Week 8 Post

Hello All,

Writing this literature review has taught me how to be more concise and analytical in my writing. It has instilled in me the idea of using multiple ideas and sources but evaluating and linking the concepts with one another. The organization during writing process was a little bit difficult for me since each of my sources took different angles on the topic I had chosen. It was also a struggle for me to pinpoint what information may be controversial because my topic is so hands on and can have many solutions. I did find that reviewing the literature helped me broaden my knowledge on physical attributes that a happy and healthy work environment entails such as the kind of lighting, the air filters, etc. I definitely still want to research further into what kind of management styles are most beneficial to employee happiness. Though I did locate information on a few professional factors affecting the workplace I do not feel I fully grasped the level of influence it has the employees. Overall, this was definitely a learning experience for me as I have never had to do a literature review. I look forward to learning more about my topic on my own and using the skills and tools I have learned from this course to do so!

Week 7 Post

Hello to all!

We are coming to a close with this course, and I truly am so appreciative of all the valuable information I have gained. This week it was great to combine and reevaluate all the work I have done to see the growth I have had.
The two new sources that I picked to add to my annotated bibliography were located via the DOAJ database. I felt that the journal articles I had found in prior assignments were extremely beneficial to me and unlike Ebooks provided studies with specific examples of the information being provided. I decided to keep my focus on the key terms I used to make my search and also highlight the validity of the author or the Universities of which they were attending. I researched the authors name, but since these were not books it was far more likely I would find better information when searching the publisher or the school that supported them. The authority of both articles were verified using this strategy and then the second factor I emphasized on was the purpose. Both articles showed me that they were really trying to dip deep into the roots of why employees have a certain mood in the workplace and what the factors are that lead to this. My research question was focusing on how to establish a healthy and happy work environment for employees and I feel like the results I found provided me with answers coming from every angle. I gained knowledge on the physical, emotional, moral, and professional factors that are required in accomplishing this. For those of you that are interested in reviewing my research, I feel that any of you looking to feel healthier in your place of work would truly benefit. If you have a problem with the morals of upper management or you just want to feel more comfortable in that cheap office chair, the sources I have provided below can be useful to you. Thank you all so much for taking your time to read my post! Below is my research question, citations, and annotations. :)

What are the most effective steps to creating a happy and healthy employee environment?

Amalia, M., & Antonakas, N. (2009) Previous Employment and Job Satisfaction Conditions: The Case of Regional Administration. 1148.1 (2009): 927-931. DOI Number: 10.1063/1.3225471 Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com

The peer reviewed journal I have selected this week uses tables and flowcharts to track the correlation between an employee’s years with the company and their satisfaction of working there. The outcomes of their studies had proven that those with lesser work experience as a whole experienced a lower level of employee satisfaction. Aside from the abstract of this article, the context of this article included a majority of the key words I had used in my search. My opinion had always led me to believe that the longer you work for a company the more repetitive it became, which wasn’t necessarily a positive in my books, but this article provided me with factual numbers proving the opposite and opened another door of research for me. After reading this it pushed me to ask more questions on whether the factors required in achieving employee satisfaction differentiate based on the number of years someone has been with the company or if it is a generalized process.

Conley, C. (2007).  Peak- How great companies get their mojo From Maslow. Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com

The author of this EBook, Chip Conley, ran a company that faced an extreme hurdle with his own company resulting in him finding aide in the teachings of a well-known psychologist. He explains, through theories of Abraham Maslow, that to provide employees with an ideal working environment you must acknowledge and inspire the motivations that drive them. The “Authority” of this book was something that I found to be easily validated because Chip Conley has written various popular novels on personal and professional growth, of which my personal fan favorite is Emotional Equations. Along with the author, Chip Conley, the publishing company Jossey-Bass strives to publish books that guide readers in achieving their educational and personal goals. This book will be a great asset to research my topic because it highlights the important factors of internal business development that most companies tend to look over and I would like to look into stories of other successful companies that first had to jump a major hurdle or experience a downfall before rising to the top.

Finna, H. & Forgacs, T. (2010). Enhancement of human performance with developing ergonomic workplace environment and providing work-life balance. Perspectives of Innovations, Economics and Business, Vol.5, Issue2, pp.59-61. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15208/pieb.2010.50.

This article went into details on the literal factors required to ensure a proper work environment and the level of comfort necessary starting from what kind of chair they sit in to the temperature of the office. They explained how the lighting of a building can have either a negative or positive affect on the employee—based on the color, level, high, intensity, etc. This article is probably the most beneficial one I have come across so far especially because it provides literal solutions to the question I am asking and even taking into account different office types and styles. I think this has given me a different angle to approach my topic by allowing me to tackle this question from all sides and to understand that in order to have a happy employee you must focus on more than just the management and training aspects of a company. I was able to validate the authority of this article by researching the alternate work of both authors, which proved to help in establishing confidence in this information.

Fleischman, G., Godkin, L., Kidwell, R., & Valentine, S. (2011). Corporate ethical values, group creativity, job satisfaction and turnover intention: The impact of work context on work response. Journal of Business Ethics, 98(3), 353-372. Doi:10.1007/s10551-010-0554-6 Retrieved from https://search-ebscohost-com

This article focuses on how the establishment of a work group effects the results that it produces and the outcome of the employee satisfaction. The results provided from their studies are then linked to suggest steps that management can take to ensure that the environment exuberates the proper characteristics to achieve this. It was very well written and the studies executed in a very organized manner making this article extremely resourceful for me. I think I have attained a better understanding on the connection between work ethic placed on employees and the outcomes of it and I am able to now pinpoint which exact factors in a corporate environment I feel are most dire to create a happy employee. Is there a certain industry that has mastered this process perfectly or is this something that is company specific? If so, I would like to know more about how that process originated for them or if it was a moralistic behavior that their company was created around.

Kocjan, Z.G. (2015). Disentangling the overlap between employee engagement and passion. 1332-0742 Retrieved from https://doaj.org

            This article focused on the differences between an employee being engaged and one being passionate and how that correlates to their psychological state in the workplace. The more passion within the employee the more positive behavior is exuberated to those around them. I looked up this University which the author of this article attended while writing this information and saw that the University also held high regards to a positive atmosphere. Along with confirming the authority of this information it helped me gained an understanding on the roots that this paper was written. It helped me understand the psychological standpoint that is best for employees to be in and sparked my interest to learn more about how management can help keep their workers moods on the more positive side.  

Makhbul, Z.  (2013). Workplace environment towards emotional health. Vol. 3, No. 1 ISSN: 2222-6990 Retrieved from https://doaj.org

            This article discusses the fundamentals of an ergonomically designed workplace and how it is a vital aspect of ensuring that employees are happy and safe in their professional environment. It also explains the relation of how outside health problems will affect ones opinion of their current job position. The paper is broken down into specific parts of this—starting from the indoor air quality ranging all the way to the acoustics of the building. This helped me validate the accuracy of the information provided to me because the points and examples provided are very detail oriented. You are definitely able to tell that the authors truly care about helping companies maintain healthy and happy employees making the purpose of this article clear. This is the second article I found that helped me learn about the physical requirements needed to satisfy an employee and it pushes me to research more into why employees don’t push for these factors when seeking for a job.

Week 6 Post

Hello again :)

Learning about the rules of writing can seem like such a tedious thing, but it really does have a beneficial outcome. Understanding Academic Integrity is not only moralistically helpful but will also aide you in ensuring a smooth ride through University. I After viewing the videos, using the interactive learning, and reading more about this issue I feel that my biggest focus when writing will be ensuring I give the credit where credit is due. One of the videos informed me that you must cite ideas, even if you changed the wording around. I had never realized that, so this will definitely push me understand the language I am taking from authors as well as the ideas that come along with it. One video that I feel I will benefit from discussed how paraphrasing is a better writing style than just indenting and citing. Paraphrasing allows you do change the words to fit your own style, while keeping the ideas and base thoughts that the authors are producing. You still must cite paraphrases. Pursuing a career in business development, I know that I will be researching the work and processes previously performed by various companies. To be able to properly use the ideas of other companies in a presentation I will give to my own company will be very useful in the long run.  I definitely want to dedicate more time into learning more about copyrights and trademarks. Though I have gained some knowledge on the basis of these topics, I think understanding the laws a little better could have a positive impact on my writing skills.

1) 1LIONTV. "Plagarism, Paraphrasing, and the APA Style" Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGlkJn0WuyA

2) A & S. "Avoiding Plagarism What Do I Need to Cite" Available from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sEQ7Mai2_0

3) UCLA Library. "Carlos and Eddie in Rock Machine" Available from https://unitproj.library.ucla.edu/col/bruinsuccess/01/01.cfm

Week 5 Post

Hey All!

This week was a difficult one for me because I felt it was extremely hard for me to decipher which articles exactly were empirical research articles. Luckily, with a little assistance from our professor and some in depth research I was able to find a perfect article for me. I am looking to become an expert on what are the most effective steps to creating a happy and healthy employee environment. This week I felt my authors definitely minimized the factors that I want to now focus on. I realized through the studies provided that I may not need to focus as much on the hierarchy of a company or upper management but more so on the morals and ethics that the company is built upon and presents to their employees.

Sean Valentine, one of the authors of my empirical research article, has written a number of articles relating to business and many of which correlate with my topic of choice. There are a few referenced but the ones focusing on 'perceived ethical values', and 'organizational commitment' are some that I would find very interesting. After reading his work with this article, I definitely feel that taking the time to review more of his writings will be beneficial to my research.

Though I do feel I have come a long way from the beginning of this course, I still have a lot of room for improvement with my research skills. I have always been a quick worker, and at times this has been my downfall when doing detailed research. I am learning to take my time, and try multiple search routes rather than resorting to the first one that I find. There are certain databases that I would like to become more resourceful with, and this week that would be the Emerald database. I am excited for what I have learned so far but am even more excited for what knowledge I will continue to gain.

Hope you are all enjoying your topics as well!

Fleischman, G., Godkin, L., Kidwell, R., & Valentine, S. (2011). Corporate Ethical Values, Group Creativity, Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention: The Impact of Work Context on Work Response. Journal of Business Ethics, 98(3), 353-372. Doi:10.1007/s10551-010-0554-6 

Week 4 Post

This week I chose an article that actually did studies relating to my topic. Since I am trying to find out the necessary factors of employee satisfaction, it was extremely beneficial for me to find a peer reviewed article that focused on employment and job satisfaction conditions. I was able to learn that there is a direct correlation between the number of years an employee has been with the company and their level of job satisfaction. Along with that, this study had also proven by pulling a group of 123 employees from Prefecture of Crete that those who had both more work experience as a whole and a greater number of years within the company held the highest level of satisfaction. One may think that this is common knowledge, but my standpoint had been to assume that the longer you were with a company the more comfortable you became. I didn't necessarily believe that your satisfaction with the company grew or that the company took further steps to ensure that you were happy.


I felt that being completely specific when looking for a peer reviewed journal it was easiest to find an outcome. I not only included my key subject words but I chose English and even clarified I only wanted PDF files. By using three key words, and clarifying that all three words must be included, I was able to minimize by options (Still a huge number) to ones that provided great information on my topic. I think that validating the authority of the article, though a step I took in prior weeks, was the most important factor in finding the perfect article. By both following up on the authors/researchers and the publisher of the article I was able to my trust in the information being given to me.


The topic I chose has allowed me an easier research process, as there is an abundance of books, articles, web results, etc. that have information to assist me in my research. The biggest struggle of my process was ensuring that the results I found focused on businesses and not world wide organizations. My solution to this was a change of one of my key words and clicking on 'English' as the language and 'Wala!' the problem was fixed.


I hope to find out that there are common factors that the successful companies use to keep there employees happy. I would also like to find out why those companies lacking these steps in their employee satisfaction process choose to focus on alternate points even when it may not be beneficial to the success of their company.

Amalia, Myronaki, and Antonakas Nikolaos. "Previous Employment and Job Satisfaction Conditions: The Case of Regional Administration." AIP Conference Proceedings 1148.1 (2009): 927-931. Academic Search Premier. Web. 25 May 2016. DOI Number: 10.1063/1.3225471

Week 3 Post

Hello again!

This week my research led me to a great find written by a well known intellect, Chip Conley. Many of the readings I came across this week highlighted the necessary factors required to satisfy employee needs, but this one specifically gave me a better understanding of my topic. I have gained knowledge of specific employee needs that are best acquired by motivation. Conley provided an Employee Pyramid based off of both his personal experiences along with the teachings of a psychologist that he looked to for assistance. He explained that there are three tiers to motivating your employees and the very base one is as simple as 'money'. The next was 'recognition' and the top tier was 'meaning'. "While employers often think that the number one motivator for their employees is Money (the base of this pyramid), the reality is that the primary reason people leave their job is due to the lack of Recognition they feel from their boss, their co-workers and the company. When someone moves beyond Money and Recognition as their primary motivators and, instead, sees their work as giving them a sense of Meaning, they have moved from external motivation to the internal motivation that comes from a calling. There is no more powerful influence in someone’s work than that sense of living one’s calling in what you do." (Conley 2007) This spoke to me. So many companies achieve the bottom tier and can provide their employees the compensation that motivates them to show up to work. It takes a committed employer to motivate someone to go beyond just coming to work. A successful company will motivate their employee to perform their work with quality and a genuine smile on their face. 

The topic I picked has so many factors to it, making the initial search results very broad and abundant. This is why key words were very essential in this round of searching. By typing in "business hierarchy", "motivation", and "employee needs" I was able to locate my selected EBook much easier. Along with using key words, I also specified the field in the advanced search to both 'title' and 'subject' minimizing my search results even more. 

To be honest, I feel I was very lucky when searching for EBooks. I was able to find multiple results and each contained some vital piece of information relating to my topic. I specified my topic to a more targeted area than last week and I think that was extremely helpful in having a successful search. 

I hope to  a create a solid outline illustrating what the most important employee motivation factors are and how exactly they can be achieved. I feel that management plays a huge role in ensuring their employees are happy, which is the biggest driving force to their successful performance. Since I want to pursue a career in business development, I am interested in learning about the different processes that can be taken to help the head of each department achieve these goals. 

I hope everyone else had a productive research week and became further informed on their topic like I did!

Reference:

Conley, C. (2007). Jossey-Bass: Peak- How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow.  San Francisco, CA. Retrieved from https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.libproxy.chapman.edu/ehost/detail/detail?sid=5089a135-b31c-4063-9422-531500065aee%40sessionmgr4004&vid=0&hid=4202&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVpZCxjb29raWUsdXJsJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=nlebk&AN=208078

Week 2 Post

Hello All!

I hope that this week everyone was able to dive deeper into their topic of interest, I sure was. The broad version of my topic currently is Business Hierarchy: Employees and their needs. This topic will not only highlight the importance of a proper and effective business totem pole, but also label the importance of certain needs we must satisfy for our employees and company as a whole. I will be the first to admit that my research strategies are far from excellent, which was why I was very excited to complete this weeks assignment in hopes of picking up some tips. I found it a lot easier to locate reliable and relatable information on my topic via the Leatherby Libraries search engine. This was mainly because by web search results mainly produced Wikipedia or scholarly articles which were not usable sources in this weeks assignment. For both the EBooks and Google advance searches I was sure to clarify key words for my topic including; business, hierarchy, employee needs, internal development, and corporate environment. I noticed while conducting a Google search that when I specified a domain I did not have as much luck locating information. I erased the domain area completely and finally found information that was relatable, reliable, and beneficial for me. I made sure to research the company that posted the information or the company that published the information to ensure that the "Authority" of this information was proper.

With the research I performed this week I was able to learn about the key factors that companies should ensure they are responsible for. The 'needs' in this information I found were categorized into six key groups-- survival, development, relationship, structural, recognition, and self-actualization. I definitely saw the importance in each of these categories, and was able to relate it to current/past companies that I have worked for. The one I felt stood out to me the most was the idea that a company has basic survival needs that must be satisfied. As simple as they may seem some companies experience their downfall because they lack the efforts to do this. From this article, provided by B2B International, it stresses that these needs are as basic as the company having a product, and customers who are willing to pay for it. I work for a mortgage company, and a mortgage is currently something many people seek. Unfortunately, for our company, this fluctuates with the Economy and there may come a time where this is not the case as we have seen in the past. In order to always ensure that we meet this basic need we will need to prepare ourselves and have even greater success when demand is high. Every need whether employee specific or for a company as a whole is an extremely important piece to a successful puzzle. I am excited to research more and learn about what internal structures and needs are necessary in the corporate environment.