Conceptualization in Business Administration

CONCEPTUALIZATION IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

CONCEPTUALIZATION: Conceptualization means to form a concept about an object, event, condition, situation, etc. The word is derived from the word concept. So in order to explain the word conceptualization we will have to see first what is concept. 

CONCEPT: If one is to understand and communicate information about objects and events, there must be a common ground on which to do it. Concepts are used for this purpose. A concept is a bundle of meanings or characteristics associated with certain events, objects, conditions, situations and like. Concepts are created by classifying and categorizing objects or events that have common characteristics beyond the single observation. When we think of a spreadsheet or a warranty card, it is not of a single instance but of collected memories of all spreadsheets and warranty cards abstracted to a set of specific and definable characteristics.

We abstract such meanings from reality and use words as labels to designate them. For example if we see that a man is doing something in his mouth. We label that action as eating, chewing, grinding, etc. All these actions and the labels given to them are called concepts about the action be done in the mouth. We also have abstracted certain visual elements by which we identified that the moving object was a he not a she or a truck or a horse. We obviously use large numbers of concepts daily in our thinking, conversing and other activities.

Sources of Concepts: Concepts that are frequent and general use have been developed over time through shared usage. We have acquired them through personal experience. If we lived in another society we would hold many of the same concepts (although in a different language). Some concepts however, are unique to a particular culture and are not readily translated into another language.

Ordinary concepts make up the bulk of communication even in research but we can often run into difficulty trying to deal with an uncommon concept or a newly advanced idea. One way to handle this problem is to borrow from other languages (for example as we people in Pakistan speak a number of English words in order to keep the relevant concept intact) or to borrow other fields. The concept of gravitation is borrowed from physics and used in marketing in an attempt to explain why people shop where they do. The concept of distance is used in attitude measurement to describe degrees of difference between the attitudes of two or more persons. Threshold is used effectively to describe a concept in perception studies, while velocity is a term borrowed by the economists from the physicists.

Borrowing is not always practical so we need to (1) adopt new meanings for words (make a word cover a different concept) or (2) develop new labels (words) for concepts. The recent broadening of the meaning of model is an example of the first instance, while the development of concepts such as sibling and status stress are examples of the second. When we adopt new meanings or develop new labels we begin to develop a specialized jargon or terminology. Researchers in medicine the physical sciences and related fields frequently use terms that are unintelligible to outsiders. Jargon no doubt contributes to efficiency of communication among specialists but excludes everyone else.

Importance to Research: Concepts are basic to all thought and communication yet we pay little attention to what they are and the problems encountered in their use. In research special problems grow out of the need for concept precision and inventiveness. We design hypotheses using concepts. We devise measurement concepts by which to test these hypothetical statements. We gather data using these measurement concepts. We even invent new concepts to express ideas. The success of research hinges on (1) how clearly we conceptualize and (2) how well others understand the concepts we use. For example when we survey people on the question of tax equity the questions we use need to tap faithfully the attitudes of the respondents. Attitudes are abstract, yet we must attempt to measure them, using carefully selected concepts.

The challenge is to develop concepts that others will clearly understand. We might for example as respondents for an estimate of their family’s total income. This may seem to be a simple unambiguous concept but we will receive varying and confusing answers unless we restrict or narrow the concept by specifying (1) time period, such as weekly, monthly or annually; (2) before or after income taxes; (3) for head of family only or for all family members; and (4) for salary and wages only or also for dividends, interest and capital gains (How about income in kind such as free rent employee discounts or food stamps?).

Problems in Concept Use: The use of concepts presents difficulties that are accentuated in a research setting. First people differ in the meanings they include under the particular label. This problem is so great in normal human communication that we often see cases where people use the same language but do not understand each other. We might all agree to the meaning of such concepts as do, table, electric light, money, employee and wife. We may encounter more difficulties, however, when we communicate concepts such as household, retail transaction, dwelling unit, regular user, debit and wash sale. Still more challenging are concepts that are familiar but not well understood, such as leadership, motivation, personality social call and fiscal policy. For example, personality has been defined in the research literature in more than 400 ways. Although this may seem extreme writers are not able to express the complexity of the determinants of personality and its attributes (e.g., authoritarianism, risk taking, locus of control, achievement orientation dogmatism and so fourth) in a fashion that produces agreement.

The concepts described, represent progressive levels of abstraction, which is the degree to which the concept does or does not have objective referents. Table is an objective concept in that we can point to tables and we can conjure up in our mind images of tables. An abstraction like personality is much more difficult to visualize. Such abstract concepts are often called constructs.

Constructs: As used in research in the social sciences, a construct is an image or idea specifically invented for a given research and /or theory-building purpose. We build constructs by combining the simpler concepts, especially when the idea or image we intend to convey is not directly subject to observation.

Concepts and constructs are easily confused. Here is an example to clarify the differences. A human resource analyst in a software company that employs technical writers is analyzing task attributes of a job in need of redesign. She knows the job description for technical writers consists of three components: presentation quality, language skill, and job interest. Her job analysis reveals more specific characteristics.

Figure below illustrates some of the concepts and constructs she is dealing with. The concepts at the bottom of the figure (format accuracy, manuscript errors, and typing speed) are the most concrete and easily measured. We can observe typing speed, for example, and even with crude measures agree on what constitutes slow and fast typists. Typing speed is one concept in the group that defines a construct called “presentation quality”. Presently quality is a nonexistent entity, a “constructed type”. It is used to communicate the combination of meanings of the three concepts. The analyst uses it as a label for the concepts she has found empirically to be related.

Figure here

Concepts in the next level in the   figure are vocabulary, syntax and spelling. They were also found by the analyst to be related. They form a construct she called “language skill”. She chose this term because these three concepts together defined the language requirement in the job description. Language skill is placed at a higher level of abstraction in the figure because the concepts that comprise it are more difficult to observe and their measures are more complex.

The analyst has not yet measured the last construct, “job interest”. It is the least observable and most complex to measure. It will likely be composed of numerous concepts – many of which will be quite abstract. Researchers sometimes refer to such entities as hypothetical constructs because they can be inferred only from the data; thus, they are presumed to exist but must wait further testing. If research ultimately shows the concepts and constructs in this example to be interrelated and if the propositions that specify the connections can be supported, the researcher will have the beginning of a conceptual scheme to depict the relationships among the knowledge and skill requirements that will clarify the job redesign effort.

Definitions: Confusion about the meaning of the concepts can destroy a research study’s value without the researcher or client even knowing it. If words have different meanings to the parties involved, then they are not communicating on the same wavelength. Definitions are one way to reduce this danger.

While there are various types of definitions, the most familiar are dictionary definitions. In these, a concept is defined with a synonym. For example, a customer is defined as a patron; in turn, is defined as a customer or client of an establishment; a client is defined as one who employs the services of any professional … also, loosely, a patron of any shop. Circular definitions such as these may be adequate for general communication but not for research. Here we must measure concepts, and this requires a more rigorous definition.