Management Challenges

Description of challenge I am currently faced with a tremendous challenge that involves managing and supervising employees that are located 6000 miles away. The challenge lies in implementing a structure that will enable me to ensure that the employees accomplish their tasks as assigned. I have hired a team of market research specialist to collect some data on mobile communication use in Benin, but I am finding that managing that team and more importantly ensuring that they abide by the predefined agreement is a challenge. Some of the data that I have received from that team makes me wonder whether or not the work is being done in a meticulous manner. I have already collected secondary data on that country but the primary data that I am receiving from the surveys seems to contradict most of the secondary data extrapolated from various databases. Interpretation of challenge In that instance it seems that the data collection process needs to be revised. There needs to be better operational controls to ensure validity of the data. The controls need to focus on ensuring that the assigned tasks are being completed in a very thorough manner. By implementing better operational controls the people (the team of market research analyst) will have a different perception of the situation and may feel obliged to do a more thorough job. If they feel like systems are in place that will get them caught if they cheat, they will more than likely work diligently on their tasks. As a whole the output, which is the data collected by the different tasks assigned to the team member is questionable. Evaluation of the challenge One idea that was brought up by one of my group member would be to request that the team that I hired collect business card from each business owner that they survey. Another idea that is currently being implemented is to ask each survey participant to provide a phone number so that I could call them back to ensure that a survey was presented to them and that...