Business Research Methodology: Labour Productivity

This report provides a comprehensive literature review on labour productivity within medium-sized retail firms. It begins with an introduction to business research methodology and defines the project's objective, which is to identify and analyze the factors affecting labour productivity in the retail sector. The scope of the project focuses on measuring the productivity of the retail industry, specifically labour productivity, and highlights the challenges in measuring labour input and output. The report then delves into a literature review, drawing on various sources to examine issues such as lack of clarity, poor standardization, and the impact of cost-cutting measures on employee benefits and opportunities. The review explores factors influencing labour productivity, including cost of labour, skill sets, external factors like supplier reliability, and the impact of technology and marketing strategies. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, emphasizing the challenges faced by medium-sized firms due to resource limitations and technological gaps, and highlights the importance of addressing these issues to enhance workforce productivity and overall business efficiency.

Business
research
Methodology

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Project Objective........................................................................................................................2
Project Scope..............................................................................................................................2
Literature Review.......................................................................................................................3
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................6
Reference List............................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Business research Methodology is generally a process in which relevant information
and data is collected for the purpose of making business decisions. The research methods can
be publication reach, conducting surveys, interviews or using other research technique. While
undertaking business research methodology present and historical information is carried. In
this report, literature review is carried out on the topic labour productivity in medium sized
retailing firm. Labour productivity is a term that can be measured by an equation that is total
output divided by total input. The focus is on retail industry, thus retail productivity is
maximizing the sale and minimizing the resources. Thus, medium sized industries are looking
for a way in which productivity can be maximised as increasing the productivity will
definitely increase the overall sale. By far the most influential and effective degree of the
productivity is by measuring the sales system that is the average sale. Even a business with
unsophisticated technology can very easily measure the average sale, but surprisingly they
don’t. It is measured by dividing the total sales value ($) by the number of transactions.
Project Objective
The objective of undertaking this project is to find out the labour productivity in
medium sized industries. It is true that medium sized industries faces many issues in terms of
employees. Thus, all the issues and factors that affect the labour productivity of the industry
are identified. With the survey it was found that employment productivity is a measure of
labour input that is the efforts they are taking for the betterment. Labour productivity
includes employees and their working proprietors which can be obtained from the Inter-
Departmental Business Register (IDBR). It is said that medium sized industries do not have
much resources thus there only resource that can help them to make the place in competitive
market is labour and their productivity.
Project Scope
The aggregate scope from this project is to measure the productivity of retail industry.
It was found in this project that measuring and accessing the productivity is not an easy task
there are various difficulties. Productivity here means labour productivity that is the gross

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value that is added by an employee r staff to the organisation. But in retail industry measuring
labours input and output is a difficult task. Thus, the scope of this is to find to the factors that
affect the labour productivity and ways it can be enhances in retail sector. Thus, the
productivity can be improved by emphasis on cost control, keeping the prices low as
compared to large industries, having a tight range management and offering high level of
customer service.
Literature Review
According to (Scott and Walker, 2018), the labour productivity in medium sized
firms suffers from many issues like lack of clarity and poor standardization measures. From
the analyses it was found that, workers face many employment issues as medium sized
industries do not have well-defined policies because of this reason they do not get much
benefits (Scott and Walker, 2018). Middle sized industries focus on cost cutting so that they
can earn maximum profit. But on the other hand, workers in middle sized industries get
chances to learn and experience more things. They can an opportunity to think critically and
make their own decisions (Garnero, Kampelmann and Rycx, 2014). It can be stated that
labour productivity in retail sector is dynamic as they have a weak retail employment growth
as compared to large organisations. The workers in medium sized industry face the issue of
lack of clarity as they do not have much clear vision and change the plans as per the market
(Investopedia, 2017). Labour productivity in medium sized organisations can be measured by
many factors. One such factor is cost of labour, which is usually low as they are more
focused in increasing the total cost of the company (Investopedia, 2017). This is because
medium sized industries are focused on beating the other companies or by taking part in the
competitive environment. To remain competitive they need to keep the cost down but
workers need to offer better quality services (Foster, Haltiwanger, Klimek, Krizan and
Ohlmacher, 2015). The labour experiences more productivity as they are forced to work more
to enhance business efficiency so that profit margins are increased.
In the views of (Clarke, Qiang and Xu, 2015), It was found that labour productivity is
influenced by many factors. Thus, to achieve higher labour productivity medium size
organisations focus on extending the fixed assets. The productivity of labour in medium sized
industries is focused on skills and ability of an individual. As in medium sized industries they
look for a labour force that has skills and brains to come with innovative ideas (Garnero,
Kampelmann and Rycx, 2014). Apart from that, the success of retail industry is dependent

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on the external factors like the reliability of suppliers. The productivity of labour in medium
sized industry is dependent on two factors that is output produced per period and the number
of employees that are working (Garnero, Kampelmann and Rycx, 2014). Thus, it is
suggested that in medium sized industry productivity can be improved by measuring the
performance and setting high targets. The production process that is followed is a streamline
approach. The productivity of labour is not efficient in medium size industry because they
face issue like absence of banking facilities and limited amount of capital investment that is
faced by the labour. Labours productivity is not that high as compared to larger industries
because they work with old technologies as they do not have much funding to make new
technology available (Fang, Memili, Chrisman and Penney, 2017). They also have ineffective
marketing strategies because of this reason they are not able to reach to large audience. This
can be overcome by asking labours to identify the new markets so that they get an
opportunity to expand their venture. The productivity of labours also differs as medium sized
industry as improper training session which degrades the knowledge of an employee. Thus,
this issue can be resolved by having a top management so that they can focus on process
innovation (Fang, Memili, Chrisman and Penney, 2017).
According to (Garicano, Lelarge and Van Reenen, 2016), labour face various
obstacles in medium sized industry due to the shortage of raw materials and other facilities
due to which they are not able to maximize their productivity. The labour productivity is
affected by the product related challenges like they do not get orders in a huge quantity. Due
to this they lack in terms of standardization and find difficulty in introducing better
substitutes (De Vries, 2014). The productivity is also affected by the manufacturing and
distribution challenges like they have low production capacity. The productivity also reflects
as they undertaken improper distribution system. The low level of technology and limited
communication network do not allow labour to reach to larger market audience. Thus, the
inadequate intellectual property is one of the reason due to which labours are not able to work
efficiently (Siebert, 2017). They also face major challenges of poor rewards and motivation.
As in larger industries labours are awarded and appreciated for their work because of this
reason workers take a forward step and work for betterment of the organisation. In retail
industry, the productivity of labour in medium sized industry gets affected due to lack of
government support and marketing support (De Vries, 2014). The productivity of workers
can be enhanced by having a proper management that helps in finding out new markets. The
main challenges labour faced in medium sized industry is lack of skilled manpower that are

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taking part in manufacturing department of retail industry or taking part in marketing sector.
The lack of skills will not allow them to capture larger audience. Apart from that, the
multiplicity of labour laws offers compliance in the production (Bourlakis, Maglaras, Aktas,
Gallear and Fotopoulos, 2016). The other reason for improper productivity is improper
training and poor management of employees. The absence of work force planning causes
poor industrial relations. There are some external factors that impact the productivity of
workers like some of the cultural difference and some language barriers (Siebert, 2017).
Medium sized industry has poor management laws and lack of export infrastructure. In retail
industry, lack of resources will not allow customers to integrate their services globally (Kang,
Na and Kim, 2018). The productivity of workers can be increased if there is a proper plan and
marketing study is complete. The productivity of employees in retail industry depends upon
the sale of the organisation. The business environment needs to be successful and systematic
for the employees to monitor all the services. The medium sized industries do not have high
programmed technology which affects the quality of product and promote customer
orientation. They do not have the ease to access the market. The retailers are facing waves of
disruption as the competition is increasing day by day (Bourlakis, Maglaras, Aktas, Gallear
and Fotopoulos, 2016). The productivity of medium sized retail industry is ignored as they
are overtaken by big wholesale retail store (Parrotta, Pozzoli and Pytlikova, 2014). They are
selling similar products and services but at a nominal price. But on the other hand, medium
sized industries are taking the use of skilled and logistic labours so that they can deliver better
opportunities to people. To optimize their work they are making use of highly productive
workforce that work to meet customers’ expectations by reducing the cost (Kang, Na and
Kim, 2018).
In the view of (Li and Rama, 2015), workforce and productivity of employees is a
critical aspect for medium or small sized organisations. The productivity of retail workers can
be improved if there is a stable scheduling. Some of the operational factors that affect the
productivity of an organisation are instability and inefficiency of employees. This can be
improved by adopting quantitative and cost oriented approach that helps in managing the
employees (Mishra, 2017). The productivity and turnover of workers in retail industry is very
important. This can be accomplished by having good management quality which helps help
workers in improving their performance and its will be beneficial for the entire enterprise
(Parrotta, Pozzoli and Pytlikova, 2014). It was found that workers in retail industries have
high commitment to deliver products and services on time, thus this can be accomplished by

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offering performance based rewards. So, that they get motivation to perform better and
optimize their working capacity (Park,Yaduma, Lockwood and Williams, 2016). The
performance is linked with turn over. The labour productivity is generally affected by the
conflicts that occur in the firm due to lack of management skills that are generally hard to
observe (Berlingieri, Calligaris and Criscuolo, 2018). From all the research, it was found that
productivity is influenced directly by the management. To be more presided, it is
management bias in the production sector of retail firms. They also face issue due to lack of
clarity regarding the decision. The retail industries need clarity in measurement regarding
what need to be done next (Park,Yaduma, Lockwood and Williams, 2016). The productivity
of works is also dependent on analysis and interpretation that offers strategies as well as
tactics in which retail business should follow.
Conclusion
Thus, from this report it can be concluded that medium sized workers face issue in
their productivity as they have lack of resources and technological support. They do not get
opportunity to work on high tech platform. In this report, the discussion is about labour
productivity that is known as workforce productivity. The growth of labour productivity in
medium sized industry can be measured by economic output. Thus, labour productivity can
be increased id the output entered by them is increased but in a minimum time. The
productivity is inversely related to the labour time.

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Reference List
Berlingieri, G., Calligaris, S. and Criscuolo, C. (2018). The productivity-wage premium:
Does size still matter in a service economy?. In AEA Papers and Proceedings (Vol. 108, pp.
328-33).
Bourlakis, M., Maglaras, G., Aktas, E., Gallear, D. and Fotopoulos, C., (2016). Does firm
size influence sustainable performance in food supply chains: Insights from Greek SMEs.
In Developments in Logistics and Supply Chain Management (pp. 253-265). Palgrave
Macmillan, London.
Clarke, G.R., Qiang, C.Z. and Xu, L.C., (2015). The Internet as a general-purpose
technology: Firm-level evidence from around the world. The World Bank. pp. 28-33
De Vries, G.J., (2014). Productivity in a Distorted Market: The Case of B razil's Retail
Sector. Review of Income and Wealth, 60(3), pp.499-524.
Fang, H.C., Memili, E., Chrisman, J.J. and Penney, C., (2017). Industry and Information
Asymmetry: The Case of the Employment of Non‐Family Managers in Small and Medium‐
Sized Family Firms. Journal of Small Business Management, 55(4), pp.632-648.
Foster, L., Haltiwanger, J., Klimek, S., Krizan, C.J. and Ohlmacher, S., (2015). The evolution
of national retail chains: how we got here, pp. 38-39
Garicano, L., Lelarge, C. and Van Reenen, J., (2016). Firm size distortions and the
productivity distribution: Evidence from France. American Economic Review, 106(11),
pp.3439-79.
Garnero, A., Kampelmann, S. and Rycx, F., (2014). The heterogeneous effects of workforce
diversity on productivity, wages, and profits. Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and
Society, 53(3), pp.430-477.
Investopedia, (2017). Labor Productivity. Available from
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-productivity.asp.pdf Accessed on 03 SEPT 2018.
Kang, Y.H., Na, K. and Kim, Y.S., (2018). Labor Productivity In Emerging Markets:
Evidence From Brazil, China, India, And Russia (BRIC). The journal of Applied Business
Research, 34(2), pp.325-338.

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Li, Y. and Rama, M., (2015). Firm dynamics, productivity growth, and job creation in
developing countries: The role of micro-and small enterprises. The World Bank Research
Observer, 30(1), pp.3-38.
Mishra, A. (2017). Retail Productivity: Concept and Analysis for an Emerging Retail
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SEPT 2018.
Park, S., Yaduma, N., Lockwood, A.J. and Williams, A.M., (2016). Demand fluctuations,
labour flexibility and productivity. Annals of Tourism Research, 59, pp.93-112.
Parrotta, P., Pozzoli, D. and Pytlikova, M., (2014). Labor diversity and firm
productivity. European Economic Review, 66, pp.144-179.
Scott, P. and Walker, J.T., (2018). Retailing under resale price maintenance: Economies of
scale and scope, and firm strategic response, in the inter-war British retail pharmacy
sector. Business History, 60(6), pp.807-832.
Siebert, S. (2017). Labour Turnover and Labour Productivity in a Retail
Organization. Available from http://ftp.iza.org/dp2322.pdf Accessed on 03 SEPT 2018.