CW2: Critical Reflection on Ethical Aspects of M&S Research Study

This report provides a critical reflection on the ethical aspects of a research study investigating the impact of employee motivation on performance, using Marks and Spencer as a case study. The report begins with an executive summary, followed by an introduction that outlines the research's aim, objectives, and methodology, including the use of quantitative and mixed methods, with primary and secondary research approaches. Key ethical considerations are then examined, such as maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of participants, ensuring data security, providing equal opportunities, and avoiding plagiarism. The report emphasizes the importance of ethical practices in building trust and ensuring the validity of the research. It also discusses the ethical responsibilities regarding autonomy, privacy, and dignity of individuals involved in the study. The conclusion summarizes the importance of motivation in improving company performance and the vital role of ethics in ensuring successful research outcomes. The report references various books and journals to support its findings.

CW2: CRITICAL REFLECTION ON ETHICAL ASPECTS OF THE
RESEARCH
TITLE OF THE RESEARCH
The Impact of employee motivation on performance: A case of Marks and Spencer
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Ethics play a vital role in research study as it supports researcher in making study successful.
Considering ethics is important in research study, otherwise, it can create several problems or
barriers in conducting study.
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents...........................................................................................................................3
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
Ethical considerations in research...............................................................................................5
Autonomy, privacy and dignity of individuals............................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
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INTRODUCTION
This report is based on the ethical consideration of the research. This particular research
focuses on the impact of employee’s motivation on performance (Helps, 2017). The organisation
being taken in the case study is Marks and Spencer. Marks and Spencer is a retail company
which deals in personal care products operating at UK and has a large employee base. The main
purpose of this report to identify and critically examine the key ethical aspect that is fit for this
research. The report includes aim, objectives, brief methodology and key aspects of ethical issues
including confidentiality, privacy, scientific integrity, social benefits etc.
Aim:
The aim of the research is to investigate the impact of employee’s motivation on organisational
performance within the context of Marks & Spencer
Objectives:
a) To assess the impact of employee motivation on performance.
b) To measure the increase in performance of employees with regard to past performance.
c) To identify the factors which cause an increase in performance?
Methodology
The research is based on positivism research philosophy and deductive approach is
employed. The other research methods are quantitative as well as mixed methods research. The
quantitative research method is found to be justifiable to collect data from the subject. The
methods for research generally used are both primary as well as secondary. Primary research is
the one which is collected from sources directly such as doing interviews, filling up of feedback
forms, asking questionnaire to people and filing them for their views and opinions. Basically,
these methods are implemented at the institution itself. These methods require time, some
funding and can be claimed done by the owner itself (Lee, 2018). Secondary research is the
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research done through taking information from websites, taking views online. Apart from this,
research conducted through books and other publishing material comes under secondary research
(Copl, 2018). Secondary research is basically taking of ideas and information from where
already research is done. The method which has been used here is more of secondary than
primary considering lack of time and funds. However, the research has been done extensively
through various sources to authenticate the research.
The participants here will be the employees of Marks and Spencer. The data will be
collected by using questionnaires-based survey. Simple random sampling will be used to select
the subject which is a type of probability sampling in which researcher selects randomly people
to be questioned. The survey will be carried out online by using survey monkey due to current
covid-19 situation. Collected data will be analysed by using the same software (Survey Monkey)
that will include tables, charts and figures to indicate the findings (Basias and Pollalis, 2018).
Ethical considerations in research
Ethics is one of the main important elements in research methodology that helps scholars in
knowing the difference between right things and wrong things. Ethics can be known as moral
principles and values that play a vital role in conducting research and making it successful. I
believe that by considering ethics in research study, scholars can improve his image and can
conduct study in the future in an effective and successful manner (Brannen, 2017). When
researcher understands that what is right and what is wrong then he is more likely to satisfy
company for which they conduct research study. There are some ethics that need to be
considered by scholars in order to make viewer feel valued and make them feel that study is
being conducted in an ethical manner. There are some ethics that should be considered by
research for this study. According to me some ethics that can make this research study successful
include:
 To maintain privacy of participants’ information by not disclosing it with others.
 To not share information of company with another company and make company feel
trust.
 To provide equal and fair opportunities to all participants, selected for primary data
collection in order to promote diversity and equality.
 To allow employees to skip question if they do not want to answer of specific questions.
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 To gather secondary data from reliable sources that are old not more that years in order to
making study validate and reliable.
 To not copy data from any sources or avoiding plagiarism.
 To not hurt anyone in any manner and complying with all laws and legislations related to
research study in order to protect against lawsuit.
So, on the basis of above discussed all ethical considerations, I can say that it can help scholars
to the great extent in completing research study successful. All these ethics can make company
feel valued and can also increase trust of viewers (Tolksdorf and et.al., 2020). Trust and loyalty
is the main key of success of research study. It can boost confidence of researcher by which he
can conduct similar studies in the future with efficiency. Overall, it can be said that ethical
consideration in research study is vital or main key of success as like data collection and data
analysis elements of research methodology.
Autonomy, privacy and dignity of individuals
Maintaining privacy, dignity and autonomy is the main part of ethics. According to this,
researcher needs to maintain privacy by not sharing personal and professional information of
participants and companies with other organizations and members. For this research study,
scholar will gather both primary and secondary data for accomplishing goals and better positive
outcomes. For collecting primary data, researcher will conduct survey and from survey monkey
or online, he will gather all information (Giuffrida, 2019). Researcher wants to know impacts of
employees’ motivation on organizational performance. So, it will require to keep all data of
employees of Marks and Spencer safe and secure on computer and other devices. It will make
use of some devices and tools such as phone, laptop and others for maintaining privacy or to
keep data safe and secure. So, by doing so, it can maintain privacy and autonomy. For dignity it
will require to respect values of cultures of all participants and making them feel valued by
promoting diversity and equality (Sobočan, Bertotti and Strom-Gottfried, 2019).
CONCLUSION
It has been summarized from the above study that motivation plays a vital role in improving
overall performance of company. It has also discussed importance or ethics in making research
study successful.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Basias, N. and Pollalis, Y., 2018. Quantitative and qualitative research in business & technology:
Justifying a suitable research methodology. Review of Integrative Business and
Economics Research, 7, pp.91-105.
Brannen, J. ed., 2017. Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research. Routledge.
Copl, F., 2018. Reflecting on the ethics of researching communication in superdiverse contexts.
In The Routledge handbook of language and superdiversity (pp. 133-146). Routledge.
Giuffrida, I., 2019. Liability for AI decision-making: some legal and ethical
considerations. Fordham L. Rev., 88, p.439.
Helps, S., 2017. The ethics of researching one's own practice. Journal of Family Therapy. 39(3),
pp.348-365.
Sobočan, A.M., Bertotti, T. and Strom-Gottfried, K., 2019. Ethical considerations in social work
research. European Journal of Social Work. 22(5). pp.805-818.
Tolksdorf, N.F. and et.al., 2020. Ethical considerations of applying robots in kindergarten
settings: Towards an approach from a macroperspective. International Journal of Social
Robotics, pp.1-12.
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