Program Overview

To be innovative, creative and hence efficient and productive organization, a certain ingredient is required. Organizational culture plays an invaluable role to achieve such goal. Many learning and development programs are available in the market with the direct objective to change organizational culture which in fact solves the symptoms yet leaving the fundamental problems unsolved. This program in hand, was designed to specifically boost a research culture within the organization which enables everyone within an organization to work in more structured yet innovative and creative environment. Organizations are always struggling to find the right calibers who not only do what was asked for to do, but also to initiate new ideas, and to challenge the current status. In other words, organizations are currently looking for different breeds who are following certain methodology in every single issue they do inside the organization to ensure not only quality work and up-to-standard output but also trustable and reliable results. Such skills are rare to find in our current staff who graduated from our educational system that never tackled such critical issue. Nevertheless, organizations are committed to develop its employees in different disciplines. This program will help organizations to develop the research and data analytics skills for its employees in order to boost the needed research culture for not only its growth but mainly for its survival.    

 

Content

This five-module Program was designed to be practical and results oriented in order to equip the participants with all necessary skills and tools for initiating, planning and implementing a business research task, assignment or project in different disciplines.

 

The five modules of the diploma are as follows:

 

Module 1: Research Initiation, Planning and Management | Asking the Right Question!

(15 hours)

This module will introduce different key issues and concepts related to: Research Definition and Scope, Problem Identification, Research Types, Research Process and Lifecycle, Stakeholder Analysis, Subject Matter Experts Interviews, Planning and Management.

 

During this module participants will be asked to think of current business issues that need to be understood, researched and solved, such as consumer/client reaction to the current product/service portfolio or to new product/service which will be introduced to the market, or research regarding a decision concerning closing a partnership deal with potential partner in or outside the country. Also research tasks can be related to internal problematic issues inside organization or even inside departments, such as HR, sales, operations, finance, marketing, etc ...

 

In this module (and the rest of modules) participants will work in group of 3 or 4 members. The outcome of this module is a tentative time plan for the task or the project that the group will agree upon.

 

Module 2: Data Collection Methods and Design | Quality Information is the Key!

(18 hours)

This module will mainly focus on the collection of the information and data needed to tackle the problem defined in module 1. During this module participants will be exposed to different methods of data collection and the rationale behind the selection of the right method. Meanwhile several key issues and concepts will be introduced such as, data types and scales, sampling selection and criteria, designing a survey (questionnaire), or interview, or focus groups etc., piloting the data collection instrument, linking the data to be collected to the research objective.

 

The outcome of this module is a further development of the project that started in module 1 including a design of the chosen data collection instrument.

 

Module 3: Data Analysis and Reporting | Make Sense out of it!                    

(24 hours)

After designing the data collection instrument in module 2, participants will need to understand the possible data analysis techniques and tools in order to process the collected data and information (during module 5) for the purpose of concluding the results. During this module a lot of quantitative and qualitative techniques and tools will be introduced with the focus on quantitative data analysis using a statistical software packages such as SPSS and/or Excel or other relevant statistical packages.

 

Descriptive and Inferential (parametric and/or non-parametric) techniques will be introduced, such as measures of central tendency of data, measures of variation and shape of the date. Moreover, graphical tools will be presented e.g. Histograms, scatter diagrams, bar and pie charts, etc. The concepts of probability theory and probability distributions and its application, whether continuous or discrete, will also be presented.

 

During this module also, participants will be introduced some knowledge about advanced techniques in data analysis, like multivariate techniques including linear and logistic regression, cluster and discriminant analysis, factor analysis etc.

The outcome of this module will be building on the outcome of module 2. Groups will update or modify the project on the light of the new knowledge they acquired during module 3 and specifying which data analysis techniques will be used relevant to the nature of the data to be collected.

 

Module 4: Skills and Ethics in Research | Findings can also lie and mislead!         

(8 hours)

This short module will open several discussions about very sensitive subject which is ethics in research and data analysis. There are several definitions for ethics in literature with a lot of agreements on one hand and criticism on other hand. Ethics in research touches many issues and corners along the whole research process starting by the initiation of the research through the data collection procedures till drawing the final conclusion.

 

This module will take the form of seminar, which will involve the participation of all groups to conduct presentation about subjects (based on own choice) related to ethics in research and also related to skills and competencies needed for researcher in business.

 

Module 5: Final Project | Build the Big Picture!                                                   

(20 hours)

During this module all groups will implement the planned project by collecting the data and by performing data analysis tasks in order to reach a conclusion.

 

All groups will present their project in the class. Each group will have one hour to show their own case and defend it in front of their colleagues and the instructor.

 

Key Benefits

Upon the completion of the program you will gain:

·         The knowledge about the decision making process.

·         Comprehensive learning experiences on how to conduct a business research project from planning to drawing the conclusion.

·         Intensive hands-on exposure to the know-how of asking the right question, and finding the answer.

·         The needed technical skills and tools to successfully perform a research and analyze data.

 

Participants’ Profile

Since this program was designed to build a research culture inside organizations, all levels in the organization are welcome and encouraged to attend this program. Not to forget, the bottom line is, in future the organization talks same language. Therefore, this program is not only recommended for executives whose jobs involve decision making and problem solving issues but also recommended for everyone whose job requires knowledge creation via collecting and analyzing data, such as marketing, sales, business development, operations, finance, etc.