Answer

Abstract

Chaos defines human lives, however, whereas some people thrive in chaos, others are adversely affected by it. This research proposal acknowledges the inevitability of chaos in the modern organization. It notes that modern organizations are operating in an increasingly chaotic environment as a result of technologies, globalization and other factors in the macro environment such as cross-cultural teams. These factors create a situation that is hard to stabilize. As a result, the paper analyzes how leaders can adopt new faces and voices that maximize their output even in chaotic environment. The literature review proposes a shift from traditional leadership approaches to modern value-based leadership and transformational leadership. These proposals are supported by chaos theory, systems theory, and the complexity theory. To evaluate these claims, a qualitative research will be conducted where interviews will be used to collect raw data from 20 leaders. Purposeful sampling will be used to identify the 20 leaders from different organization. The findings will be evaluated against secondary data collected using the archival research method. Collectively, these two methods will form the mixed method research.

Keywords: social chaos, chaos theory, leadership theories, organizational performance, and systems theory

Navigating Beyond Social Chaos: The Face and Voice of Leadership

Introduction

Chaos is an inevitable part of any organization. Unlike the past years, modernity has brought new concepts such as globalization and cross-cultural teams, which are some of the concepts leading to a build-up of chaos in organizations (Smith, 2008). In response to these changes, leadership literature has begun to acknowledge the growing significance of complexity science, systems theories, and their significance in understanding chaos in organizations. As much as chaos is a broad topic, social chaos has been one of the most important topics in modern literature. Tsoukas (2018) reports that complexity science and chaos are rapidly becoming part of the new imagery in lay and scientific cultures. These two concepts are important in understanding social chaos since they help leaders understand the social world through what is known as chaosmos. The term chaosmos denotes the combination of cosmos and chaos, which means that the universe or the environment in which an organization operates should be associated with instances of chaos. In such a case, chaos arises from the potential disequilibrium caused by two opposing forces—order and disorder.

In line with the concept of chaos, organizations are beginning to understand new concepts such as sensitivity, feedback loops, processes, novelty, non-linearity, unpredictability, emergence, and linearity. These notions are important in understanding the necessity of new approaches to leadership that will propel the organizations beyond the social chaos into a future that will be both turbulent and counterproductive (Tsoukas, 2018). This statement is made with the realization that social chaos and any other chaos cannot be stopped altogether, but rather, be explored to the advantage of the organization. Dolan, Garcia, and Auerbach, (2013) second this statement noting that being in a constant state of comfort will lead to a stagnant organization. However, the organizations with constant doses of social chaos tend to be more innovative in coming up with new solutions to challenges. In the process, they make discoveries about the whole organizational ecosystem and use the new developments to thrive and attain sustainable competitive advantages.

Statement of the Problem

Unlike previous generations that conformed to common ideologies, the new generations of citizens and employees are challenging previously set norms as they attempt to discover new approaches to enhancing the quality of life. By challenging the status quo, they create disorder in the organizations and society as a whole. Hasinoff and Mandzuk (2018) explain that social theories that were initially applied by organizations and societies to guide people toward achieving common goals have become irrelevant. An example is the concept of globalization, where organizations are forced to employ multicultural and cross-cultural workforces (Kiel, 2016). The pressure that comes with managing people from different societies with different norms, religion, ethnicity, sexual preferences, political convictions, race, and work ethics has made it challenging for leaders to use the traditional leadership approaches.

Unlike traditional leadership, where people could be grouped based on sex, tribe, and castes, among other factors, social activism has led to the eradication of such groups in favor of a fair workplace. Such grouping was used to ease social control and reinforce a social order. Structures were deliberately set to ensure that people adhere to similar patterns of behavior. The uniformity in mindsets and behavior made it easy to lead society and organizations. The rise of the information age challenged most of the long-standing mechanisms used to enforce social order. The internet empowered a new generation of ideologies, which made the workplace more chaotic than before. This has created the taxonomy problem, as illustrated by Aristotle and Plato Tsoukas (2018). Constantly challenging taxonomical boundaries has motivated emergence of new social structuralism, that subsequently calls for new face and voice of leadership.

Purpose of the Study

Since the onset of scientific management, traditional studies on leadership and management of organizations assume that firms should be controlled using a linear understanding. This study proposes challenging the traditional view and, instead, advocates for new approaches to leadership that can enable organizations to optimize their performance in chaotic environments. This means adopting non-linear approaches, as opposed to the linear approaches used in the past. This study further explores chaos theory concerning developments in management literature and epistemologically explores new discourses in organization and leadership theory.

Objectives

This research study intends to explore the need for new voices and faces of leadership to navigate the increasing social chaos in modern organizations.

Significance of the Study

The research study seeks to guide leaders into understanding and acknowledging the inevitability of social chaos in the organizations. By doing this, the research study creates new knowledge to fill a knowledge gap on social chaos in an organization and how best the leaders can use it to the advantage of their respective firms. Apart from empowering leaders and exploiting the chaos to optimize performance, the study’s findings seek to redefine the current attitude towards chaos.

Scope and Limitations

Chaos is a wide topic of study that spans different dimensions. This study limits its scope to explore the intricacies of social chaos. Guided by relevant theories, it analyzes leadership and how current leadership theories can be readjusted to suit them for the ensuing social chaos in organizations. The literature is limited to corporate leadership and not public administration.

Definitions of Terms

Social chaos – this term represents the social disorder in organizations. In a broader sense, it denotes the lack of stability as the existing social structures are constantly challenged to meet new requirements.

The face of leadership – the term refers to changes in the leadership style and behavior of a leader to adapt to the current needs of the followers and the organization.

Voice of leadership – this term reiterates how leaders use the power of communication to influence, inspire, motivate, and achieve results.

Chaos theory – this is a mathematical concept that evaluates how certain systems exhibit changes in behavior due to random and small changes in their immediate environment.

Organization of Study

This research study follows a simple format, beginning with a detailed introduction of the topic, a literature review, and a research methodology section.

Summary

This section introduces the reader to the topic of interest, navigating beyond social chaos, the face, and the voice of leadership. This is a worthy topic considering that modern organizations encounter different sets of challenges that demand a change in approaches to leadership. As a result, this section justifies the need for research that will critically evaluate social chaos in modern societies and emphasize why new leadership approaches are required to tap into the chaos to optimize performance effectively.

Literature Review

Inherent Chaos in Social Systems

The 19^th-century theory of Social Darwinism and the 21^st-century behavioral revolution theories have been applied by social scientists to explore how natural sciences influence the understanding of social systems, which is a leading cause of social chaos in organizations in the wider society. Other authors introduce diverse theories such as systems theory, chaos theory, and pair them with complexity sciences to understand changes in organizations and other social systems. By applying these insights, it is agreed that organizations are a naturally turbulent and complex adaptive system. In the article ” Chaos in Social systems, ” Kiel (2016) furthers this discourse by lamenting that social systems, unlike the physical and natural world, have provided a difficult backdrop for understanding organizational change processes. This scenario arises from the fact that social systems are made up of intricate webs of variables. These variables also embody a dynamic nature, thus making it a daunting task to understand changes in social systems. In elaborating this point, Kiel notes that it is easier to understand and explain changes in healthcare systems and space travel than to explain social chaos dynamics.

It is upon this line of thinking that Herbert Simon, a Nobel Laureate, retorts that the natural sciences are much easier to comprehend than the social sciences. This statement elaborates on the hardships of establishing a dominant face and voice of leadership when organizations are going through social chaos. For any leader to successfully have a voice in managing social chaos, they need to understand that social systems are non-linear. Van Der Merwe (2018) explains that non-linearity makes workplaces filled with uncertainty, disorder, and surprises. Non-linearity arises from the unpredictability of social structures and behaviors exhibited by human beings as they attempt to survive through the social chaos. As a result, the search for order and stability stirs more chaos, thus placing the organization in a constant state of disequilibrium. In such cases, Çakar and Alakavuklar (2011) advise that the leaders do not need to quell the chaos, but rather use it to optimize the organization’s productivity. Smith (2008) reinforces this discussion, noting that businesses represent what in mathematics and physics are designed as chaotic systems. The chaos theory provides a critical analysis of the relationship between order and chaos. Understanding the theory makes it easier to comprehend how organizations drift from order into chaos and how chaos can be handled to realize order.

Analysis of Social Chaos and Need for New Approaches to Leadership

Finding the voice and face of leadership in social chaos is often challenging for most leaders. Smith (2008) reiterates this point by narrating a folk-tale where four blind men were made to encounter an elephant. Surprisingly, they all had different descriptions and perceptions of the animal, depending on the part they managed to touch. The four people made four disconnected theories detailing the nature of the animal they touched. The author concludes that because they failed to see the whole animal, their perceptions were distorted and biased. To avoid such shortcomings, he emphasizes the need for leaders to have a holistic perception of the organization, especially when under chaos. This means having a full understanding of the complex and chaotic nature of organizations. Dolan et al. (2013) emphasize that organizations are complex systems whose behavior is determined by fundamental rules. Leaders cannot control or influence these fundamental rules, but rather, they can lead and guide them in a definite direction. The formula for achieving this objective is dependent on the availability of the right tools. For this reason, Kiel (2016) proposes a leader’s need to manage by embracing good values.

Before mastering leadership and management values that empower the organization to benefit from social chaos, Dolan et al. (2013) note that there is a big difference between traditional and modern approaches to leadership. As reiterated in the folk-tale in the previous paragraph, traditional leadership theories and approaches were one-directional. Unlike traditional perceptions of leadership, modern organizations are complex, thus require complex approaches to leadership. A detailed comparison of the traditional versus the complex ‘modern’ approaches to leadership is illustrated. First, the traditional approach to leadership follows a linear path, making it simple for the leader in conducting a cause-and-effect analysis.

On the contrary, modern approaches are non-linear, meaning that they fail to adhere to the cause-effect relationship (Kiel, 2016). The relations between these variables is therefore unpredictable as it continuously evolves. Secondly, traditional approaches use the reductionism concept where the whole organization is believed to be a sum of the different parts. On the other hand, the modern complex approach perceives the organization as a fractal, meaning that the whole organization is made of n-million interactions of different patterns replicated on diverse scales. Thirdly, the traditional approach is based on the fact that social chaos in organizations can be controlled. Leaders in the past believed that chaos is avoidable, and if not, then it should be controlled.

Contrary to this approach, the modern approach believes that organizations are chaotic. The leaders have to understand that there exists a cordial relationship between order and chaos in the sense that one will ultimately lead to another. Therefore, chaos is unavoidable. Leaders should not avoid it but instead, use it to self-organize the system. The fourth difference between traditional and modern approaches is that whereas the former is known for promoting uniformity, the latter thrives on catastrophe (Dolan et al. 2013). Systems under the traditional approach do no change suddenly. If they do change, then it is concluded that something went wrong, thus triggering the sudden change. However, the complexity approach acknowledges that one tiny factor could cause sudden chaos requiring explosive changes to be made in the organizational system. The fifth difference is that the traditional approach enforces Aristotle’s logic since it propagates the view that an element cannot be both classified as a set of elements and as a complementary set simultaneously (Dolan et al. 2013). On the contrary, the modern approach advocates for fuzzy logic.

Backed by these differences between traditional complexity approaches, it is notable that modern leaders have to treat chaos as a natural and inevitable evolution. The modern leaders have to comprehend that nature has a way of readjusting and organizing itself to suit a particular flow. These sentiments are further expressed by Luhmann’s totality paradigm, which affirms the importance of analyzing social chaos based on relations between the organizational system and the environment in which it operates rather than as a whole-part relation (Dolan et al. 2013). Whereas analyzing a system and its environment provides a total understanding of the system’s performance, the recent analysis focuses on the system’s internal dynamics while ignoring the environment around it. This way, analyzing the system’s internal operations would fail to provide a total understanding of the system’s behavior and performance. Kiel (2016) emphasizes the need for leaders to introduce the metaphors highlighted in the chaos theory to the organization to understand social chaos and how to effectively change the voice and face of leadership to position the organization so that it will benefit instead of being negatively affected. Noting the emphasis on adopting a new voice and face of leadership, the author questions why some leaders are determined to silence the chaos rather than benefit from it. In answering this question, Tsoukas (2018) explains that it is human nature for people to want stability and certainty as opposed to uncertainty. This point narrows down to emotions where the author explains that most human beings have a natural tendency to feel secure when in control of their lives and situations around them. They feel good when they can use the stability to predict future outcomes.

On the other hand, they have a fear of the unknown as it brings discomfort. This same explanation applies to organizations whereby uncertainty causes anxiety, insecurity, powerlessness, and a general sense of discomfort, while control means power and security. People tend to resist change because they are afraid of causing instability in the organizational system. Instead, they prefer stability and comfort (Ragland, 2020). In the long run, the organization becomes accustomed to doing the same things repeatedly, which predisposes them to disruptive changes in the market. For instance, the traditional taxi industry was in a state of security and comfort until the digital taxi-hailing apps such as Uber emerged and displaced the industry. This example again reiterates the inevitability of chaos. The traditional taxi industry was disrupted by the digital taxis, which caused unexpected turbulence that forced the traditional taxis out of business.

Despite the bigger risks created by comfort, and the lack of social chaos, leaders are often blamed and considered unworthy if they cannot assure their followers of stability, security, and comfort. The resulting pressure puts the leaders in a dilemmatic position where they have to balance security within their workplaces, while also stirring reasonable levels of discomfort by triggering social chaos to keep the followers active (Tsoukas, 2018). A critical look at the dynamics created by stability and social chaos in organizations creates a new paradigm and point of view that is hard to ignore. For instance, how will leaders sustain favorable levels of social chaos in the organizations and tap into it to benefit the organization without being thought of as weak or unworthy? Secondly, is it beneficial for the leaders to sustain the chaos or to quiet it and return the organizations to the desirable state of comfort and stability?

Leading in Turbulent Environment in the 21^st Century

Thousands of articles and literature on leadership note that the 21^st-century business environment is more turbulent than the past years. It is expected that the future will be more turbulent as globalization and technology continue to influence social interactions in the organizations. According to physics, turbulence refers to irregular movements of fluids under high-intensity pressure (Grossman & Valiga, 2016). The term turbulence is, therefore, used in leadership literature as a metaphor reiterating the intense and irregular pressure arising from political, social-cultural, and economic forces within the macro and microenvironment in which organizations operate. Turbulence arises from a combination of factors, especially weak control, unexpected changes, uncertainty, complex decisions, high-performance demand, disintegration, neurotic organizations, confusion, group interdependence, and de-humanization. The complexity approach expresses the view that organizations cannot escape the turbulence. As a result, Grossman and Valiga (2016) deduce that organizations are not products of deterministic regulations and rules, but rather, they are made up of chaotic dynamics.

A leader needs to understand the dynamics of social chaos. Because of the social chaos, leaders find it challenging to achieve set organizational goals and objectives. However, the best way to tapping into the social chaos is by establishing and embedding values that self-organize the chaos. Undertaking this process enables information exchange and knowledge sharing that encourages creativity and innovation. These two elements ensure the development and growth of organizations (Lee, Lampel & Shapira, 2020). Therefore, the leaders often ask what the best way to reaching maximum development is? In answering this question, Gigliotti (2016) proposes the need for the leaders to define new values in what is known as value leadership. Value leadership surpasses traditional approaches to leadership since value leadership gives the leaders a new face and voice that enable them to inspire confidence in the followers. In the process, they easily adapt to the chaos and use it to come up with creative ideas and innovations that push the organization towards greater levels of achievements. Besides, value leadership ensures that the followers are also in a constant state of change, thus increasing their chances of accepting social chaos as a normal part of a developing organization. This statement is seconded by Dolan et al. (2013), who notes that leadership in the 21^st century needs to acknowledge that change implies learning new ways of accommodating cross-cultural teams, organizational politics, and ever-changing dynamics in the macro-level business environment.

For this reason, it is quintessential to humanize the tools and concepts used in organizational change processes. Other conditions for adapting the 21^st-century leadership styles to the violent social chaos in organizations could be through adopting conditions such as reaching shared principles, nurturing trust in leadership, embracing flexible working, looking at ways in which chaos could foster innovation and creativity, adopting simplified rules and structures, self-organizing, creating quality relationships with followers, embracing ethical leadership, and stimulating collaborations and participation (Dolan et al., 2013). These human adaptations to leading in turbulent environments can be incorporated in organizations with social chaos by introducing new sets of values in what is known as value leadership.

Sources of Social Chaos

Dolan et al. (2013) clarify that unlike traditional organizations, modern organizations need to understand four interconnected trends contributing to the complexity of leading organizations with social chaos. These factors contribute to the creation of social chaos—the pressure from customers demanding quality and timely services and products. Unlike past years when customers were comfortable with standardized products, modern customers require customized products and services suited to their needs. They demand quality products, within the shortest possible time, accompanied by rapid and real-time support services. Given that most of these organizations operate internationally, they find it chaotic to meet diverse needs.

In some cases, differences in cultural practices and language barriers lead to misunderstanding, which hampers the delivery of superior value proposition. The second source of social chaos emanates from the increased need for professional autonomy by the employees (Rimita, 2019). Unlike the traditional management theories that were based on the scientific management of employees, social media has empowered people to speak their minds. For this reason, more people are enlightened on their rights and, thus, demand professional autonomy in corporate circles. The process of providing autonomy to each of the employees ends up creating conflicts in the workplace, which amplifies social chaos. The chaos is worsened by the availability of information systems where external players such as activists can easily coerce employees into unrest, demanding changes in policies to encourage professional autonomy. The third source of social chaos is the changing preference among followers. Unlike traditional leadership, where the senior staff behaved like bosses, modern employees prefer transformational leaders.

East (2018) explains that this type of leadership requires applying the four I’s of transformational leadership. These are individualized consideration, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and idealized influence. By applying these I’s, transformational leaders facilitate and empower their followers, thus enabling them to do the right thing. This includes being productive even when under pressure or when the organization is undergoing social chaos. Transformational leadership is lauded for being one of the best approaches to meeting the complex demands of an organization in chaos, as opposed to the traditional leadership approaches where leaders order instructions to their followers (East, 2018). Transformational leadership has been proven as a good approach to promoting autonomy, which ensures that employees continue to be productive even when the organization is going through turbulence. Besides, this leadership style inspires people, shares a common vision, and holds the workers together even when everything else around them is falling apart. The third source of social chaos is the need to transition to flatter, leaner, and flexible organizational structures (Dolan et al. 2013).

The traditional bureaucratic leadership styles are synonymous with hierarchical levels, which limit the flexibility of organizations. As a result, it makes organizations rigid when faced with turbulent environments. Therefore, it is in the organization’s best interests to reduce hierarchies by creating flatter organizations. As noted by change management theories, most employees are bound to oppose change that is likely to render them redundant. For instance, employees will oppose any organization measures in the form of downsizing or eliminating some positions (Ragland, 2020). This, by itself, is a source of social chaos. On the other hand, the organizations are forced to keep up with the changes in management literature through leaning and introducing flexible organizational structures. The need for these changes and the resulting opposition is likely to cause turbulence within the organization, thus stimulating social chaos.

Theoretical Framework

According to Kiel (2016), chaos theory and the complexity theory form the foundational theories that explain the necessity of chaos in an organization. The article associates the chaos theory with long term disturbances within systems, which in return lead to a state of instability. On the other hand, the complexity theory posits that it is much more unpredictable when organizations’ chaos will end. For instance, Houry (2012) notes that the organizational emergence from chaotic events is often described as random and unpredictable. This observation applies when the environment of an organization is evaluated in the long-term. Thus, Houry proposes the introduction of a forecasting model that guides leaders in making short-term predictions when their organizations encounter chaotic events to help them effectively navigate the turbulence. A critical analysis of this article shows that given the long-term nature of chaos, it is important that leaders embrace leadership approaches that will ensure the organization continues to be productive even as it sails through the chaotic environment.

Another significant theory that illustrates the possibility and potential negative impact of social chaos is the systems theory. The systems theory is a transdisciplinary study exploring how independent entities known as components organize themselves to form a system (Kiel, 2016). Systems thinking underlies the systems theory, and it is useful in understanding the impact of social chaos on section and the whole of the organization. According to the systems theory, a negative behavior on one component will significantly reduce the system’s effectiveness. Similarly, the efficiency of one component could significantly improve the productivity of the whole system. Backed by this understanding, systems thinking is described as the process of comprehending how various components influence the system’s behavior. In any organization, the four components that make up the organizational system are processes, planning, people, and performance (Tsoukas, 2018). These components work together in meeting set organizational goals. Chaos affecting any of the four components will affect the whole system.

Research Hypotheses/ Research Questions

H0 – Merging value-based leadership and transformational leadership will redefine the face and voice of leadership, therefore, enabling organizations to benefit from social chaos.

H1 – An utterly new leadership paradigm is required to set a new face and voice of leadership for organizations facing social chaos to quell and stabilize the work environment.

Method

This section outlines how the actual research study will be conducted. It identifies research methods, design, sampling approach, instrumentation, data collection, data analysis, and decision rules governing the actual research process. These are strategies, techniques, or processes are used to collect research data and evidence for analysis to either understand a given topic or uncover new information. The most common research methods include participant observation, surveys, interviews, focus groups, experiments, secondary analysis of data (archival study), and mixed methods. This research will use mixed methods consisting of interviews and archival studies. According to Kumar (2019), there are three designs of mixed methods, namely; sequential exploratory, convergent parallel, and explanatory sequential. The sequential exploratory allows for the combination of interviews and archival study. Interviews will be used to collect primary qualitative data.

The selection of these two methods is backed by the research goals, which is to identify how leaders can effectively navigate the social chaos in their organization. Besides, it would be vital to collect information on how leaders can use social chaos to optimize productivity instead of evading it. The interviews will be in-depth to facilitate data collection, which will then be sorted and analyzed to make inferences on the topic of interest. The selection of this method is seconded by Basias and Pollalis (2018), who note that interviews are suitable in collecting rich qualitative information that helps gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between research variables. This method contrasts surveys that collect quick data yet lacks the much-needed details to understand variables. Archival studies entail collecting and use of secondary data to interpret the primary data collected.

Research Design

Research design denotes the framework of research techniques and methods used by researchers to collect data. It helps researchers identify the most suitable research methods to collect the most useful information on their areas of interest. The three basic designs of research are data collection, sorting and measurements, and data analysis. The best research design will exhibit minimal bias in collecting data while increasing the validity of the data collected. Other elements to consider when selecting the best research design include reliability, neutrality, and generalization. Guided by this understanding, Mohajan (2018) identifies two broad categorizations of designs for a research study; qualitative and quantitative. This research uses a qualitative research design. This design establishes the relationship between observations and collects data based on theories. Ragab and Arisha (2018) add that the research designs can further be broken down into five categories, comprising descriptive research design, experimental research design, correlational research design, diagnostic research design, and explanatory research design. This research will use the descriptive research design as opposed to the explanatory design. The descriptive design is applicable where a researcher is interested in descriptions of situations and cases influencing the research study.  Given that the research study is theory-based, the research will help gather, process, analyze, and present data. Using this approach, a researcher will provide a more in-depth insight into why and how the face and voice of leadership need to be aligned to the emerging needs of the organization to navigate beyond social chaos.

Sampling

Sampling techniques are essential in selecting the most suitable study population. This research intends to use purposeful sampling as it allows a researcher to identify and select the most information-rich sample (Ragab & Arisha, 2018). For this research, the selected sample will comprise 20 leaders drawn from 20 firms across the USA. The archival study will equally use the purposeful sampling to identify the most suitable secondary sources of information to provide the much-needed expert opinion to facilitate understanding the primary findings. The only criteria to be met when selecting the secondary sources is that they must be current and peer-reviewed. Peer reviews ensure that the information presented in the journal articles is credible and reliable.

Instrumentation

The most commonly used instruments for data collection include interviews, observations, and questionnaires. Given that this research will subject the research participants to interviews, it will use the structured interview questions as the man instrument for collecting qualitative data. The questions will be in-depth. The research participants will be subjected to in-depth oral interviews, which will be audiotaped and converted into transcripts to help uncover the stories behind the participants’ leadership experiences when working in socially chaotic environments. For the archival study, the research questions will be used to identify the scope of information required for the research. Archival aids such as Google search engine will be used to identify and extract useful articles from online databases.

Data Collection

In-depth interviews for this research will be less structured and less formal. This approach to data collection will help collect deep and complex information from the respondents. Because of its unstructured nature, the interviews will collect opinion-based information backed by practical evidence and experiences of the managers involved in the research study. The main advantages of the in-depth interviews include the ability to collect complete information that fosters an understanding of the topic of interest. Secondly, the interviews will enable personal and up-close interactions with the respondents, which could ensure a higher response rate. Third, the interview allows for greater control of the research process. Fourth, interview allows greater flexibility in data collection since it can be adjusted to suit the changes in research needs. An archival study will back the primary data. Data will be collected from secondary sources retrieved from peer-reviewed online academic and professional databases such as Google Scholar and Ebscohost.

Data Analysis

The interviews with the managers will be recorded using a digital recording device. The recording will then be transcribed and analyzed concerning the research questions and the research hypothesis formulated in the second chapter. The seven-step approach will guide the analysis of the findings. These steps are; listing and preliminary grouping, reduction and elimination, clustering and thematizing the invariant constituents, final identification of the invariant themes and constituents, constructing an individual textual description of each co-researcher, constructing individual structural descriptions for each co-researcher, and finally, constructing individual textual structural descriptions for each co-researcher. In addition to using this approach, East (2018) proposes that for the practical analysis of mixed-method research, it is essential to merge the findings made from the two researchers in a table form. This strategy for analyzing data is known as the joint display of data. It can be implemented in many alternative forms. Nevertheless, the fundamental reasoning behind tabulation is for the researcher to display the joint information and data collected by combining the findings to ease the analysis process by creating a single consolidated picture.

Decision Rules

Decision rules refer to procedures used by researchers to decide on the most appropriate hypothesis to consider. For this research, the decision rule will consider the hypothesis that aligns with the findings using the interviews.