Improving Corporate Governance in Small- Research Proposal

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This method is congruent with Fraenkel and Wallen (2001) who note, "Researchers usually dig into the literature to find out what has already been written about the topic they are interested in investigating. Both the opinions of experts in the field and other research studies are of interest. Such reading is referred to as a review of the literature" (p. 48). A critical review of the literature can also provide other benefits as well. For example, Wood and Ellis (2003) identified the following as important outcomes of a well conducted literature review:

1. It helps describe a topic of interest and refine either research questions or directions in which to look;

2. It presents a clear description and evaluation of the theories and concepts that have informed research into the topic of interest;

3. It clarifies the relationship to previous research and highlights where new research may contribute by identifying research possibilities which have been overlooked so far in the literature;

4. It provides insights into the topic of interest that are both methodological and substantive;

5. It demonstrates powers of critical analysis by, for instance, exposing taken for granted assumptions underpinning previous research and identifying the possibilities of replacing them with alternative assumptions;

6. It justifies any new research through a coherent critique of what has gone before and demonstrates why new research is both timely and important.

The primary data needed for the proposed study will be collected using an online custom survey instrument to be posted on a premium online survey service such as Zoomerang, SurveyMonkey or SurveyGizmo. The questions for the custom survey instrument will be based on the primary themes that emerge from the review of the relevant literature following the guidance provided by Proctor and Vu (2005). Face validity of the survey instrument will be achieved following the guidance provided by Neuman (2003) for this purpose. The survey instrument will consist of three sections:

1. Section one will consist of a series of yes/no, fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice questions to develop relevant demographic data and professional experience information.

2. Section two will consist of a series of five-level Likert-scaled questions ranged "strongly agree" to "strongly disagree," with a "no opinion/not application" option offered.

3. Section three will consist of an open-ended comment segment that will encourage respondents to include any additional thoughts, insights, empirical observations and experiences concerning good corporate governance practices in the small- to medium-sized enterprise.

The data that results from the secondary and primary research will be analyzed as described below.

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Data analysis methods

The secondary data will be analyzed by identifying recurring themes, salient points, major issues and other areas of interest and synthesizing these findings with the results of the primary data analysis. The primary data will be analyzed using SPSS Version 11.0 for Windows (Student Version) to develop frequencies, standard deviations and means for each of the custom survey question responses. These results will be presented in tabular and graphic form and summarized and interpreted in a narrative fashion.

Mechanisms to assure the quality of the study

All respondents to the online survey will remain anonymous but will still be consented prior to the commencement of the survey administration using the informed consent form shown at Appendix a which is specifically designed for online surveys. Notwithstanding the anonymity of the respondents, all survey data will remain password-protected in the researcher's personal computer, maintained for a period a 10 years and then destroyed. Researcher bias represented a potential limitation, but the use of both secondary and primary data will help to improve the trustworthiness of the research findings and every effort will be made to interpret the findings objectively.

Study period

A tentative timetable for completion of the study proposed herein is shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1

Tentative Timeline

ACTIVITIES/TASKS

TIME (MONTHS) (2011)

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

1

Bibliographic Searches

X

2

Photocopy info from non-bibliographic sources

X

3

Reading

X

4

Submission of thesis proposal

X

5

Fine tune research question and methodology

X

X

8

Data collection

X

X

9

Data analysis

X

X

10

Writing up of thesis

X

X

11

Revision, editing and submission

X

12

Submission of thesis

X

X

Conclusion

The research showed that in an increasingly competitive marketplace, small- to medium-sized enterprises need a competitive advantage to remain viable and sound corporate governance practices can provide this advantage. In fact, this was one of the few areas where there was a consensus about the importance of good corporate governance practices. The research also showed that while there is no universal definition of corporate governance, the main thrust of the concept relates to how companies are controlled, with the specific definition being applied to each company's unique situation and circumstances. Finally, the research showed that although the issue of corporate governance has received an increasing amount of attention in recent years, particularly following the corporate scandals as exemplified by Enron et al., there remains a dearth of timely and relevant studies concerning.....

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