Journal Reading and Critical Comparisons
Introduction
Proper structuring of a research paper is a critical skill to ensure that information on results and findings are well communicated and understood by any reader. Adequate research about a specific problem question is expected to have an evident background that informs a reader about particular aspects, and that leads to a clear understanding of the research question (Balakumar, 2013). It should be able to state clear and concise objectives that the research seeks to achieve. The researcher has to explore other prior studies in the same research area, and those studied need to be explained in a manner that the reader can connect the relationship between the research question and previous studies (Ramdhani et al. 2008). The literature review should also provide an understanding of what is expected by carrying empirical analysis. Research should also establish reasons for using a particular methodology in data collection and analysis as well as being able to show the limitations of the study and recommendations for further research. This paper will discuss the difference in clarity portrayed by the research background, its contribution to knowledge, differences in literature review presentation, methodologies used, and limitation of two journals below.
Summary of Between Merger and Syndrome: The Intermediary Role of emotions in
Four Cross-border M&As by Sinkovics et al.
People are the most valuable asset that any organization needs to execute activities and achieve its objectives as well as the vision. In this journal article, the authors say that mergers and acquisitions have caused emotions and anxiety on employees of the organizations involved in the merger and acquisition, which in turn imply the success of the firms involved. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
Summary of Determinants of Internal Control Weaknesses Disclosure by Ji et al.
Internal control, also referred to as the basic standards in an enterprise, is key to promoting success and achieving goals in a business enterprise. The authors in this journal say that some businesses have been reluctant to disclose their internal control weaknesses (ICWs) in their internal control reports (ICRs). China was chosen as the target region for researching the uptake of voluntary disclosure of ICWs. The objective of the research, as presented by the authors, is the investigation of determinants and the economic consequences of voluntary disclosure of ICWs. The researchers undertook a quantitative research methodology to answer the questions. From the literature review and hypothesis development, determinants of ICWs disclosure were identified to be firm characteristics, ownership structure, and corporate governance, and audit assurance. Based on the results from logistic regression models that authors used, firm characteristics such as profitability, age and size affected the disclosure of ICWs where firms with a higher amount of profits, larger size and has been in business for long, tend to have fewer ICWs and therefore not likely to disclose unlike smaller sized, younger and firms with less profits. Corporate governance of the Chinese is strongly associated with the willingness to disclose the ICWs. Also, political connections were found a significant determinant of ICWs disclosure.
Clarity of the Research Background and Contribution to Knowledge
The article written by Sinkovics et al. on “between merger and syndrome: the intermediary role of emotions in M&A,” does not provide sufficient clarity of the research background in the sense that, the authors spend much time explaining the reasons that have led to increased attraction to merger and acquisition activities, such market increased technological change, globalization, market liberalization, and deregulation functions while investing little in the human side. According to Balakumar (2013), the research background should gather ideas and information that are orchestrated to lead towards a new or improved solution to formulated problem questions about an aspect in society. Despite this article stating that emotions towards M&A have received less attention, which in turn has led to its failure, the article does not provide clear examples of the firms that M&A failed due to prioritization of other areas forgetting the human side in the change process.
Ji et al. (2010), offer more clarity on the research background than the other article. The steps authors see this provided the timelines when the need to report on internal control weakness was introduced. Further, they explain the bodies in china that pushed for the implementation of the ICRs featuring the ICWs in them. The show of phases gives clarity that the need for the disclosure of ICWs kept on advancing to the period the research was done. For example, the article reports in 2008 basic standards were issued; later in 2010, three implementation guidelines of the basic standards were issued, and finally, in 2012, the regulations were made mandatory. The element shows more clarity to the research that authors reports as before the regulations were made compulsory, the firms decided to disclose such information voluntarily. This builds up a research question that seeks to investigate the determinants the led to the voluntary disclosure of ICWs and what was their economic implication.
Precisely, the journal article was written by Ji et al. seems to contribute more to knowledge than the journal article written by Sinkovics et al. This is evident where the article provided the background information that led to the formation of basic standard regulations that are implementated in several bodies in China. These bodies entail the ministry of finance (MOF), China Securities and Regulatory Commission (CSRC), China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), the National Auditing Office (NAO), and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC). The articles report that before 2012 reporting on ICWs was voluntary, hence listed firms could choose to report at will. This informs that there were some motivational reasons to disclose ICWs and limiting reasons to not disclose among some companies, and hence the validity of the credible rationale of the research question. Sinkovics et al. (2010) give inadequate knowledge as the background does not provide specific attention to the fact that workers had expectations on the management of firms involved in M&A. Hence, they felt these expectations were overlooked and that triggered emotions; instead, its focus on strategic and financial goals as the more general cause. Therefore, this presents the research question to the reader without providing the background knowledge of what is required to reduce the effect of negative emotions that could cost the success of M&A.
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Literature Review Part
According to Libguides (2020), the literature review is an import acts as a roadmap to conducting conclusive research and also to compare the variations in the outcome obtained from your research and the works done by other researchers previously. Ji et al. (2010), a journal article presents a literature review section that is structured in ways that lead to answering the research question. According to Library.sacredheart.edu. (n.d) a literature review should have background information that directly leads to answering the research question. This is consistent with this article, where firms tended to disclose ICWs due to incentives that reduced capital and information asymmetry costs. This relates to the objective of investigating the determinants for ICWs disclosure. This is contrary to the journal article by Sinkovics, R. R, where some part of the literature review, their background information does not seem to connect with the research question. For example, on merger syndrome, the articles talk about increased levels of uncertainty and job losses due to restructuring, but this does not connect to the objective of studying the relevance of the emotions in the aspect of M&A.
A literature review is also supposed to guide the researcher in developing different sets of hypotheses that would later inform the conclusions made after the analysis of the data (Ramdhani et al. 2008). This is seen in the journal article of Ji et al., where the set of five hypotheses and variable choices have been informed by the review of past literature in the same field. For example, the article says that past studies established that a firm’s characteristics such as business complexity, firm size, and profitability have a different association with ICWs disclosure, and this guided the authors to set the hypothesis to investigate the firm’s characteristic as a determinant of ICWs voluntary disclosure. On the other hand, the literature review section in the journal article by Sinkovics does not demonstrate a review of past literature guiding the authors to developing a set of hypotheses to be tested afterward (Cronin, Ryan, and Coughlan, 2008, p42). The article presents different types of emotions in the literature review part that employee exhibits with news concerning M&A come up. Ideally, the cause of the emotions that hinders smooth transition into the M&A has antecedents that past literature discusses, and so hypotheses could be developed from this part.
In both articles, the literature review section has informed conclusions that have guided the authors towards conducting empirical research about the research question and check for agreement between the allegations by the literary works or any contradictions. In the journal article by Sinkovics , the authors report two conclusions from the arguments. First, it was management communication, and behaviors are the stimulus of emotions of employees during M&A. Secondly, the emotions lead to action or reaction, which determines their behavior and attitude that can lead to the success of failure of acquisition or merger. Example form the Ji et al. journal article, the authors concluded that some state-owned firms in china had not embraced quality financial reporting. Thus they developed a hypothesis to be tested and be compared. This agrees with Pare and Kitsiou (2017) that good literature reviews should have a structure that bears conclusions which incline to achieve the objectives of the study and prompts for investigation for comparison of the cases. The failure to indicate the literature review as a subtopic in the article by Sinkovics presented a weakness as other readers can fail to notice where the section starts and end.
The difference in Data Collection Methodologies.
In the article written by Sinkovics, the researchers utilized qualitative methodology in analyzing the employee’s emotions due to merger or acquisition. This methodology fits the research because of the following reasons. First, the emotions of people are qualitative, which means that it is challenging to quantify emotion or its level assigned a numerical value (Ingels and Zizzi, 2018, p 1019). For example, fear of job loss, promotion, demotion, and other anxieties is to have no universal scale that represents them numerically. Secondly, emotional intelligence varies with people. This is to means different people react to specific emotion stimuli differently, and a quantitative method may not yield results that reflect this difference. Also, researching the relevance of emotions on M&A, the researcher not only seeks to know the emotions that employees exhibit but also why they get such emotions. Due to these reasons, qualitative research method tops as it presents open-ended and conversational data collection methods such as interview method that is reported in the article (Suter, 2012). The researcher uses theoretical and purposive sampling are qualitative data collection sampling methods. Because collecting primary data could be expensive, this method of sampling does not consider sample size significant in results production, but the knowledge or experience of employees concerning merger or acquisition (Dworkin, 2012; Ames, Glenton, and Lewin, 2019, p 26). The sample size of 18 interviewees, yielded results that were consistent with discoveries in the literature review part.
In the article written by Ji et al., the researchers used a quantitative methodology to analyses and make conclusions about the hypothesis. The rationale for the methodology for this research suits the objectives of the researcher of investigating determinants of ICWs voluntary disclosure and economic effects of ICWs disclosure on the firms. This, because of first, disclosing or not disclosing ICWs voluntarily, is a binary outcome that depends on several variables. Korkmaz, GÜNEY and YİĞİTER (2012) affirm that this is achieved quantitatively as the variables can be assigned dummy numeric variable and use of logistic regression to calculate the probabilities as the authors have shown in the article. In this research, secondary data was used for analysis and making conclusions about the hypotheses. The data was pulled from the websites of the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR). The advantage of using secondary is the time-saving and reduced cost of carrying out the research. According to Noyes et al. (2019), The advantage of that this research achieved is that the results obtained can be used to generalize cases for a large population of firms that choose to disclose ICWs in ICRs voluntarily or not.
Limitations of the articles
Both of the two articles present some limitations in them, which may be a gap of information on both research topics. Upon reading the two articles, the following limitations were identified. The first limitation arises from the methodologies adopted for empirical analyses of the research problems. For example, in the article written by Ji et al., the researchers used a quantitative method to attain empirical results and concluded after that. There is a possibility that some of the selected firms in china were reluctant to ICWs disclosure during the voluntary regimes due to other reasons that cannot be quantified. Therefore using a quantitative method only could have left other determinants of voluntary disclosure of ICWs. Chan (2017) asserts that the use of mixed methodology, which is the combination of quantitative and qualitative, could bridge the gap of information. Sinkovics et al. (2010) used a qualitative method and theoretical and purposive sampling methods. The information acquired results from the analysis of qualitative data may bring misleading results, especially when the honesty of the interviewee is not assured. Also, the information and results of qualitative data may be difficult to verify due to a change of perspective with time, thus what is considered to be right now may not be the case in the future.
Secondly, there are no enough real examples. Both articles have not shown specific and clear examples of firms that portrays the problems or issue that the research questions points out. The article by Sinkovics et al., apart from the sampled firms, the researcher has provided a case study of a firm that, in the process of merger and acquisition, specific antecedents triggered employee’s emotions that lead to its success or failure. In the article written by Ji et al., there is no specific example of a firm shown, where determinants such as firm characteristics, audit assurance, ownership structure, and corporate governance affected voluntary disclosure either positively or negatively.
Conclusion.
Clarity of research background, literature review part, and its impact on research question and objectives, the right choice of research methodology backed up reasons, and an indication of research limitation are critical in imparting knowledge to readers. As shown above, the article was written by Ji et al., presented clear background information by showing historical periods when basic standards were issued in China, the progress towards implementations up to when it was made mandatory. This article also presented clear background information from the literature review and showed how it is connected with the research question. A literature review of both articles led to conclusions that suggested empirical analysis of the variables identified. A literature review of an article written by Sinkovics et al. shows weaknesses where it fails to indicate the beginning of the literature review part to avoid confusion with another part of the article. Sinkovics et al. present an empirical analysis of data using qualitative methodology and the use of primary data. In contrast, Ji et al. present the empirical analysis of data using the quantitative method and use of secondary data. Despite the rationale behind using methodology being fit, some limitations accompany both methodologies, such as the possible existence of nonquantifiable variables where a quantitative method is used and statistical non-representation of data in qualitative methods.
Work cited
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Chan, M.L., 2017. An explicit pragmatic approach to integrative data analysis strategies for mixed methods research. International Journal of Linguistics, 9(3), pp.166-184.
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