Managerial Assessments of the Applications of Regression

Managerial Assessments of the Applications of Regression Management The commentary of the article begins with the subject of the research in the article: Organizational Politics within Academic Departments. This subject is valid of research as it is a factor of which many students are unaware, yet are apart of and by which they are affected. Uninformed views or stereotypes of academia may not include the order of politics evident among faculty and staff within each department, yet they exist.

Therefore the first piece of criticism is to validate the subject matter of the study. Furthermore, the authors argue for the importance of their study as there is little research in the area, for reasons that some of which are obvious and self evident. The specific behavioral focus for the article is conflict. The authors wish to understand the nature of conflict within organizations and the impact conflict has upon perceptions.

There are nine hypotheses the researchers intend to prove or invalidate, some of which are: Hypothesis 1: Departments with higher levels of intra-departmental task and relationship conflict will have more politicized climates. Hypothesis 3: Paradigm development will be negatively related to political climate such that departments belonging to well-developed paradigms will exhibit lower levels of politics. Hypothesis 6: Those experiencing high levels of role ambiguity and role conflict will report a more political climate. Hypothesis 7: Intra-departmental task and relationship conflict will mediate the relationships between role perceptions and political climate.

Hypothesis 9: At the departmental level, the relationship between rank heterogeneity and political climate level will be mediated by task and relationship conflict. (Darr & Johns, 2003,-Page 37-39) Nine hypotheses are perhaps too many hypotheses to endeavor to research within the scope of this study. Some of the hypotheses could be condensed or eradicated. It is the opinion of the author that it would have behooved the researchers and the research to narrow the scope and focus of the study of political climates in academic departments to five or less hypotheses.

Some of the hypotheses may function better in the Discussion/Results/Conclusion section rather than earlier on in the description of the study. Noting factors such as conflict, climate, paradigms, perceptions, relationships, and role perceptions benefits the researchers and the data. Delineation inclusion of terms or factors such as these reflects the intelligence and awareness of the researchers.

Particularly, studying the issue of role ambiguity as it pertains to conflict and political climate is particularly astute, as this is a factor of great study and scrutiny by researchers in such disciplines as organizational psychology, economics, business, cultural studies, as well as management. Six variables in this study were: Department size, Paradigm Development, Rank heterogeneity, Department task conflict, Department relationship conflict, and Department political climate. The use of regression analysis revealed relationship conflict is more directly related to the levels of political climate.

Their initial analyses of the data supported the first two hypotheses, yet because the researchers were worried or aware that the interpretation of their results must be done with caution because of diminished reliability in computation aggregates with fewer cases, larger within-group variance, and sampling error. (Darr & Johns, 2003) Their findings concluded that departments with a lot of climate were departments that had highly charged political climates. In their attempts to determine the antecedents of political climates, their corresponding hypotheses proved false.

The authors believe their greatest achievements with the completion of this study was the addition of study in this area of research, partially filling in the gaps in the existing research, and offering definitive evidence of politics as a group-level construct. The utility of regression analysis proved beneficial in this case. In reference to the applicability of Porter et al. (1981)'s critique, there is evidence this study fell prey to some of their issues with regression methods of analysis. There was significant mere description of the data collected.

The approach of the researchers calls into question the validity of the data, the validity of the interpretation or analysis of the data, and.