Problem Statement
What paradigm/onto-epistemology are you situating your research in? Describe some of the philosophical assumptions related to:
• Nature of Reality
Crotty (1998) writes of reality and constructionism, that it "is contingent upon human practices being constructed in and out of the interaction between human beings and their world, and developed and transmitted within an essentially social context" (p. 42). As this study is focused on how new employees interact with their new world or new organization, and how they express what is happening in their interactions with that organization and the people within the organization, the nature of reality that this study proposes to follow is fundamentally one of social construction.
This, according to Pascale (2011) is what makes up a world view of research with an interpretivism mindset, those researchers who are "committed to the philosophy of social construction" (p. 22). As Creswell and Poth (2018) write about social constructivism and the nature of reality associated with that framework, "multiple realities are constructed through our lived experiences and interactions with others" (p. 35).
• Values
The values that make up a part of this study is that people will inherently know whether or not they are constructing a life or reality that is harmonious with their own values and principles. This is in line with the concept of values fit theory, meaning that employees seek organizations whose values match their own and that this will lead to a more beneficial working environment for the worker. This study attempts to study the phenomenon of what occurs to newly hired workers within a specific industry, a framework based on interpretivism, one that as Jones et al. (2014) citing Crotty (1998) writes, "seeks to take participants and researchers to a deeper understanding of a phenomenon by uncovering aspects that have been hidden" (p. 17) will be followed. understand the lived experiences of n of a specific phenomenon within the energy industry,
• Relationship between researcher and participant
In other studies of this type, Creswell and Poth (2018) explain that "researchers recognize that their background shapes their interpretation, and they "position themselves" in the research to acknowledge how their Interpretation flows from their own personal, cultural, and historical experiences. Thus, the researchers interpret what they find, an interpretation shaped by their own experiences and background" (p. 24). The relationship between the participants and the researcher in this specific study will be one of an insider who has experienced many of the same challenges the participants will face will have been faced by the researcher years before and who is working to discover what challenges remain in the environment, or in what ways the challenges that employees face in the energy industry might be evolving. The primary researcher and the secondary researchers all have a deep understanding of the energy industry having worked with and in the energy industry contracting community for many years. This understanding, hopefully, will provide greater insight and empathy for the employees, which may lead to a deeper understanding, but could also lead to confirmation bias and thinking within a silo.
• Nature of Truth
Jones et al (2014) write about the nature of truth for studies that follow a post-positivist epistemology that the research sees truth as sometimes ambiguous. This implies that there are times when results can be predicted based on variables and what might have been noted before. However, as this study is also focusing on a social constructionist epistemology, Jones et al state that the findings from the participants in this study could be individualistic as well. The participant's own lived experiences and the way they interpret those experiences, combined with how they express those experiences, and the researcher's views will make up how the experiences are analyzed and interpreted.
• Purpose of Research
The purpose of this research is to help understand the contracting learning community that HASC serves. HASC offers classes for new employees entering the energy industry and by understanding the nature of the challenges they face at their hiring organizations, HASC can be more able to guide these employees through training and courses that might help them overcome the challenges that are identified through this research. Additionally, as HASC is a non-profit association that exists for contracting organizations, there is the potential that this study could help influence the hiring practices of these organizations which could then in turn lead to decreased recruiting and onboarding costs, and increase the safety standards of the organizations. A lower turnover rate among employees, especially new-to-the-industry employees, leads to an organization with an employee base with more experience. A lack of experience leads to confusion and potentially a greater number of safety issues. This study could potentially help decrease the number of accidents that contracting organizations absorb as well as decrease recruiting and onboarding costs.
• View of Knowledge/Knowledge Claims
This study will follow a more constructionist epistemology. The knowledge claims that are a part of this philosophy of research are generally, according to Jones et al (2014) based on the individual's or the participant's own lived experiences. Additionally, there are aspects of interpretivism throughout this research, and as Jones et al. (2014) write that this belief system generally relies on the idea that "knowledge claims that need to be verified by a structured process" (p. 21). This study will analyze responses from multiple participants through multiple interviews. That process will include the fact:
- Each interview is conducted using a standard set of questions and will occur at roughly similar times in the participant's hiring and working lives.
- Interviews will be transcribed from a recording that will be used to capture each participant's interview.
- Notes and transcriptions of the interviews were read and flagged for themes ranging from: (a) job security, (b) personal and family life, (c) leader-member exchange, (d) recruiting and hiring review.
However, following along with a constructionist view that knowledge is built and constructed by the participant's view, the participant's story of their being hired, and their lived experience, and following along with a view based on interpretivism, that these lived experiences of being hired and onboarding and being work, and how the participants perceive that lived experience, how they express it, and how they interpret it, then how the researcher interprets it, all make this study more valuable and follow both frameworks.
Theoretical Perspectives
What larger theoretical perspectives position your work? Provide a brief overview/description
Creswell (2007) describes phenomenology as “the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon” (p. 62). The phenomenon of being recruited, hired, onboarded, trained, and introduced to a new job and organization is a distinct phenomenon for many new employees in the energy industry that HASC supports. Although phenomenology can be considered both a theoretical perspective as well as a methodology, as Creswell (2007) points out that "beyond these procedures, phenomenology has a strong philosophical component to it" (p. 58). Researchers using this framework, Creswell continues, must "reflect on essential themes, and what constitutes the nature of the lived experiences" (p. 59) for the participants and for the whole of the study that takes part within the phenomenon.
Citing Stewart and Mickunas (1990) Creswell (2007) continues about phenomenology as a theoretical framework that it is "a philosophy without presuppositions. Phenomenology's approach is to suspend all judgments about what is real – the "natural attitude" – until they are founded on a more certain basis" (p. 58). This suspension of reality on the part of the researcher, the opportunity for the researcher to wait to hear from the participants about how they describe and construct their reality in terms of that distinct phenomenon, is very similar to the ideas that make up constructionism, where reality is a construction of what others see and how they process it. Finally, writing on phenomenology more, Creswell states that researchers "reflect on essential themes, what constitutes the nature of this lived experience" (p. 59) and that "phenomenology is not only a description but it is also seen as an interpretive process in which the researcher makes and interpretation" (p. 59) of the participants lived experiences and the meaning for them and their research.
The intent behind this study is to not only capture and understand the tides that influence both hiring and onboarding of contractors in the energy industry but to determine whether or not they are hired with values fit in mind, and whether or not that values fit leads to higher turnover, but this study must also work to understand these themes through the lens of the participants. The participants are selected from a pool of inexperienced workers who are new to the industry. Entering a new industry and starting a new job can be worrisome and add pressure on the participants. Many of these participants will be family members with active social and personal lives that will also interfere with how they interact with their jobs. All of this must be a part of the interpretation that the researcher must use to filter the experiences and analyze the results. Finding meaning will be the chore of both the participants and the researcher who as Creswell (2007) wrote is based on interpretation of the lived experience while endeavoring to suspend judgment and the researcher's sense of what should be occurring.
Content-Level Theory
What content-level theory or framework are you using?
Fit theory is the idea, or a series of concepts that express the idea that the values, traits, or characteristics of an employee, when matched with an organization with similar values, traits, or characteristics, will result in an increased possibility for greater job satisfaction and long-term employment. This has also been called, values fit or Person-Environment (PE) fit. The subsidiary and tangential concepts and theories that PE fit is built on include Person-Organization (PO) fit, Person-Group (PG) fit, Person-Supervisor (PS) fit, Person-Vocation (PV) fit, and Person-Job (PJ) fit. Two concepts that are a part of PJ fit include Demands-Ability (DA) fit, and Needs-Supply (NS) fit. All of these have been studied to determine the relationship they might have with the employee's ability to act on the different fit aspects listed above.
Many studies, such as Westerman and Cyr (2004) have found that there is a multitude of relationships between PO fit and the subsidiary fit theories and job satisfaction, organization commitment, and intention to remain. Values congruence, a foundational element of PO and PE fit theories, is a “direct and significant predictor of employee satisfaction, commitment, and intention to remain with an organization” (Westerman & Cyr, 2004, p. 258). This idea of value congruence aligns with some of the first work in PO and PE fit theory according to Psychology magazine’s person-organization fit article (2016), performed by Argyris in 1958, that “proposed that organizations were characterized by particular types of climates, which played an important role in the attraction and selection of organizational compatibility of individual and organizations” and became the cornerstone for attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) theory, that provided a foundation for PO fit theories. Accordingly, as Furnham (2001) writes, the concept of fit, and more specifically a lack of fit, is viewed as “resulting in decreased performance, dissatisfaction and stress in the system” (p. 6).
Finding ways to decrease these variables and find a better PO fit between organizations and employees will lead to less stress, greater job satisfaction, and other positive benefits. These theories focus on self-determination theory (SDT) and Maslow's hierarchy of needs and theorize that "individuals will perceive high employment quality if, for example, their needs for safety, income, security, and skills development are fulfilled" (Travaglianti et al., 2016, p. 2). To determine this among their participants for this study, the authors conducted a qualitative (passive) computer-based survey/ questionnaire delivered to 1500 respondents in the federal public service sector/bureaucrats, within the Belgian national government. Boon and Biron (2016) focused on how PO fit and PJ fit can affect employee turnover. Their work has a particular focus and builds on a foundation of value congruence, which is a term relating employees' values aligning with an employer's or organization's values. Boon and Biron (2016) write about findings from several authors and find that values congruence "fosters communication between employees, enhances employee's identification with the organization, creates and environment of trust, and translates into positive work-related attitudes and behaviors" (p. 2181). This idea of "fit" both in terms of value congruence and PE fit, the concept of fit, and the various subsidiary concepts is a major focus of Furnham (2001) which provides an overall review of the concepts as well as dives into cross-cultural applications, occupational considerations, and social considerations of the different theories and concepts that make up the PE fit theory.
Methodology
What methodological approach best aligns with your theoretical framing?
The methodology that will be used for this study is a case study, and as Stake (1995) writes about different types of case study research, it fits well with research that is performed on multiple participants from multiple organizations performing a variety of jobs. Stake refers to this type of case study as a collective case study. Stake continues, writing about case studies, that they are not used to "map and conquer the world but to sophisticate the beholding of it. "Thick description," "experiential understanding," and "multiple realities" are expected in qualitative case studies" (p. 43). The idea that Stake presents of dealing with multiple realities using a case study makes this methodology particularly ideal for this study. Writing about external reality (#1), experiential reality (#2), and rational reality (#3), Stake writing about case study states that "the aim of research is not to discover #1, for that is impossible, but to construct a clearer reality #2 and a more sophisticated reality #3" (p. 101). This paper has already discussed during the previous sections that research with a constructivist perspective views the world through prisms where meaning for experiences and that the nature of reality is ambiguous. Finally, the researchers for this study are a part of the community that they are studying. Therefore personal perspectives might influence the interpretation of the participant's interviews. Stake writes about case studies with similar characteristics as "qualitative case study is highly personal research. Persons studied are studied in depth. Researchers are encouraged to include their own personal perspectives in the interpretation. The way the case and the researcher interact is presumed unique and not necessarily reproducible for other researchers. The quality and utility of the research is not based on its reproducibility but on whether or not the meanings generated, by the researcher or the reader, are valued" (p. 135).
References
Boon, C., & Biron, M. (2016). Temporal issues in person-organization fit, person-job fit and turnover: The role of leader-member exchange. Human Relations; Studies towards the Integration of the Social Sciences, 69(12), 2177–2200. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726716636945
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. SAGE Publications.
Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). SAGE Publications.
Furnham, A. (2001). Vocational preference and P–O fit: Reflections on Holland's theory of vocational choice. Applied Psychology: An International Review, 50(1), 5–29. https://doi-org.er.lib.k-state.edu/10.1111/1464-0597.00046
Jones, S. R., Torres, V., & Arminio, J. (2013). Negotiating the complexities of qualitative research in higher education: Fundamental elements and issues (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Person-organization fit. (2016, February 1). Psychology. http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/industrial-organizational-psychology/recruitment/person-organization-fit/
Stake, R. E. (1995). The art of case study research. SAGE Publications.
Stewart, D. & Mickunas, A. (1990) Exploring Phenomenology: A Guide to the Field and Its Literature. 2nd Edition, Ohio University Press, Athens.
Travaglianti, F., Babic, A., & Hansez, I. (2016). The role of work-related needs in the relationship between job crafting, burnout and work engagement. SA Journal of Industrial Psychology. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v42i1.1308
Westerman, J. & Cyr, L. (2004). An integrative analysis of person–organization fit theories. International Journal of Selection and Assessment. 12. 252 - 261. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0965-075X.2004.279_1.x
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