The Project Agreement pro-forma

Word length: 1500 words maximum (indicative word counts for each section are given although this may vary)

Name Gulnara Batirova

Student no

Your degree programme BA (HONS) BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT

Mobile no

Provisional title of your project Stock control: a case study of 1001Meloch

Introduction All business people are aware of how important it is to have accurate information on the availability of goods in the warehouse, on the stock balance. Firstly, you will immediately notice the loss of time employees. If the records in the computer and the real remains of the goods do not match, employees will have to be worn on a regular basis to the warehouse, checking balances and consider them. Naturally, in the course of something will be lost, and all of a sudden be. If the employees serve clients ... and because not every customer will agree to lose their personal time to wait until the employee finds the right product and will verify the amount (Syntetos, Babai, Davies & Stephenson, 2010). In addition, unpleasant and hurtful situation may arise: the goods sold, and it is impossible to deliver it to the client, because in the residues indicated a greater amount than it actually is. The client, of course, will lose the loyalty, the supplier - a reputation and money (Tratar, 2010). Although, money can be earned again, but the reputation is priceless; Even if the amount of the discrepancy remains and does not come out to the customers, it will cause internal damage. Unaccounted items are easy to steal and lose. The sharp decline in demand, an increase in its variability, employee error, strategic shortcomings, just keeping conditions with certain types of products - all this causes the formation of illiquid (a product with a low turnover or without movement) assets on the company's warehouses (Cooper, Groth & Avera, 1985). Overstocked warehouse means confusion, shortages and surpluses, need frequent inventory, and all of this together slow, and sometimes paralyze business. Therefore, an analysis of stocks and the management of the remnants of the goods in the warehouse is written many articles and even books; Invented many mathematical methods of the analysis (Syntetos, Babai, Davies & Stephenson, 2010). The purpose of stock management - to reduce production costs and, consequently, to increase profits. The larger the stock, the greater area takes warehouse, the more needs to be paid for the rent (Tratar, 2010). The aim of this research is to understand how organisations control their margin in order to avoid shortage of stock or overstocked warehouse. Using selected company the research objectives are to identify the stock control methods within the organisation, to explore the current stock level and to investigate findings to the firm. This topic is interested me as I have been working in a selected company for many years and this particular issue of unsold stock was common and was giving difficulties both to the employees and organisation itself. Therefore, in order to privent this happening again I want to alalyze the rote of this problem and contribute some reccomendations to avoid shortage of stock and overstocked warehouse in a future. This project might potentially contribude to the selected organisation by finding what academic communities discussing about stock control and identifying models, frameworks and theories around it.

Please indicate the relevant subject field (noting the restrictions in the handbook).

Accounting & Finance

Economics

Events & Tourism

Human Resource Management

Law

Marketing

Operations & Information Management

Organisation Studies

Strategy & International Business

Access to organisations In the dissertation, I explore the biggest wholesale organisations in Novosibirsk, Russia called 1001Meloch. This firm works directly with manufacturers of imported (from China, Belorussia, Kazahstan) and domestic goods (from Russia); the primary activity is wholesale trade in consumer goods: household goods, haberdashery, toys, souvenirs, household products, goods for sport and recreation (Batirova, 2016). 1001 Meloch was selected for this research as it is family owned business and I have been working there for 6 years. The project and reserch requirements have been discused with a director and the line manage; and permission was diven to collect required data and inretviewing their employees. Moreover, director of the organisation was very pleased that their organisation is selected to be analysed and given reccomendations at the end, which he thinks might help them in a future.

Research Methodology Your initial thoughts about your methodology – what data do you plan to collect, and how it be collected and analysed - plus some justification for the choices made. Mixed method will be used as according to Tashakkori and Teddlie (2003) multiple methods give more opportunities towards defining the research question. Therefore, this research will conduct qulitative method to understand how the purchasing decisions are made and how they impact on the level of the stock in selected organisation, while quantitative Saunders, Lewis & Thornill (2009, p. 595) defines mixed method research as: ‘use of quantitative and qualitative data collection techniques and analysis procedures either at the same time (parallel) or one after the other (sequential), but not in combination’. For this research, the first methodology to be used will be qualitative, which will be gathered through interviewing line managers and supply chain managers. Bryman and Bell, (2012) suggest conducting one-to-one interviews would be the most feasible option of collecting data in reaching towards the aim of the research by considering a small sample size. As the chosen business is based in Russia, the semi-structured internet-mediated interview wil be organised. Meanwhile, the data has been gathered it needs to be analysed for presenting the findings. One of the recommended software is NVivo, which is designed to analyze text-based information’s (Lewins and Silver, 2007). The NVivo software allows to merge a set of data into codes and themes, which will be used iteratively (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, & Jackson, 2012). Following qualitative research the quantitative will be applied. Quantitative methodology is a study that inspects the connection between different range of data. There are numeriouse types of secondary data: writen materials, non-writen materials and survey data; this particular research will conduct written materials in a form of statistical mathematical and numerical information of organisational records, such as annual reports, supply chain reports, level of stock documents and so on (Walliman, 2011). In addition, organisations in Russia usually keep their records and private documents within the organisation, therefore materials for the quantitative data will be requested from the line manager. Once the data has been gathered, these data will be analysed to present findings. The data collected will be downloaded to be analysed in software such as Excel or SPSS (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, & Jackson, 2012). SPSS is one of the most popular statistical package which can accomplish highly complex materials manipulation and analyse with straitforward instruction (Batirova, 2016). Bryman and Bell (2012) suggest to use sample T-test in order to differentiate the relation between the level of stock in a selected organisation with a recommended level for this industiry in current economics of scale; to find out how the organisation is presently performing.

Timetable of Research Activity: this should be a Gantt chart that most logically follows the activity column from the module calendar as per page 5 of the handbook. This is not included in word count.

Task/Uni Week	15-19	20-23	24-27	28- 33	34-36
Search and review the literature
Data Collection
Analyse research data
Writing up
Revise, proofread, print and submit

Ethical Considerations (this is covered by inclusion of the Ethics Form) Attiched on apendix

A list of references and a bibliography (not inlcuded in the word count) References Walliman, N.S.R. 2011, Research methods, Routledge, London. Cooper, S. K., Groth, J. C., & Avera, W. E., 1985. Liquidity, exchange listing, and common stock performance. Journal of Economics and Business, 37(1), 19-33. Syntetos, A.A., Babai, M.Z., Davies, J. & Stephenson, D. 2010, Forecasting and stock control: A study in a wholesaling context, International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 127, no. 1, pp. 103-111. Tratar, L.F. 2010. Joint optimisation of demand forecasting and stock control parameters ,International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 127, no. 1, pp. 173-179. Batirova, 2016 Bibliography Here you identify key elements of the body of academic literature that will inform your project. This is the list of the 5-10 references (including articles, web sites, etc.) that you have identified as being key to your project and which you plan to read. Ettl, M., Feigin, G. E., Lin, G. Y., & Yao, D. D., 2000. A supply network model with base-stock control and service requirements. Operations Research, 48(2), 216-232. Syntetos, A. A., & Boylan, J. E., 2006. On the stock control performance of intermittent demand estimators. International Journal of Production Economics,103(1), 36-47. Ettl, M., & Lin, G. Y. J., 2000. U.S. Patent No. 6,078,900. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Jayaraman, S., & Milbourn, T. T., 2011. The role of stock liquidity in executive compensation. The Accounting Review, 87(2), 537-563. Jayaraman, S., & Milbourn, T. T., 2011. The role of stock liquidity in executive compensation. The Accounting Review, 87(2), 537-563.

Apendix:

Ethics Approval Form

‘Research’ involves a specific research question or area and a project to investigate that, guided by a supervisor. An important part of research is to consider its ethics. This may include the consequences of your research topic. You must consider whether your research topic is in itself sensitive or potentially harmful. Seek clarification and advice from your supervisor on how to proceed. There are also ethical aspects to how you carry out research. It is essential that you and your supervisor consider these. You must not commence your research until you have ethical approval from your supervisor.

Please complete and sign this form and submit with the Project Agreement. One of your first tasks in meetings with your supervisor will be to pass this form to them for their consideration. They also need to record that ethical approval has been granted.

If you are doing research within an organisation you must ensure that you have the organisation’s permission to do the research, and then to use the data you have collected. It is particularly important to check if your work is in/on health sector organisations (i.e. the NHS) because additional permissions will be needed.

If you are doing research you must demonstrate that you have considered ethical issues. Specifically, if you are collecting data from human participants, again you must demonstrate that you have considered ethical aspects of the research.

You must include the completed form with your Project Agreement. (Signed by you and your supervisor will then sign this at a late date)

Student Details (complete all sections):

Name of student (applicant):	Gulnara Batirova
Student number
Student’s email address:	[email protected]
Faculty and Department:	BA (HONS) BUSINESS AND MANAGEMENT
Details of course/degree for which research is being undertaken:	UMCDHU-30-3 - Applied business project 16sep_1
Academic (UWE) Supervisor name:	To be completed when known
Academic Supervisor’s email address:	To be completed when known
Academic Supervisor’s telephone number:	To be completed when known
Project title

Your first question is: “is my research ‘high risk’?” Please answer these questions:

Does your research involve….?	Yes/No
Children	No
Other vulnerable groups, including those who lack mental capacity	No
Sensitive topics, e.g. sexual behaviour, experience of violence	No
Human tissue, such as body parts	No
Administrative data which is secured or not publicly available	No
Deception of the participants (e.g. Not saying what the research is really about)	No
Accessing sensitive information (e.g. personal or confidential data)	No
Potential harm or stress to participants and/or yourself	No
Methods which place physical or mental strain on participants	No
Potentially sharing data beyond the scope of consent given	No

If you have answered ‘yes’ to ANY of the above, your research may be ‘high risk’. You must discuss this with your supervisor. If your supervisor views the research as high risk you must apply to the Faculty Research Ethics Committee for full ethical approval.

If your research is not classed as ‘high risk’ you still should ensure that you have considered ethical issues, been granted ethical approval by your supervisor, and conducted your research appropriately.

CHECKLIST QUESTIONS	Y/N	Explanation
	Have you informed participants about the nature and purpose of the research and how data will be?	Yes
	Will participants be clearly asked to give consent to take part in the research?	Yes
	Can participants withdraw themselves and their data from the research project at any time if they choose? Are they told this?	Yes
	Are measures in place to provide confidentiality for participants?	Yes
	Have you ensured secure management of data, (e.g. ideally stored only on UWE computers with passwords)?	Yes
	Is it clear to participants for how long their data will be kept, and that it will be destroyed after that time?	Yes