Employee Satisfaction in an Organization

This file includes 4 main parts.

1. The CAT Report Assignment
2. Instructions
3. Important Notes on CAT Steps
4. Assignment Structure  
   The CAT Report Assignment

The CAT Report is not a research paper
• The aim is not to investigate a general topic with multiple objectives.
• The SINGLE aim is rather to find evidence for or against a “specific claim” or assumption.
• Reflect on the practical implication of your CAT question before you proceed. Ask, if I get an answer to my question, so what?
• Suppose that your question is: “What is the impact of culture on organizational performance?”
• What does it mean practically to know, after acquiring scientific evidence, that culture has an impact on organizational performance?
• Culture is a very complex concept, conceptualized differently by different researchers, and without being specific about which dimension of culture to focus on it would have little, if any, practical relevance.

Instructions
• Follow the steps and guidelines provided in the PDF file (CEBMa Guideline for CAT in Mgt & Org. 2017) & show all the steps in detail before writing the assignment, then following the Assignment structure provided.
• Include (7) peer-reviewed articles.
• Use APA style of referencing not less than 15 references including the 7 peer-reviewed articles.
• Acquiring evidence from any source [internal or external] starts with an assumed problem, a preferred solution or a deemed opportunity.
• It is therefore important that you first clearly describe the (assumed) problem that needs to be solved or the opportunity that needs to be addressed. A good definition of the problem entails at least four elements:

1. The problem itself, stated clearly and concisely (What? Who? Where? When?).
2. Its (potential) organizational consequences.
3. Its assumed major cause(s).
4. The PICOC (Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome, Context).

The assumed problem for this assignment is Impact Question:
“The Impact of Flexible Work Hours on Employee Satisfaction” 
Important Notes on some of CAT Steps

• Step3. Defining inclusion criteria: Which studies will be taken into account?
Note: Choose the study designs that serve your CAT purpose and stick with it in selecting studies for data extraction.

• Step 4: Search strategy – How should the studies be sought?
Note on: documentation of the search part ( ABI/Inform Global,PsyclNFO, Business Source Premier table),
o The last search (S6) should be a combination of ALL key words relevant to (the intervention and the outcome) in the CAT question. These are the studies to be screened for relevance]
o Search terms should be keywords (and their equivalence) from the CAT question – not long sentences!!!]

• search strategy using ProQuest One Academic and EBSCO Host or any relevant strategy.

• Step 6: Data extraction – What information should you extract?
Note: Example of data extraction:
• After critical appraisal of the 24 studies, only four studies were included.
• Most studies were excluded because they had serious methodological shortcomings [based on your evaluation].
• One of the studies included concerned a systematic review, representing the results of 18 studies.
• The overall quality of the included studies, however, was low [as reported in your table]. For instance, all but two of the studies included in the systematic review were self-report surveys, and due to heterogeneity between studies it was not possible to calculate a pooled estimate of effect. The three single primary studies used a cross-sectional design.
• As a result, the trustworthiness of the scientific evidence supporting the following main findings is very limited.

• Step 7: Critical appraisal – How should the quality of the studies be judged?
Methodological appropriateness
• You can usually find a study to support or refute almost any theory or claim.
• It is thus important that you determine which studies are trustworthy (i.e., valid and reliable) and which are not.
• You should first determine and grade the trustworthiness of a study by its methodological appropriateness.
•

• Step 8: Results – What did you find?
8.1 Definition: What is meant by X?
• Note: A definition is not any statement taken from a paper but it should be described as such, i.e., explicitly stated as a definition of the term/concept.]
8.3 Main findings
Remember that your audience are practitioners not academics]
• findings are stated in a way addressing different dimensions of the CAT question (intervention, outcome, and any moderating or mediating variables). Never use the language of certainty (will, must, etc.) when making any claim of relationship between variables].
Example [Your concern is not the study itself but the conclusions of the study that are related to your CAT question]

1. Difficult and challenging goals have a moderately positive effect on performance (level A [This is your evaluation of the trustworthiness of the study])
   • Numerous meta-analyses have demonstrated that difficult, challenging goals have a moderately positive effect on performance, compared with easy goals. Goals must therefore be made as difficult but realistic as the individuals can cope with. In addition, goals must be challenging and stimulate the individual motivation [these are comments taken directly from the findings of the studies you are referring to not your own impressions].
2. However, when employees must first acquire requisite knowledge or skills to perform the task, specific and challenging goals can have a large negative effect on performance (level A)
   Several randomized controlled studies have demonstrated that when a task requires the acquisition of knowledge before it can be performed effectively, a general goal (e.g., ‘do your best’) leads to higher performance than a specific high goal. In fact, when knowledge acquisition is necessary for effectively performing a task, setting a specific but extremely high performance goal can lead people to ruminate on the potential negative consequences of failure rather than focus on task-relevant ways to attain the goal.
3. In addition, when employees need to acquire knowledge or skills in order to perform a set task, or when the task involved is complex, then behavioural goals and learning goals tend to have a more positive effect on performance than outcome goals (level A)
   • In addition to the findings reported above, several randomized controlled studies have demonstrated that when a simple task is involved, an outcome goal (focused on results) leads to higher performance than urging people to do their best, whereas when a complex task is involved, a learning goal (e.g., adopting a specific number of strategies or procedures to perform the task correctly) leads to higher performance than either an outcome goal or urging people to do their best.
4. The effect of goal setting varies across workers’ ability levels (level C)
   A recent controlled study found that low-ability workers for whom goals were likely to be challenging increased their performance by 40 per cent in the goal-setting treatment with respect to the baseline while high-ability workers achieved the same level of performance across treatments. This finding confirms the outcome of previous studies that ‘ability-based’ goals are more effective at improving performance than a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, where everyone is assigned the same performance target.

Step 9: Conclusion Do not say that the evidence supports MY assumption …
Step 10: Limitations Not of each study you cited, but of the CAT as it relates to your Q
Step 11: Implications and recommendations
• This is the most important part of the CAT report. Play the role of an advisor with clear, practical recommendations based on the findings.
• This should be a direct advice to management about the adoption (or not) of the intervention and what should be taken into consideration (if this is addressed by the studies cited).
• Every recommendation should be strictly based on one or more of the studies you cited in your CAT report. They are not your personal opinions.

Assignment Structure

1. Introduction:
   a. Background and context
   b. Rationale for the CAT
2. Objectives:
   a. Statement of the CAT’s primary objective
   b. Statement of main question to be answered
3. Criteria for considering studies for this CAT:
   a. Type of population
   b. Type of intervention
   c. Type of outcome(s)
   d. Type of context
   e. Type of studies
4. Search strategy for identification of studies:
   a. What databases and sources were searched?
   b. What time period?
   c. What search terms and key words were used?
   d. What search strategy was used?
5. Inclusion criteria:
   a. What are inclusion/exclusion criteria for studies?
6. Assessment of methodological quality:
   a. What instrument or scale or criteria was used to determine the level of trustworthiness?
7. Results and conclusion:
   a. Based on the evidence reviewed, what is the answer to the review question? How much confidence can we have in the answer?
   b. What do we know in relation to the review question? What do we not know?
   c. Based on the evidence found, what would be your recommendation?
8. References:
   a. APA style.