An Analysis of the Internet's Role in Management Research

This essay explores the use of the internet as a management research methodology. It begins by highlighting the importance of management research for organizational efficiency and productivity. The essay justifies the selection of the internet as a research method, emphasizing its transformative impact on data collection, cost-effectiveness, and global reach. A comprehensive literature review discusses various online research methods (ORMs), including cyber-ethnography, online focus groups, and surveys, and illustrates their application with examples. The essay then examines the use of the internet in secondary research, emphasizing its role in accessing published sources. It details the characteristics of internet research, such as easy communication and anonymity, and justifies its relevance in management studies. The essay also addresses ethical issues, including data confidentiality and originality, and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of internet research. The paper concludes by recommending the best possible manner to apply the internet for conducting any management research in any organization.

Running head: MANAGEMENT RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Internet as Management Research Methodology
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Introduction
Management research is very important for any type of organization. To perform the
organizational activities efficiently and productively, the organizational invest considerable
amount of time and capital in management research. Companies conduct management research
for many purposes, starting from improvement in organizational culture, testing new products
and services, increase in productivity, enhancing sales and customer support services, measuring
the effectiveness of the promotional activities and most importantly studying the market
competition, threats and opportunities (Fiss, Cambré and Marx 2013).
Internet has been chosen as the research method for this essay. The justification for
choosing this method is as follows. Over the years, the researchers have used various methods
for research, but after the discovery of internet, the process of research has changed significantly.
The modern world is dominated by advanced technology and internet is the biggest discovery in
this area. Internet has changed the course of the businesses. With globalization and trade
liberalization in effect, internet has helped the organizations to expand internationally. It also
helped the companies to do external environment analysis before international expansion
(Hewson and Stewart 2016). All types of organizations have been improving their technological
capability to compete with the world. The internet research method is beneficial in terms of
getting all sorts of relevant data in a very short span of time. This research method not only saves
time for research, but it also helps in saving the cost of data collection and analysis (Ngai, Tao
and Moon 2015).
The objective of this paper is to find out the pros and cons of using internet as a research
method while applying the other methodologies in a management research study.
The scope of internet as a research method is huge. It not only provides the necessary
information required for conducting a research, but also throws light on the various techniques
that can be applied for conducting the research study by the organizations. In this research paper,
various dimensions of internet as a research methodology will be highlighted, which will be
followed by the recommendations to apply the internet in the best possible manner for
conducting any management research in any organization.

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Literature review
Internet as a research method
Internet as a management research method has become extremely popular in the last few
decades. It helps the organizations to access huge amount of information for conducting the
research on a particular management issue and get the directions to solve that. For any kind
research, the researcher must collect data and analyze those applying suitable methods.
According to Zikmund et al. (2013), internet offers several different research methods, known as
Online Research Methods (ORMs). These are the methods or practices followed by the
researchers for relevant data collection for the research study by the using the internet. These are
also called the internet research methods.
Majority of these research methodologies are enhancement of the existing methodologies
by applying the new technologies. Internet has contributed in the re-invention and restructuring
of the research methods with the incorporation of the new technology. The world has become
smaller with the invention of internet and it has influenced every aspect of life. The growth of the
Social Medias has added a new dimension, new level of opportunity and complexity in the
education, research and business (Ngai, Tao and Moon 2015). Hence, social media or virtual
media has become a very important research field. It provides unique insights to various research
studies on the customer and social segments that have a significant influence on the businesses
and management of the organizations. Hence, although the management issues are dependent on
the type of business, these issues have impact on the business and to solve the issues, research is
needed to find out the best possible solutions (McDaniel and Gates 2013). Through the
application of various internet research methods, the businesses can do this quite efficiently.
Different types of internet research methods are, cyber-ethnography, online focus groups,
online content analysis, online interviews, online surveys, social network analysis, online
qualitative research, online quantitative research and web based experiments (Bryman 2015).
The common factor in all the above research methods is the presence of internet as a research
tool. The relevance of using internet can be justified using the following example. An
organization in the consumer goods industry wants to expand its sales. For that, it needs to know
about the demand of the customers, which will help it to take the decisions about whether it

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should increase the production of the existing product or it should opt for product differentiation.
Hence, this is a management issue of the organization and market research is the best method to
know the trend of the market. The organization adopts the online survey method for the research.
The survey questionnaire is sent via email to few randomly selected customers, from the CRM
database and their responses are also collected via online method. After the responses were
collected, the management can perform scientific calculations on the data and can make
decisions about the business expansion. It can be said from the above hypothetical situation that,
internet has helped the organization immensely during conducting the survey and data collection.
They did not have to print questionnaire and meet the customers physically to give it to them.
They also did not have to worry about the location of the customers. Emailing the questionnaire
has not only reduced the cost and time of the survey, but also the hassle of data collection
(McDaniel and Gates 2013). The management of the company can also perform social media
analysis to find out the tastes and preferences of the target consumer group via online methods.
Hence, the entire research process has been faster and the management of the organization can
proceed to rational decision making process quite easily and in a quickly manner.
Use of internet in secondary research
Internet as a research method is immensely beneficial for conducting secondary research.
Secondary data are the ones that are collected from already published sources, such as, official
websites, online publications, academic journals, books, magazines, newspaper articles and
business reports (Hanna 2012). Internet research method is extremely beneficial for collecting
secondary data for any research. According to Miorandi et al. (2012), internet enhances the
traditional research methodologies. In the traditional methods, any research methodology follows
few basic steps of choosing the research philosophy, paradigm, approach, design, sampling
techniques, and data collection techniques (Bryman and Bell 2015). In these methods,
application of internet plays a significant role in improving the accuracy. The researchers can
find huge amount of information on the research methodologies with the help of internet, can
apply sampling techniques by using various online tools and can collect relevant primary and
secondary data from various sources.
Characteristics of internet as a management research method

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The characteristics of internet as a research method are quite distinct from the other
research methods. Gosling and Mason (2015) state that, internet is one of the best mediums of
communication in the technologically advanced era. It provides multiple means of
communication and interaction within the community and among the organization located across
the globe. For collecting primary data for a research study, the management of the organizations
can easily communicate with the respondents, whom are chosen using a suitable sampling
technique, via different channels on the internet, such as, email, social media, websites, online
newsletters etc. This type of communication is more convenient in terms of time and cost
effectiveness. As stated by Hewson and Laurent (2012), the reach of internet is widespread,
irrespective of the geographical location and distance. Hence, the researchers do not need to
travel to other locations to collect the data for research. With the help of internet, they can access
the relevant data for the research study from online libraries, online publications and books,
official websites, newspaper articles etc. Internet gives scope to be anonymous and maintain the
privacy of personal information and confidentiality of data (Markham 2014). The participation or
interaction between the people can remain secret as face to face interaction does not happen.
Justification of the usage of internet as a research method
In the management research studies, usage of internet is relevant as the technology has
become quite advanced. The researchers can adopt either qualitative or quantitative or mixed
approach of study, based on the requirement of the paper. Selection of the research philosophy,
design, strategy and approach are determined by the topic and research objectives of the study
(Roman, Zhou and Lopez 2013). Internet helps the researcher to get information about the
available research topics before choosing a particular one. It also helps in getting insights about
which approach and strategy to be chosen for the particular research. For the management
research studies in the organizational level, the companies often need to do social media analysis
to get an idea about the tastes and preferences of the customers and change in the pattern of the
market trends (Hewson and Laurent 2012). This research can only be possible to be conducted
using internet method, which not only provides the information faster, but also helps to get the
precise outcome quicker.
Ethical issues in using internet

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Every research method has some ethical issues and internet is no exception. Conducting a
research on a particular topic requires permission from the sources. Even conducting the survey
and interviews also require permission from the respondents (Williams 2012). The researcher
must agree to the terms and conditions regarding data confidentiality. Internet gives opportunity
to the researchers to reach out to the individuals in remote areas where it is impossible to go to
conduct the research. With this matter, comes the question of ethical considerations.
Determination of safe environment for conducting the research, security and confidentiality of
the data, availing the consent of the participants of the surveys and interviews and performing
secondary analysis on the archived information are the ethical concerns that the researchers face
(NESH 2014). Hence, the researchers must be aware of the laws regarding the ethical usage of
internet for research and must follow those rules to the core to maintain the integrity of the
research.
Another important area of ethics is the originality of the research paper. The plethora of
information that is available on the internet often tempts the researcher to copy it without making
any changes. The researcher must maintain the originality of the paper. Copying information
from other scholars’ papers or from any other sources without giving proper reference citation is
a crime in the educational world and in the management research as well. Hence, even if the
researcher is using internet as a management research method, he must mention the source of
information in the research paper. Thus, the researchers must address the ethical issues of
privacy, recruitment, informed consent, cloud computing and ethics of industry conduced
research by following the ethical consideration guidelines (Plato.stanford.edu 2016).
Advantages and disadvantages of using internet as a management research method
Like any other management research method, internet also has advantages and
disadvantages. As mentioned above, easy communication, privacy and confidentiality, and wide
range of access are the major advantages of internet as a research method. The other advantages
include, the ability to acquire large and more diverse samples, automatically coded data and
decreased cost of conducting the research (Markham 2014). There are some disadvantages also
about using internet as a research methodology. Firstly, the authenticity of the data cannot
always be trusted. Unless it is from an official website, the researcher should not trust any other
source which does not have any particular validation or authentication. Secondly, in many cases,

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the data or the research papers are not available for free of cost. The researcher should pay a
price to the online libraries to get access to the paper. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to the
researcher to pay to multiple libraries due to lack of financial resources (Miorandi et al. 2012).
Thirdly, the researcher faces some potential challenges during conduct of the surveys or
interviews. The participants may not reveal the true answers, some may stop answering mid way
and come back later, some may not complete the study, some may participate more than once,
some may rush through the study and answer incorrectly. All these factors lead to biased
responses, leading to undesired outcome or error in the results. Since, the researcher is not going
for face-to-face interaction; it is not possible for rectifying the errors in the response patterns.
Fourthly, there is risk of hacking and misusing the personal information on the internet, which
prevents many from opening the survey mails and click on the link or revealing important details
for the survey. Thus, the accuracy of the data and the result sometimes gets compromised due to
sampling error and inaccurate responses (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson 2012).
Recommendation
As observed from the disadvantages of using internet as a research method for the
management research, there can be a few ways to overcome the problems.
 Firstly, the researcher should not rely completely on the information gathered from the
internet. Although, internet provides immense opportunity to find the right information as
well as methodology for conducting the management research, still it is not reliable to
conduct the study with only internet based data. It is always suggested to the researchers
that they must use resources gathered from the internet and university libraries. It is
easier to cross check the data obtained from the internet with that from the library and
this ensures the reliability and authenticity of the data of the internet sources.
 Secondly, the huge amount of information on the internet can overwhelm the researcher
while selecting the topic. Hence, the researchers must narrow down on the topic and must
know the research objectives well to direct and limit the search in the right direction.
 Thirdly, the researchers must know the subject directories and the proper search engines
to make specific searches. For conducting a well read study, the researchers must access
the high quality peer reviewed articles by other scholars. These can be accessed from

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many good online libraries that contain the highly acclaimed papers. For that, proper
keyword is required which would save a lot of time and effort of the researchers during
the research.
 Fourthly, some precautions should be taken during conduction surveys and interviews
over the internet. Some technical measures can be taken to remove duplicates in the data
or making the questions mandatory for submitting the responses in a survey. It is also
recommended that the researchers must keep a margin of error while doing the
quantitative calculations on the obtained numerical data. Regarding qualitative research,
the analysis should be validated by ensuring the authenticity of the sources and the
methods applied.
Conclusion
Qualitative as well as quantitative study of the online research method is expected to change due
to the emergence of new technologies and the abilities of the researchers to reinvent or explore
the methodological approaches in the interactions related to the internet. There is huge scope in
using the internet as a research method in the management studies or in the organizational
activities. Regarding obtaining information through primary and secondary data collection from
different types of sources and analyzing those keeping the ethical issues addressed, the
researchers can exploit the internet for a high quality management research. Whether the
research follows inductive or deductive method, qualitative or quantitative approach, internet
offers the any advantages due to technological advancement. However, the researchers must
consider the ethical issues and must apply appropriate techniques to handle the disadvantages of
using internet as a research method. Hence, it can be said that, in the modern world, without
using internet, a research study cannot be completed and the researchers must use it responsibly
to produce a high quality research paper.

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