Week 8 Blog

After writing my literature review I do feel this will have an impact on future research that I will conduct. Preparing for a literature will have you analyze the the research question in a different manner and they type of content you are looking for will be different also.  With this type of research you need to have more than a couple supporting sentences because you need to include the authors theory or reasoning behind their thoughts. 

When writing a literature review you have to remove your thoughts and opinions and present those expressed by your sources.  This was an area I struggled with.  Possibly because I have strong opinions and stand directly behind my own opinions and thoughts.  But this assignment has allowed me to look at research and writing with a different point of view.

Week 7 Blog

For the Week 7 assignment, annotated bibliography I found two additional sources to add to my research.  One of the new sources was an eBook very similar to one of my other sources.  This source was a question and answer style text which focused on various questions asked regarding leadership motivation, communication, and performance.  The second new article was from a peer reviewed journal and provided a long and in-depth explanation of servant leadership.  This article was very useful for my research because it provides all background information to describe my research topic favoring a servant leader in the work place. 

Over the past few weeks I have had to slightly alter my research question because I was not able to find enough valid sources to support the negatives and also provide solid definitions for "micromanaging."  I had to include my preferred to leadership style in the research question because it is the exact opposite to micromanaging.  Adjusting my research question allowed me to provide a remedy opposed to just explaining a problem.

-Chris Smith

Week 6 Blog

The most important take-a-way from this weeks lesson came from the tutorial video regarding citing. It seems fairly obvious that using another persons words as your own is plagiarism.  But, using another person's idea as your own may be more complicated.  I think this can easily occur when you are reading the same piece of material over and over, you start to feel as if you had thought this same way all along.  I am not referring to believing you came up with an involved scientific theory but something smaller such as an authors reasoning or evaluation of an idea. 

Properly citing someone's idea was an area of APA I had difficulty with when I returned to school last Fall.  This is an area I still need to be careful with to ensure I am citing properly at at the correct instances.

-Chris Smith

Week 5 Blog

One of the biggest things that stands out to me at this point is the lack of peer reviewed articles that match my topic specifically.  My topic includes a description of micromanaging in the workplace and the effects of micromanaging.  What I am finding I am having to do, it based off previous research to give me a solid definition of micromanaging, I am then having to go through the article and pick and choose portions of the article that explains my research question.  

I feel my research skills are improving after every research assignment.  That is what lead to my frustration in finding relevant articles for this week’s assignments.  I feel my research question is still a valid question for this course but I may have to adjust how my question is worded to allow for more research without having too much research and diluting the material.

Week 4 Blog Post

Week 4 Blog

This week I took a different route to my overall topic.  All along I have been searching for the characteristics of and the issues that come from management micromanaging in the work place.  This week I decided to search for a rebuttal to micromanaging.  Instead of saying what is wrong with this managing technique I chose to search for what can be done instead of micromanaging.  This lead me to the article, “At Your Service” which focuses on the leadership style of servant leadership.  Servant leadership is an extreme contrast from micromanaging.  With servant leadership the leader’s purpose is to allow their team to succeed through their own work but be present when assistance is needed.   

This allows the leader to build a sense of trust with their employees.

As for my research, I feel as if I am gaining a good understanding of the Leatherby website.  These past few weeks of assignments have taught me different functions of the library that I was not aware of.  This has also helped with the two other classes I am also taking this term. 

Week 3 Blog Post

The book I selected for Assignment 1 was titled Perspectives on Managing Employees written by Michael A Fina. 

So far I have not found any new knowledge on the topic of micromanagement of employees but I was able to see insight from various authors.  All but 1 of the eBooks I found in my research gave reasoning for the positives of micromanaging.  All the rest discourage micromanaging for various reasons.  The most prevalent reason being it devalues the employees and their ability to complete their daily tasks and job.

The best strategy I found while conducting my research is the ability to locate and utilize the eBooks.  This brings my research and accessibility of sources to a new and better level.  I originally had difficulty locating eBooks and had to call the Leathery Library directly.  The librarian I spoke with showed me a different route to find the eBooks through the Brandman University Library and Research Guide and this produced more results.   I was originally searching from the Leatherby homepage in the search bar under “ebooks” but as the library told me, this only searches eBooks that Brandman has bought. 

In my continued research I am hoping to find ways and processes to help me avoid micromanaging employees when I am in a leadership position.

Week 2 Blog Post

With my major being Organizational Leadership, I have chosen the topic of micromanaging in the workplace to research.  From our Week 1 readings I focused on Standard Two from the ACRL Information Literacy Competency Standard for Higher Education which focuses on finding the appropriate method for conducting your research.  I found that while searching the Leatherby Library, the use of keywords will have a major impact on the search results.  For example, searching “Micromanaging” versus “Micromanagement” resulted in different search results.  Also the use of synonyms for my primary and secondary keyword search produced different results.

                

 Based off my research thus far I have decided to pursue, what is the impact and effect on employees that are micromanaged in the work place.  I chose to take my research this way because of personal experience and my preference in leadership styles.  My previous employer before my current job micromanaged every single aspect of our work day and this lead to unbearable work conditions in contrast to my current job where I feel like I am trusted to do my job with slight guidance and I can ask for assistance when needed.