MGMT 8920M Week 11 Chapter Assembly Example

Premises Earned, Premises Cited: An Assembled Literature Review and Method Chapter for a Study of How Employee Resource Group Leaders Influence Corporate Policy Without Formal Authority, Linked by Five Numbered Premises and Checked by an Orphan Audit

Student Name

Walden University

MGMT 8920M: Developing the Content Literature Review and Research Method and Design

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Premises Earned, Premises Cited: An Assembled Literature Review and Method Chapter for a Study of How Employee Resource Group Leaders Influence Corporate Policy Without Formal Authority, Linked by Five Numbered Premises and Checked by an Orphan Audit

Chapter 2 Summary: Influence Without Authority

The literature review examined how employee resource groups, voluntary groups of employees organized around a shared identity such as race, gender, disability or veteran status, influence the policies of the companies in which they form. Welbourne et al. (2017), reviewing research on these groups, argued that they are a valuable but little-studied part of organizations and proposed a research agenda grounded in social identity theory. The review's themes covered four areas: the influence tactics available to people without formal authority, the role of executive sponsors, the limits of resource group budgets and the conditions under which employee groups change company practice.

On influence tactics, the review drew on research showing that people seeking to influence those above them use different tactics from those seeking to influence peers or subordinates. Yukl and Falbe (1990), in two studies using reports from both agents and targets, found that influence attempts differ by direction and that rational persuasion was among the tactics used most often in upward attempts. On the conditions for change, the review drew on Briscoe and Safford (2008), who studied the spread of domestic partner benefits across the Fortune 500 from 1990 to 2005 and found that employee activist groups played different roles depending on whether a firm was inclined to respond to activism.

Premises Carried Forward

The review closes with five premises, each a sentence the chapter has earned:

1. Employee resource groups seek to influence company policy without holding formal authority over it.

2. Their influence depends on relationships with executive sponsors, but those relationships have been studied mainly from the executive's side.

3. Upward influence relies on tactics such as rational persuasion, which depend on access to decision-makers and to information.

4. Whether employee groups change practice depends on characteristics of the firm, so evidence from one firm cannot show what is general and what is local.

5. Influence attempts unfold over months, as groups build cases, gain sponsors and wait for decision cycles.

Chapter 3: Research Method

The method follows from the premises. Premise 2, that sponsor relationships have been studied mainly from the executive side, justifies interviewing resource group leaders rather than executives; the study asks how leaders themselves describe gaining and using sponsorship. Premise 4, that the effect of employee groups depends on characteristics of the firm, justifies a multiple case design across four firms that differ in size and industry. Premise 3 shapes the interview protocol, which asks leaders to describe specific attempts to influence policy, whom they approached and what information they brought. Premise 5 justifies a time frame of one year for each case: the study follows each group's attempts over twelve months through two interviews per leader, six months apart, and through the group's meeting minutes.

A qualitative multiple case design is used, and each case is one resource group's attempts to influence a company policy, bounded by the year of data collection. Participants are the group's chair and up to two other officers in each firm, for a total of between eight and twelve participants. Data come from semi-structured interviews and from documents the groups share, chiefly meeting minutes and proposals sent to executives.

Analysis will proceed case by case and then across cases. Within each case, interview transcripts and minutes will be coded for influence attempts, the tactics used, the people approached and the outcome of each attempt, using codes drawn first from the review's themes and then from the data. Across cases, attempts will be compared by firm characteristics, which is the comparison premise 4 calls for. Participants will be identified only by role and firm type, and firms by industry and size band, because resource group leaders may be identifiable within their companies and some of their attempts will have failed or caused friction with executives. Minutes will be shared only with the group's written consent and stored without names.

Appendix: Orphan Audit

After assembling the two chapters, every theme in the review was checked for a use in the method, and every choice in the method was checked for a premise behind it. An orphan is a theme with no use or a choice with no premise.

Table 1

Orphan Audit

Each orphan was resolved by cutting, re-arguing or linking. No choice in the final method chapter lacks a premise.

What the Audit Changed

The audit removed one section of about four pages from the review and strengthened two justifications in the method. The most important change concerns the time frame. In the first draft, one year was simply what seemed feasible. The review, however, had already established that influence attempts unfold over months, which gave the time frame a substantive justification: a shorter study would capture only part of an attempt, and a single interview would ask leaders to reconstruct a process rather than describe it as it happened. The premise was in the review all along; the audit made the method use it.

The audit also clarified what the two chapters promise together. The review argues that resource group influence is relational, tactical, firm-dependent and slow. The method studies it by talking to the people doing the influencing, in several firms, over a year. Each of the review's claims now has a matching feature in the design, and each feature of the design can be traced to a numbered premise.

References

Briscoe, F., & Safford, S. (2008). The Nixon-in-China effect: Activism, imitation, and the institutionalization of contentious practices. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53(3), 460-491. https://doi.org/10.2189/asqu.53.3.460

Welbourne, T. M., Rolf, S., & Schlachter, S. (2017). The case for employee resource groups: A review and social identity theory-based research agenda. Personnel Review, 46(8), 1816-1834. https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-01-2016-0004

Yukl, G., & Falbe, C. M. (1990). Influence tactics and objectives in upward, downward, and lateral influence attempts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(2), 132-140. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.2.132