¶ … DuPont has become one of the most well-known household names for the various products they are selling. The most notable include: corn hybrid, soybean, canola, sunflower, sorghum, inoculants, wheat, rice seeds, herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides, photopolymers, electronic materials for photovoltaic products, consumer electronics, displays, advanced printing, ultures, emulsifiers, gums, natural sweeteners, soy-based food plastics / coatings, textiles, mining, pulp, paper, water treatment, titanium dioxide, specialty fluorochemicals, fluoropolymers, performance chemicals, thermoset engineering polymers and elastomers. This helped the firm to become one the top producers of these areas. To determine how success is impacting DuPont requires focusing on: its resources, schedule, scope, budget, communications, training and support. These different elements will illustrate the way specific variables are impacting stakeholders. It is at this point, when select ideas can be used to understand those factors influencing the company.

For any kind of strategy, the ability to determine how successful an organization will be depends upon how quickly it can make adjustments to changes inside the marketplace. This means that it must be able to objectively measure and analyze what is happening to various stakeholders in the process. The focus of the project will be the DuPont Corporation and the manner in which the attitudes of stakeholders and non-stakeholders impact the firm's culture.

To fully understand the way that this is occurring requires developing a method and the expectations of a learning management system. This will be accomplished by discussing what approach will be used, how feedback will be provided to instructional designers and the way the results will be collected / measured and compared with each other. Together, these elements will provide specific insights which are showing the strengths, weaknesses and areas for improvement utilizing the current system. (Schuman, 1996; Sue, 2012).

Measurement Methods

The basic measurement method will focus on utilizing a survey to understand the attitudes of stakeholders and the impact it will have on the firm. This will be accomplished by asking them a series of questions. A few of the most notable include:

What is the impact of the firm on you?

How does this shape your buying decisions and attitudes?

What are specific factors which are influencing the attitudes stakeholders?

How do you think this will affect the organization moving forward?

Do you think the firm has a strategy for continually innovating and adapting with changes inside the marketplace? If so, how has this influenced your buying decisions and the kinds of choices you are making?

What is your image of DuPont and the products / services they are selling?

Do the environmental practices and their track record in these areas influence your opinions positively or negatively?

Are you or anyone you know currently shareholders in the company? (Schuman, 1996; Sue, 2012)

These different areas will offer a baseline of understanding by showing how DuPont's practices, procedures and products are influencing consumers. Students can share these insights by reflecting their own views, those of their friends, family and other stakeholders. When this happens, a more realistic approach is taken in understanding and addressing these kinds of challenges in the long-term. It is at this point, when we can offer specific insights that will show how major issues / risks, goals and milestones are effecting these perceptions.

Mission Statement and Target Performance Objectives

The mission statements are focused on understanding DuPont and the goals the firm has laid out. This achieved by looking at the short- and long-term benchmarks that will help the company to remain competitive. The most notable include enhancing shareholder returns / improving profitability, decreasing expenses, reducing the firm's environmental footprint, supporting the needs of employees / managers, meeting the demands of customers, adjusting with shifts inside the marketplace, implementing / sustaining communities and following the various guidelines established by regulators. These factors are enabling the firm to focus on meeting key objectives. In the future, this enables the company to create products which are most in demand and continually evolving with these needs. The target performance objectives are designed to ensure that DuPont is meeting the requirements of stakeholders. This is achieved through establishing a series of goals for the company to reach on a quarterly and annual basis. For example, managers will often set targets for the various divisions of the firm. This means that each department must reach these benchmarks in order to help the company meet its performance goals.

Scope

The scope of DuPont's success is directly related to their achievement and ability to understand what is important to stakeholders. This is accomplished through objectively looking at the...

Once this takes place, is the point DuPont can comprehend what is happening by looking at key shifts and how they are impacting the firm over the long-term. This is when executives will have a clear idea of key challenges and the way they are impacting others.
Methodological Considerations

For years, there has been a rather ongoing tug-of-war between qualitative and quantitative research methods. Despite the fact that both begin with a similar premise -- that of formulating a question or hypothesis, following a research plan (the investigation), collecting data in an unbiased manner, and then reviewing and analyzing that data based on scholarly methods. This is a step-by-step process that is both systematic and formalized. The key is the formal and recognized process that attempts to be as objective as possible. Procedures, for instance, may differ between sociology and biology, but the basic structure of the research should be equal so that collected results may be shared multidisciplinary (Leedy & Ormrod, 2009). The current study will evaluate the challenges surrounding quantitative research, specifically addressing the issues of sampling, validity, reliability, and bias. These methodological variables will then be used to form a focused review of a hypothetical study on business incubators.

Qualitative and quantitative research requires checks and balances dealing with several factors in order to be appropriate academically. These include issues dealing with: sampling, validity, reliability, and bias.

Sampling -- Sampling is the manner in which the researcher selects a certain population that will become part of the experimental group. Sampling is a means of selecting one population over another, or deciding which subsets of that population are appropriate for the study. Random sampling is preferred for research because it gives the better sense of a possibilitiy of the general population and is more predictive (Bryman, 2012)

Validity -- Validity is a bit more complex in quantitative research, consisting of content, criterion, and construct validity. Content validity tells the reader that measurements within the study represent all appropriate attributes of a population or situation. There is some subjectivity in this, but may be handled by accounting for different variables and their use within the research project. Criterion validity measures the manner in which one variable set predicts and outcome based on other variables (e.g. how can a test score predict future behavior)? Construct validity shows how observation inferences and/or measurement tools represent or measure the issue under investigation (does the measure behave in a predictable fashion (McBurney & White, 2010).

Reliability -- Reliability and validity, while related, are methodologically distinguishable. If any part of measurement is invalid, then it is unreliable -- and vice versa. Reliability refers to the consistency of a measure and includes three predominant factors: 1) Stability 2) Internal Validity; 3) Inter-observer . eliability also includes the type of source, its bias, viewpoint, or inclusion of other research material to buttress the argument (Bryman, 2012)

Bias -- Bias is the manner in which individuals may have an opionon and express that opinion within the research situation, either covertly or overtly, that may skew or refocus the research to a specific perspective. (Wilcox, 2011).

It is the combination of all of these issues that contribute to the success of quantitative research in that taken together they general models, theories, and hypotheses, develop unique and valid measurement theories and tools; help control the experimental manipulation of variables; collect and model empirical data; and verify which hypotheses are true of false within a research scenario. This is because quantitative research remains grounded in statistics and probability theory, allowing for a more universally accepted measuring technique (Goertz & Mahoney, 2012).

Updated Instrument

Measurement -- Survey, qualitative. Will need to use content analysis and/or grouping of like-answers to find consistency in measurement. Suggest, splitting survey into two parts, quantitative and qualitative so that there are numerical measurements and then subjective, content measurements. Alternatively, a basic focus group could be used to determine the appropriateness and to hone the qualitative questions used. This could then be combined into a mixed-method study so that extrapolation of data could be analyzed by a number of demographic and psychographic variables within the experimental set.

Sampling- Random sample for subjects who can provide opinions about Dupont. Category 1 will be individuals who are not stakeholders, but have opnions about the company and then Category 2 will be stakeholders. This could be further delineated into types of each category. No original number is mentioned, but one might suggest a n=100-200 for validity. In addition, the amount of information each person has and the source of that…