3.5 Recruitment procedure
Participants were recruited through both online mechanisms and also through personal contacts the researcher had through family connections in the form of a snowballing sampling strategy. LinkedIn was used as a way of targeting participants and an advert was placed on a number of groups on LinkedIn including the Doing Business in China group to facilitate access to a relevant sample group. In the advert the details of the study were clearly stated and the low time expectation was also promoted to encourage the most number of participants and to draw out one of the core strengths of facilitating a questionnaire online. Finally, company and individual details were gathered from LinkedIn and various databases to then contact companies over email to ask for a participant. To join in the research project. In most instances, the researcher offered to provide an executive summary of the results following the study which would be emailed out to encourage firms to participate.
3.6 Data Preparation and Data Analysis
Data was prepared in SPSS and was used in order to develop a spreadsheet which focused upon ensuring the data was presented in the correct format. Data was extracted from the BoS platform and was then transferred into SPSS in order to aid analysis. At this point, missing data was checked for to ensure that all responses were accounted for. Data was analysed within SPSS and the results of the analysis are presented in chapter four. Descriptive statistics were presented first and then simple correlation tests were used in order to determine relationships between variables. In order to analyse the open-ended questions, key themes were taken from the responses given and used to shape a discussion inherently linked back to the literature discussed in chapter two. However, no coding was used and instead a more traditionally qualitative approach was followed where the knowledge of the research and the interpretation of the researcher guided by the literature was used.
3.7 Ethical approach
Due to human participants in this research and despite the remote nature of digital communication there is still a need to consider the ethical approach of this research. Ethical guidelines presented by the Academy of Management (2016) will be followed in order to support the integrity of the research. Such guidelines will be used in addition to the university's own ethical guidelines. In particular, reflecting upon guidelines highlighted by the Academy of Management, three key principles must be focused upon: honesty, responsibility and integrity.
3.8 Limitations
There is a need to consider the limitations of this research and to do so in a manner that allows for action to be taken to remedy any potential limitations. One of the central limitations relates to the validity of the questionnaire, which may be reduced as a result of bringing together different scale items from the literature (Bryman & Bell, 2015). Further, a second limitation relates to the sample population which failed to reach
