Mars Enterprises is an international company specialized in construction engineering and contracting with thousands of employees around the globe. It performs operations in different countries around the world and project teams often need to interact with other teams for engineering consultation and also contractual support. The company had been growing in recent years with hundreds of dispersed teams that require more effective collaborative platforms to enable better interaction among team members. The leadership, headed by the knowledge management (KM) department, decided to introduce a new collaborative platform which aims at helping employees and teams from around the world to share professional knowledge, lessons learned, methods and techniques from a variety of projects. Team and project leaders were introduced into the new system by the KM department and benefits from the new system were presented so that everyone can get motivated to use it. Mars Enterprises is interested in understanding the impact the new collaborative system might have on their team and project collaboration on a global level.

Assuming that you have got a chance to investigate the case presented above at Mars Enterprises and start a research inquiry to help them get some insights into how the new system is used, you are required to provide them with a proposal that includes:

a) Writing a researchable aim and a concrete research question.

b)  Developing a problem statement of maximum 3 lines that captures a key concern for the company in this case.

c) Selecting a suitable method (qualitative, quantitative, and both) that would help you in carrying out the investigation at the company together with describing the data collection tools you plan to use. You should also outline your motivation for the choices you make and the implications of your chosen method with respect to validity and reliability as well as ethics of research.

Course: Qualitative Method