any respondents to participate in the survey process. A situation can arise where some respondents may not reveal information regarding their organizational practices, or it may be in their organizational policy to keep internal information confidential. In such cases, the researcher will not force any respondent to give up the required information. He will also ensure that the data is not manipulated in any way to meet the desired result. Implications of the Research and its Relevance This research work will provide a relevant background of study for the academic readers and the business firms as well. The rapid growth of internet and social media has made it a significant subject for study and its influence on the work culture is also quite noteworthy as it has been mentioned in the literature review. On this context, it can be mentioned that this research topic will be useful for the studying the current trend and influence of internet and social media on workplace learning. It will help the firms to understand the positive and negative influences of internet and social media on workplace leaning. As a result, they will be able to leverage the positive influences and selectively remove the negative ones. The academic readers can also utilize this research work as a secondary data source for their research works. It will give them an opportunity to learn about the evolving trend of the work culture and the work place learning and how it is being influenced by the internet and social media. The recommendation proposed by the researcher can be utilized by the firms to leverage the usage of internet and social media in favour of organizational success. Time Scale Activities Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Topic selection Developing research methodology Collecting secondary data Collecting primary data Analysis and Findings Drawing Conclusion and Recommendation Final Submission Reference List Awolusi, F. 2012. The Impacts of Social Networking Sites on Workplace Productivity. The Journal of Technology, Management, and Applied Engineering. 28(1). Copperman, M., Angel, M., Rudy, J. H., Huffman, S. B., Kay, D. B. & Fratkina, R. 2004. System and method for implementing a knowledge management system. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Dabbish, L. A., & Kraut, R. E. 2006. Email overload at work: an analysis of factors associated with email strain. In Proceedings of the 2006 20th anniversary conference on Computer supported cooperative work. pp. 431-440. Hart, J. 2015. Social media and its impact on workplace learning. [online] Available at: http://c4lpt.co.uk/resources/social-learning-handbook/social-media-and-its-impact-on-workplace-learning/. Accessed 2nd April 2015 Hyder, S. 2014. Organizational Culture In The Digital Age. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/shamakabani/2014/06/10/organizational-culture-in-the-digital-age/>. Accessed 2nd April 2015 Internet World Stats. 2015. Internet Growth Statistics. [online] Available at: http://www.internetworldstats.com/emarketing.htm. Accessed 2nd April 2015 King, W. R., & Marks, P. V. 2008. Motivating knowledge sharing through a knowledge management system. Omega, 36(1), pp. 131-146. Kothari, C. 2008. Research methodology: methods and techniques. 5th ed. New York: Leadership Press. Leavy, P., & Hesse-Biber, S. N. 2010. The Practice of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage Publications. Leedy, P. D., & Ormrod, J. 2012. Practical Research: Planning and Design. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Person Education. Manyika, J., & Charles Roxburgh, C. 2011. The great transformer: The impact of the Internet on economic growth and prosperity. [online] Available at: http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/high_tech_telecoms_internet/the_great_transformer. Accessed 2nd April 2015 Murphy, M., & Levy, M. 2006. Politeness in intercultural email communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 12, pp. 1-11. Roger, T. 2009. Survey methodology. 6th ed. New York: Wiley. Saunders, M. N., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A. 2009. Research methods for business students. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Tardanico, S. 2012. Is Social Media Sabotaging Real Communication? [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/susantardanico/2012/04/30/is-social-media-sabotaging-real-communication/. Accessed 2nd April 2015 Vitez, O. 2015. The Effect of the Internet on Modern Businesses & Corporations. [online] Available at: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/effect-internet-modern-businesses-corporations-896.html. Accessed 2nd April 2015 Wallace, P. 2004. The Internet in the workplace: How new technology is transforming work. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Read More