Page 220 - Crossing Cultural Boundaries - Cees den Teuling
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(vi) The independent and objective position of the consultant/advisor as a driving force for the alteration of management processes in the organisation.
All this should lead to “value for money” to secure (SVC) as beneficial to the
recipient organisation in the longer term.
6.5.7 Limitations of the research
Some reflections on validity
An important issue, which should be taken into consideration is the scientific integrity of the obtained results and their internal and external validity. The first questionable position is on behalf of the external validity. Will it be an option to generalise the research outcomes to a larger population of Russian managers with experiences in foreign training programmes or managers of Russian organisations which received advisory services from external advisors? The research participants were unmistakable part of wider networks of managers and executives, had intensive communications and exchange of experiences and knowledge with fellow-trainees during and after the training and advisory period, e.g. in alumni associations on regional and federal level in Russia, international connections with the host-countries and regularly organised events. Based on the realistic situation as elucidated, presumably the results of the research and the conclusions presented have a validity for a larger group of managers than the managers/participants solely. Additionally, managers and organisations from a variance of economic sectors, from SME’s, organisations with national operations, covering Russia and MNC’s stemming from all over the Russian territory were included in the sample. Thus, opinion of actors from different sectors and geographical areas is studied.
Another aspect of validity is the internal validity. This is a problem for the underlying research. The theory of validity declared that to prove the evidence of internal validity, several measurements with similar outcomes are requested (Croon & Segers, 2002). However, in the perspective of this research, there is no ultimate truth, but variances of alternative interpretations are included and consequently, the level of internal validity is questionable. Alternatively, in the execution of the research, a strict connection is obtained with the methodology of “Action Research”, by the additional involvement of independent second, third and fourth researchers.
6.5.8 Future research opportunities
In succeeding research, possibly to be organised in future, larger samples of organisations and trained employees and managers are to be collected, to increase the
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