Good Leadership Practices in Hong Kong Engineering Companies: A Study

This project investigates good leadership practices within Hong Kong's engineering companies, focusing on the perspectives of local employees aged 30 to 40. The research addresses the backdrop of a potential boom in the engineering and construction industry and the associated skilled labor shor...Read More

Assignment 3: A Study on Good
Leadership practices followed in
engineering companies in Hong Kong in
the eyes of 30 to 40 year old local
employees
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1. Executive Summary
Hong Kong is likely to experience a boom in its engineering and construction industry
in the next decade. This likely growth in the activities however, brings to light a serious
challenge which is plaguing the industry – that is of shortage for skilled labours. Hong Kong
government are undertaking attractive initiatives to attract skilled and talented workforce in
its engineering and construction industry. In this backdrop it was needed to look within the
industry to understand how employees view companies of engineering and construction
sector and perceive their leadership practices. The rationale was to look within the industry to
identify whether the manner in which these companies are run can give an indication of this
chronic labour shortage and high demand for skilled and talented workforce. A primary
research is to be conducted amongst leading engineering companies of Hong Kong and a
questionnaire based survey is to be conducted on a sample size of minimum 30 respondents
within the age group of 30 – 40 years. Alongside qualitative interviews would also be
conducted on middle management leaders of these engineering companies. Based on their
response, the present leadership aspects of these companies would be explored and as per
these respondents the “good leadership practices” which they would like to observe in their
own company settings would be identified. Based on the findings from this primary research
and extensive analysis of the secondary research (literature review) the final findings would
be developed which will help in understanding the right and optimal manner of managing
these companies to attract the right talent in their midst.
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Table of Contents
1. Executive Summary...............................................................................................................2
2. Introduction............................................................................................................................4
2.1. Background......................................................................................................................4
2.3. Outline of Proposal..........................................................................................................5
3. Literature Review...................................................................................................................5
4. Research Aim, Objectives and Questions..............................................................................7
4.1. Aim..................................................................................................................................7
4.2. Research Objectives........................................................................................................8
4.3. Research Questions.........................................................................................................9
4.4. Research Hypothesis.....................................................................................................10
5. Theoretical Content..............................................................................................................10
6. Experimental Set Up............................................................................................................15
6.1. Research Approach........................................................................................................15
6.2. Research Design............................................................................................................15
6.3. Data Collection, Research Instrument, Sampling and Ethical Considerations.............16
7. Results, Outcome & Relevance............................................................................................17
8. Project Planning and Gantt Chart.........................................................................................18
9. Conclusion............................................................................................................................19
9.1. Assumptions & Limitations...........................................................................................20
10. References..........................................................................................................................21
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2. Introduction
In the twenty first century, the Engineering and Construction sector of Hong Kong
continues to become one of the most important drivers and indicators for wealth creation and
economic activities. In this present world, where technological advancements have become
the norm and change is the only constant, the challenges facing the engineering industry is
likely to become even more complex. Along with the dynamic and ever evolving market of
China, rail and road infrastructure investments, the residential and commercial development,
a large number of infrastructure projects are likely to be witnessed in the future. In this
present economic environment that characterises the engineering and construction industry of
Hong Kong, it is critical for this industry to have businesses that are innovative in their core
approach and to sustain their stronghold on procedures of tendering and control of costs as
the industry is expected to become more competitive and have pressure on the margins (PwC,
2018). This industry is therefore chosen as the backdrop for the project to be based upon.
2.1. Background
In Hong Kong, the engineering and construction industry is multidisciplinary and
includes domains of civil, building, structural, mechanical and electrical. As per 2015 data,
the transportation sector was followed by the residential building sector and this was closely
followed by the commercial building projects (HKTDC, 2016). Therefore, the dominance of
engineering and construction sector is significant in Hong Kong and it is a leading contributor
to the economic growth of the city. However, as per the HKCA or the Hong Kong
Construction Association, this industry is increasingly getting plagued by a host of issues
pertaining to shortage of the skilled workers and workforce management (Chung, 2016). The
city is undergoing a major increase in the construction and engineering work and to meet
these demands, the industry experts and government officials have presented a strategy
framework that will tackle these issues amending the practices and cultures of the
engineering industry. The HK government is bringing a number of changes in the industry to
attract skilled workforce, as the present workforce of the construction and engineering
industry is aging having an average age of 50 years of more. This workforce often is against
the modern evolved way of operation and is resistant to change. Therefore, a drastic
amendment is required firstly in attracting the right personnel to the industry, and secondly in
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the way the management performs in engineering companies to help the workforce gradually
adapt to the change.
Experts opine that effective and suitable leadership showcased by leader-managers
help in bringing about significant changes, as the former help the employees to understand
where they need to be, showcase their path, and reduces obstacles and mental resistance and
helps in achieving the shared goals (Darr, 2004), (Fahey, 2007), (Day, 2005), (Fries, 2018).
In such a backdrop it was felt logical to conduct a research project on the good leadership
practices of engineering companies as per the perception of employees within the age group
of 30 to 40 years. The justification for choosing such an age group is that – neither this group
is very young nor it is maturing. The employees of this age group ideally have more than 6 –
12 years of work experience and are seasoned enough to know about the differences between
good leadership skills and practices from the ineffective ones. Therefore, such a topic has
been selected for this research project.
2.3. Outline of Proposal
This research proposal will be comprised of 10 segments. The first two segments were
the executive summary and introduction as can be seen. This is followed by literature review
which will review the existing work in this field and shall identify any gaps in the literature.
The fourth segment would be the research aim, objectives and questions along with
presentation of sub goals. The fifth segment is the theoretical content which will align itself
with the theoretical aspects of every research goal. This is followed by the sixth segment
which shall present detail about the research to be conducted and the experimental set up. The
potential results, data and expected outcome will be mentioned and the relevance of such
outcome will also be presented. The 8th segment shall present the Gantt chart and the
approximate project outline. The 9th segment is the Conclusion segment, which will present
the assumptions and limitations and will also present the scope for further work. The last
segment will present a list of academic journals and articles, which were analyzed to
construct this research proposal.
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3. Literature Review
The engineering and construction industry in Hong Kong is likely to undergo a
massive growth due to investments in residential and commercial buildings in the future; but
the industry is plagued by an acute shortage of skilled workers, and the existing workers of
the industry are gradually aging, with the average age being above 50 (Kao, 2018), (Chung,
2016). Therefore, this becomes an imperative for all the leading engineering companies of
Hong Kong to adopt means by which they can adopt strategies by which the rightly skilled
and aged workforce and employees are attracted and retained by them. But prior to
identifying and devising the strategies which will attract the right workforce towards the
companies, it is important to understand the leadership and management approach these
companies have towards their employees. This will also help in understanding whether
leadership / management approaches act as a significant reason for a worker shortage in this
industry.
As per a 2014 article by Hout and Michael published in the Harvard Business Review,
the companies based in Hong Kong and China are state owned institutions which are
experimenting with management practices dominant in the West (Hout & Michael, 2014).
The companies give importance to improvisation, speed, flexibility and responsiveness.
These are the abilities which aid them with a critical edge and studies conducted by Liu and
Siu of Hong Kong University show that the private companies earn a much higher return than
the 4% return earned by the state owned organizations. The Hong Kong based companies
have learnt to manage and operate differently in the last three decades as they had to evolve
through a very turbulent external environment.
As per the article, the business leaders of China manage their employees very
differently. These leaders are culturally trained to see the employees of their companies as
their extended families but in fact in return do expect a lot (Hout & Michael, 2014). Majority
of the CEOs of these companies hail from humble beginnings where they built their company
with their own hands and maybe due to this, the founder manager believes in doing every
task themselves starti9ng from recruiting to supplier management, to creating government
ties etc. Basically the managers get involved in every aspect of the business and it might be
too much for the new generation employees who need their own degree of freedom and a
sense of empowerment (Hout & Michael, 2014).
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As management bench strength acts as the biggest restriction for company’s growth,
often founder managers are committed by offering generous incentives to the employees,
education for their children, housing facilities etc. The Chinese management practices are
characterized by – having simple organizational structures but the control lies from the top,
they follow a total top down approach but business units are often given autonomy which in
itself is a contrast between the management control and organizational structure; localizing
the different value propositions; tendency to develop products at a faster time which often
leads to quality issues as well; tendency of collocating the engineering and manufacturing
aspects close; these companies hire mid level experts in manufacturing and engineering even
if it proves to be expensive for them and using a host of different strategies which are non
market smartly (Hout & Michael, 2014).
As per another article published in Harvard Business Review by Quinn Mills in 2005,
the Chinese companies are majorly family businesses and the succession of leadership occurs
within the family (Mills, 2005). Therefore, automatically there is a reduction in reliance of
other employees and their career growth is stagnated within companies. The degree of
freedom provided by these Chinese companies to their mid level executives is much lesser
than what happens in the rest of the world. Adaptability is another aspect which is given less
importance in Chinese companies but is a factor which is critically needed by them. As per a
study by Chiang, in 2006, the elements which determine an employee’s outlook towards the
leadership are – the acceptance of the leader by the group or team, the nature of task, the
nature of the leader, the degree of communication encouraged by the leader, the source of
power of the leader, the directive style of leadership, the chance of providing feedback etc
(Chiang, 2006).
Even after repeated literature search no study on good leadership practices followed in
Hong Kong engineering companies as per the perception of the employees could not be
identified. Therefore, this primary research project would help in mitigating this gap in
published research, and apart from theoretical standpoint of leadership and effective
leadership practices, the literature review cannot contribute much to the topic. Therefore the
importance of the primary research further increased, and this research in the form of both
qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques will be conducted critically to generate
accurate and original findings.
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4. Research Aim, Objectives and Questions
4.1. Aim
The aim of this research project is to identity and explores the good practices of
leadership practiced by leading engineering companies of Hong Kong, and to understand how
such practices are viewed by local employees within the age group of 30 years to 40 years. It
is also the aim of this research project to identify the effectiveness of the present day
leadership practices amongst the engineering companies of Hong Kong, and what the
perception of employees have towards such practices.
4.2. Research Objectives
The research objectives are as follows;
- Exploring the theoretical concept of leadership, its uniqueness in engineering
industries and the specific traits/styles of leadership that prove to be effective in
today’s young employees
- Exploring the concept of leadership practices in the engineering industry of Hong
Kong and identification of key leadership strategies that are popular amongst
companies
- Conducting primary research on a minimum of three leading engineering companies
of Hong Kong ( one of that would be Startac Engineering Private Ltd) and
interviewing the mid-management leader managers ( total sample size minimum 6)
and conducting a survey research through questionnaire on the employees within the
age group of 30 – 40 years ( total sample size would be minimum 30 ) to understand
how leadership is viewed by the management as well as the employees
- Analysing the data received and identifying what good leadership practices are in the
eyes of 30 – 40 year old local engineering employees and what should the companies
do to improve their practices and attract and retain skilled and talented workforce
- As the Literature review is conducted in the previous assignment, this project would
present a critique between the secondary research findings and primary research
findings to develop the final inference on the hypothesis developed at the start of this
paper
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- Developing a set of recommendation framework that would be effective for both the
managers and the employees of Hong Kong’s engineering companies that promote
efficiency and effectiveness in performance.
The actions pertaining to these research objectives are as follows;
- Developing the Research Project Formulation Outline
- Conducting the Literature Review
- Developing the initial poster stating the aim, objectives and research questions
- Sending the poster to a list of engineering companies to select the companies on
which the research is to be conducted
- Developing the research proposal in detail and constructing the questionnaire
- Selecting the right respondents and sending them the consent form to be filled up and
receipt of such
- Sending the questionnaire
- Receipt of the filled up questionnaire
- Data analysis & interpreting the data
- Constructing the discussion based on literature review, the theoretical aspects and the
primary research findings
- Developing the final research dissertation.
4.3. Research Questions
The research questions are as follows;
- What are the good leadership practices being followed in the engineering industry of
Hong Kong? What as per to you are relevant and effective leadership practices
globally? Do you feel there are similarities between the popular leadership practices
in global engineering industries and the approach of leadership in Hong Kong based
companies? What are the dissimilarities?
- Are there any specific leadership traits that employees (age group of 30 – 40 years)
would like to witness in their work culture? What as per to you are the specific skills
and traits that would likely to gain popularity and relevance amongst this employee
group?
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- What are the specific characteristics that separate this employee group of 30 years to
40 years from the rest of the employees? What do you feel are their aspirations and
life goals?
- Is ineffective leadership a promoting cause for the potential shortage of skilled and
talented workforce in Hong Kong’s engineering industry? What are the reasons as per
you that can be cited for this present impending shortage of skilled workforce in the
engineering and construction industry of Hong Kong?
- Is there any gap in the perception of good leadership practices between the leader-
managers and employees of Hong Kong’s engineering industry? What do you feel?
- What as per the employees of HK’s engineering companies are the good leadership
practices? What recommendations do they provide that should be followed by the
industry in general? Do you believe in taking employee feedback to change your own
management approach and leadership styles?
- How would you describe the leadership approach taken by Hong Kong managers? Is
it a top-down or bottom-up approach? Would you call your employee friendly? How
do you describe your management approach – employee oriented or task oriented?
- What as per to you, are the future strategies that must be taken by Hong Kong’s
engineering industry to combat the impending issues and create an attractive industry
for drawing the right talented workforce amongst their midst?
4.4. Research Hypothesis
This research project has its dependent variable as perception of employees (30 to 40
year old) and the independent variable is effectiveness of leadership practices. Therefore, the
set of hypotheses created for this paper are;
Null Hypothesis (Ho) – The leadership approaches of HK’s engineering companies is not
effective as per the perception of employees
Alternative Hypothesis (Ha) – The leadership approaches of HK’s engineering companies is
not effective as per the perception of employees
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5. Theoretical Content
As the aim of this research paper is to identify the good leadership practices of
engineering companies in Hong Kong. Therefore, to understand the leadership practices it is
first important to have thorough theoretical knowledge about leadership and different
leadership theories, styles and traits. Therefore, concept of leadership and its aspects becomes
the main theoretical content for this research paper.
Leadership is an aspect that has since long generated much interest and debate
amongst scholars. The concept is one of the most critically studied, dynamic domains and is
still one of the least understood phenomenons. From the very beginning of civilization, the
importance of leaders and their leadership has become the most significant aspects of
historical studies, and has acted as a domain of active inquiry (Chrobot-Mason, Gerbasi, &
Cullen-Lester, 2016). Leadership has in fact been identified as one of the most critical factor
for determining the success or the failure of organizations. The focus on leadership was first
found in the works of Machiavelli in the early sixteenth century, where depiction of a leader
was initially presented (Galie & Bopst, 2006). Later on, a more systematic analysis of the
concept of leadership was proposed by Max Weber. Weber’s theory of leadership was based
on three core pillars – legal authority that stemmed from the functional official duties;
traditional authority that stemmed from complying with the forms and norms of conduct and
lastly charismatic authority that depicted the personal characteristics of leaders (Breuilly,
2011). Therefore, as per Weber a leader is a person who had the right personal traits, depicted
the right behaviour and approaches, complied with the set norms of conduct and had legal
authority as well. Since the theory of Weber, the concept of leadership has underwent more
systematic studies and analysis and developed into a range of conceptual definitions and
theoretical perspectives.
Leadership effectiveness was the main focus of all the studies which began from the
early twentieth century and the different scholars defined the leadership as per individual
characteristics and perspectives (Bass, 1990). As per Stodgill in 1974, there are present as
many definitions of leadership as there are individuals who tried to define the dynamic
concept (Neera, Anjanee, & Shoma, 2010). Therefore, no unanimous viewpoint regarding the
leadership concept has ever been reached so far and the chance of having an uniform outlook
is quite rare in the future as well. Leadership concept has been defined in terms of behaviour,
traits, influence, role and relationships, interaction patterns, occupations etc (Ensley,
Hmieleski, & Pearce, 2006). As per this research project “good leadership practices” are
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sought to be identified, and this “good” practices depict the “effectiveness” of leadership in
generating the right performance from the employees and for mitigating the employee
problems which plague the engineering and construction industry of Hong Kong.
Katz & Kahn in 1978, defined leadership as the influence over the “mechanical
compliance” showcased by employees associated with the routine norms of the organization
(Hurd, 2014). Jacobs and Jacques in 1990 depicted leadership as the process of depicting
meaningful direction to the shared effort and resulting in the achievement of such purpose
(Jacobs & Jaques, 1990). Schermerhorn in 2000, depicted leadership as an interpersonal
influence that lets a group or individual follow a specific leader or manager and does what the
latter instructs to be done (Avolio, Walumbwa, & Weber, 2009). Antonakis et al in 2004,
defined leadership as the nature of the process of influence and its resultant outcomes that
consistently occur between the followers and the leader and the manner in which this process
of influence is explained by the characteristics of the leader, his behavior, the perceptions of
the followers and the attributions of the leader and includes the context in which the influence
process occurs (Antonakis & House, 2014). Kouzes and Posner in 2007 defined leadership as
a dynamic process in which the leaders motivate and mobilize their team members to achieve
extraordinary things and in the process gets engaged in five aspects – modelling the way,
inspiring a shared vision, challenging the pre-established process, enabling others (team
members) to act and encouraging the team members and subordinates to achieve the common
and individual strategic goals (Abu-Tineh, Khasawneh, & Al-Omari, 2008). Despite the large
number of definitions which leadership has, a very common mentioned component is
“influence” which has repeatedly made its occurrence in the majority of definitions and
leadership theories proposed by scholars. However, this influence aspect has the very least to
do with power and to control things. This influence in leadership is about motivating and
inspiring others to achieve their own as well as shared common goals. Therefore, leadership
is a dynamic process, in which the leaders understand and influence professionally their
followers (employees and team members) to overcome and go beyond their own self goals to
act for the higher good of the organization. They achieve so by motivating and inspiring them
with the shared vision and supporting effectively the higher needs of these subordinates. This
leadership is also concerned with defining and establishing a very competent reward system
which will motivate the subordinates both extrinsically as well as intrinsically to achieve the
strategic goals of the organization, efficiently and effectively through a host of collective
efforts.
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The concept of leadership is dynamic, as repeatedly stated before, and this leadership
and leaders can be witnessed in every walk of life (Thomas, Bellin, Jules, & Lynton, 2012).
For the purpose of this research project, the focus is on the engineering industry of Hong
Kong and the engineering companies, where leadership exists in the form of effective
managers who showcase adequate and strong management skills. But whether managers and
leaders are the same, is another topic of debate. Leadership in an organization is driven by
purpose and results in a change based on the ideals, vision, values, emotional exchanges etc
and the management on the other hand is more results driven, resulting in a stable rational
system which fulfils contractual obligations (Bass, 1990). After detailed literature analysis,
certain differences between leaders and managers could be identified; leaders act as the heart
of the company whereas the managers act as the brain; leaders encourage, motivate and
directly work with people whereas the managers establish specific systems; leaders create
vision and sets a direction whereas managers create the rules and the procedures; the leaders
align the people based on the abilities and knowledge whereas managers are task oriented and
not people oriented; leaders strategize the company path whereas managers get the people
and organization to change (Lloyd-Walker & Walker, 2011). These differences however,
raise another concern – as to how the management and leadership occur in real practice. In
high performing organizations, the management tries to establish leader-managers who
practice the leadership skills and approach and ensures the work done for both the leaders as
well as the managers. Leader-managers are individuals who turn vision into actionable plans
and ensure that those actionable tasks are completed. Therefore, for every organization to be
effective in its management and leadership, they should aim at developing a system which is
both people oriented as well as task oriented, and should aim at creating what is known as a
leader manager (Schilling, 2009).
As mentioned the number of leadership theories are varied and have changed
dramatically over the years depending on the focus and the implication. Trait theories,
behavioural theories, contingency theories are to name some of them which deserve special
mention. But in this paper, apart from theories, it is more important to provide focus on the
three key styles of leadership that has been depicted as the most dominant and relevant in
today’s time. These are – transactional style of leadership, transformational style of
leadership and lastly, laissez-faire style of leadership.
Burns in 1978 depicted transactional style of leadership stemming from the
relationship between the superiors and the juniors as a social exchange, and which motivated
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the subordinates mainly through conditional rewards (Burns, 1978). These rewards were
given on the basis of reaching the tasks completion and on accomplishing the established
goals. A transactional leader is one who follows a cost focused economic exchange between
himself and the subordinate to meet the material needs of the subordinate in return for the
specific services rendered by the latter (McCleskey, 2014). This type of leadership can also
be understood as one involving basic exchanges between the followers and the leaders and
reflects the basic tenet of reciprocal obligation. It is further highlighted that this transactional
leadership ensures the compliance from the employee in exchange of the assistance provided
by the leader in attainment of the common goals (Ensley et al., 2006).
Transformational leadership however, delves deep in comparison to other previously
mentioned theories. Transformational leadership occurs where both the leader and the
subordinates are both immersed in raising each other to the higher levels of morality and
motivation and achievement of shared goals and values (Bass & Avolio, 2013). The
transformational leaders deeply care about their followers and also understand the impact of
their actions on the group dynamics. Transformational leadership is achieved when followers
view organizational goals as their own, and as a part of their own being and pursue such
common goals which becomes a way of their own self actualization (Strang, 2005).
Transformational leadership is an expansion of the transactional leadership and is not focused
on exchanges. The former in fact motivates the subordinates to overcome their personal self
interests and inspires them to achieve the organizational goals and at the same time focuses
on the well being of the subordinates and focuses on their individual achievement by
obtaining organizational achievement (McCleskey, 2014).
As per Avolio & Bass in 1991, the transactional leaders and transformational leaders
are active leaders and are focused at preventing problems stemming up in their organizations
and are proactive in solving them (Bass & Avolio, 2013). But laissez faire leadership is
passive and these leaders delegate their entire task to their subordinates and avoid decision
making. They focus on empowering their subordinates to the extent of allowing them to take
decisions for themselves and scores very high on task delegation and people oriented aspects
(Schilling, 2009).
Out of these aforementioned leadership styles, and other styles namely democratic
leadership, relationship oriented leadership, participative leadership etc, it is now the aim to
identify the relevant existing leadership style amongst Hong Kong organizations and what
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should be the most desired style of leadership and practices of leadership in the construction
and engineering industry of Hong Kong.
6. Experimental Set Up
The research is the process of scientific and systematic collection of information
pertinent to a specific topic with the intention of proving a specific theory or to explore a
phenomenon to come up with a specific theory or inference (Goddard & Melville, 2004).
This research project will aim to collect information pertaining to the ideas that employees of
Hong Kong’s construction and engineering industry have regarding the good leadership
practices that should be followed. To keep the research focused and specific, only the
viewpoints of employees within the age group of 30 – 40 years would be undertaken. The
following are the specifications of the research design that will be deployed to test the
hypothesis created at the start of this research proposal.
6.1. Research Approach
The research to be conducted is inductive in nature, and shall have the research
philosophy as pragmatism. As the research hypothesis is already created at the start of this
research paper, therefore, the entire research will be conducted with the intention of testing
such hypothesis (Zikmund & Babin, 2006), and is guided by the basic assumption that, the
leadership practices promoted by engineering companies of Hong Kong are not effective as
per the perception of 30 to 40 year old employees. Therefore to understand the actual
phenomenon research must be conducted where participants would be the employees within
such age group and working in engineering companies of Hong Kong. Alongside, viewpoints
of the leader-managers of the company must also be taken to understand the specific style of
leadership practiced by them and the problems they face regarding employee management.
Therefore, the methodology selected for this research is mixed methodology.
6.2. Research Design
The research methodology is therefore selected to be mixed methodology consisting
of both the qualitative research and quantitative research. Qualitative research will be
conducted on leader-managers employed in leading engineering companies of Hong Kong.
Qualitative research is chosen for the leader – managers, as it will be aimed to understand the
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leadership styles and approaches they take to manage employees and projects, and also the
problems that they face in employee engagement and ensuring that the employees perform
successfully. The issues that are challenging the Hong Kong’s engineering industry and the
apparent shortage for skilled workers and how it is likely to impact the leadership approaches
would also be aimed to understand. As in depth understanding of the phenomenon is required
to be understood therefore qualitative research is chosen as the ideal research methodology as
it would effectively derive the data that would be required by the researcher (Trujillo &
Taylor, 2001), (King, 2004). Qualitative researches help in cognitive understanding of
phenomenon and are a very popular choice of data collection for social sciences researches
(Kumar, 2005).
Quantitative research would be conducted on employees working in these leading
engineering companies for the past 3-5 years minimum. Quantitative researches focus on the
objective measurements and the numerical analysis of the data thus collected through
surveys, questionnaires etc (Ouyang, 2001). The perception on the good leadership practices
practiced in engineering companies of Hong Kong as per the employees of age group 30 to
40 years of age will be studied by this quantitative research. As it is the intention to have on
board a large number of respondents and to generate their perception about this topic, had
qualitative research been done on them it would have been beyond the scope and purview of
this research project. Therefore, a data collection procedure needed to be adopted that at the
same time would involve a large number of respondents and would also assist the researcher
to collect such large bulk of information at a short time period and to analyze the information
generated in the shortest time possible (Strauss & Corbin, 1998), (Salkind, 2010). Therefore,
quantitative research was selected as the ideal format for this part of the research.
6.3. Data Collection, Research Instrument, Sampling and Ethical
Considerations
10 companies would be identified and contacted, but it might be so that not all of
them give the permission to conduct such a research. It is expected that a minimum of 3
companies must be chosen, for conducting such a research in their midst. If more than 3
companies are available, then it will be for the benefit of the research only as varied
viewpoints of the employees and their leader managers can be sought through this project.
However, while contacting these companies, it is crucial that all the ethical considerations be
followed by the researcher (Wilkinson, 2003). Basic tenets of research ethics, namely, the
intention of the research, the objectives, the expected outcome, the implications of the
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findings, and other ethical considerations namely, maintaining complete confidentiality of the
identities of the respondents chosen, free volition of the respondents to partake in the
research, complete assurance that the viewpoints expressed by the respondents will not be
placed against their identities in future, advocacy and intervention shall be maintained and a
trustworthy and honest ambience will be created between the researcher and the respondents
shall be made aware to these companies (Golafshani, 2003). The researcher can email flyers
to these companies that can be put up in the employee emails or put up in the lounge/foyer
and the interested candidates can approach if they want to partake in this research. The
interested candidates can subsequently give information about other employees who might be
interested and therefore the sampling of respondents will be done through non-probability
snowball sampling.
Within these companies chosen from Hong Kong, it is critical that these belong to the
engineering and construction industry and is in existence for more than 10 years.
Respondents from the middle & senior management will be contacted and a minimum sample
size of 10 leader managers from the chosen companies will be expected to reach. Semi
structured interviews will be held with these 10 respondents for the qualitative research, and
Skype would be used as the medium through that the researcher and the respondents would
interact.
For the quantitative research, 10 employees from each company would be expected to
be recruited for this research leading to a total sample size of more than 30 at least. Survey
questionnaires would be built that will be subjected to these respondents and emailed to them.
The age group of the respondents is to be kept strictly between 30 years to 40 years. The
filled up questionnaire would be emailed back to the researcher and based on the feedback,
the final analysis would be done. Therefore in both the scenarios, the sampling done would
be non-probability snowball sampling.
Care would be taken to ensure that the data derived from the primary research is valid
and reliable and all the ethical considerations are effectively taken (Kothari, 2008), (Maxwell,
2005). As internet is used to collect the data, it will be ensured that all the internet ethics are
effectively followed (Silverman, 2009).
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7. Results, Outcome & Relevance
The analysis and findings segment would be divided into three sub-segments. The
first would be the data derived from the qualitative research interviews. Each of the
respondents would be asked the same set of questions, and the replies of all of the
respondents to a specific question would be presented in a descriptive paragraph format. The
most important themes would be highlighted and presented in verbatim. As the observation
would be presented it would be aimed to present a critique with the literature review findings
if direct alignment or direct contrast between the two can be identified.
The data received from the questionnaire survey would be analyzed with the help of
mathematical tools present in Microsoft Word, and then the information obtained would be
graphically represented along with tabular calculations. In this segment as well, it would be
aimed to identify whether any direct association with the findings of the Literature Review is
found. Finally the third segment would be a critical discussion whereby the findings from the
qualitative research, quantitative research and the secondary research (in the form of
literature review) would be presented and then the final analysis would be conducted and the
hypothesis would be tested.
The relevance of this research project lies in the fact that, no research has been carried
on this same topic previously, and therefore this research project would serve as the first of
its kind and would enable in mitigating such literature gap in this field. The same research
design can be utilized and the same study can be carried out in different industries of Hong
Kong and this will enable the industry experts and company owners to understand whether
they are going at the right path and what can be done to improve their present outcome.
8. Project Planning and Gantt Chart
A probable timeline (Gantt chart) is built as follows that will help to understand the
progression of events and the activity timeline.
Sl.
No. Tasks Month1 Month 2
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4
1 Formulation of the 
18

research project
plan
2
Designing the
Research
Methodology

3 Creating the
Research Proposal 
4
Market Research
and Identifying
the target
companies

5
Taking consent
and targeting the
respondents
 
6
Conducting the
qualitative
research &
quantitative
research
 
7
Collection of data
and analyzing
such

8 Writing the
Literature Review     
9
Writing the
analysis segment
and hypothesis
testing

10 Creating the final
research project       
9. Conclusion
In this chapter, the final findings, the result of the hypothesis testing and a set of
recommendation strategies meant for the leader-managers of construction and engineering
industry of Hong Kong would be presented that will help the industry to attract skilled talent
19

and have a favourable perception as per employees of all age groups. An account of the
construct validity would be presented that will help in understanding whether the research
results have effectively met all the research objectives created at the start of this project.
Scope of further research would also be presented that have been considered by the
researcher during the research project in process.
9.1. Assumptions & Limitations
Assumptions are statements that are presumed to be true but for a specific purpose,
namely, this research and also depict conditions under that the statistical techniques give rise
to valid results (Sofaer, 2002). For a mixed methodology paper namely as this, where both
qualitative and quantitative researches are conducted the following are the assumptions;
- The respondents has genuine interest to partake in the research and answers provided
by them are best to their knowledge
- The respondents are honest and there has been no case of misrepresentation of
information to improve the image of their company or management
- The inclusion criteria chosen for the sample are appropriate and therefore, the
participants chosen are expected to have gone similar experience
Limitations on the other hand are aspects on that the researcher has no control and they
threaten the effectiveness and validity of the research. For the purpose of this research project
the following are the limitations;
- Time, cost and effort have been key limiting factors. In absence of these constraints a
larger sample size could have been taken that would have given more varied
information.
- A number of unknown factors can be at work that could bias the very responses of the
participants, namely, the chance that some respondents fear that their viewpoints will
be held against them in future or they want to create a different image of their
company than it is in reality.
After careful analysis of the literature it was found that, there was no specific study
conducted on the topic of good leadership practices in the engineering companies of Hong
Kong especially as per the perception of employees between the age group of 30 to 40 years.
Therefore, the relevance and value of this paper lies in this fact, that it will act to mitigate the
gap otherwise present in the relevant literature published in this topic.
20

21

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