Essay Question

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Public Administration
Question 1- Explain the role of production, bargaining and opportunism costs in relation to assessing public policy initiatives.
Public policy is mainly used to assess the costs of any proposed policy regarding production, bargaining, and opportunity costs. Production costs refer to the overall expenses of a production process, such as labor including both human labor and machine labor and raw materials. The cost of transporting raw materials is also included in the production cost, packaging costs of the final products are also included in the production cost. Bargaining costs relate to costs used to develop and monitor an agreement, as well as any other dispute aspects likely to arise between parties. It’s important for a business to cut bargaining costs of its investors by dealing with the issue of bias in business. The government plays a major role in ensuring the effectiveness and fairness of a negotiation process by providing the necessary incentives and a bargaining endpoint and creates a linkage between the regulatory body and the beneficiaries of the negotiations. Finally, opportunism cost is a situation where one organization, privatized public services, they offer the services with little knowledge from the government or no knowledge at all. In case of a subcontract, a high-level government agency is tasked with the process oversight and accountability of the service delivery by the private entities. Opportunism generally happens when people are self-centered, they take advantage of others for their own gain by making false promises or changing terms of business to their advantage.

Question 2- Define and describe Field research and Document Research and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of both.
Field research is a qualitative data collection method which aims at comprehension, observation and association with individuals in their standard settings. Methodologies and strategies utilized in field research contrast in different disciplines (Gervais & Roxane Pg.6). For example, biologists do not focus only on the interaction of animals and human beings in their field work, while social researchers majoring in field research would interact with people or observe them in their normal setting to learn their dialect and social structure. Field research conveys an expansive scope of an all-around characterized variable techniques: ranging from interviews to direct observation, mass discussions, group discussions, and self and analyzed personal documents produced by the panel.
Document research is defined as the utilization of documents and outside sources to support a perspective or contention in an academic setup. When analyzing the documents, the researchers can use either qualitative or quantitative techniques or both. The literature research process, in most cases, involves several or all the conceptualizing methods as well as usage and assessment of documents. The analysis of literature materials in research are either quantitative, qualitative or both. The main subjects surrounding the papers are the ability to consider them as reliable sources of evidence in a social world.
Advantages of both Field and document research is that they make outstanding methods for one to understand the aim of social context as a shaping tool to people’s experiences and lives. The study facilitates an intense understanding of daily life’s intricacies and complexities. The Field yields precisely detailed data, emphasizes the role of the relevance of social context (Gervais, Roxane Pg.10), and finally, it uncovers social features that may not be obvious or of which research professionals may be unaware.
Disadvantages of both are that Field and document research may lack broadness; to gather very detailed information would that mean one cannot collect information from a large number of people. The second disadvantage is the high cost of data collection; finances are required to collect data, most of the money being used for resource collection. Thirdly, it is time-consuming. Due to the tiresome nature of the exercise, it requires a lot of time to do accurate research. Lastly, inaccurate feedbacks are likely to be recorded. In cases where the research involves feedback collection from the singled out audience, there exists the high possibility that feedback given could not be correct. Comments are mostly biased or issued just for the sake of it. Finally, documented observations have proved to be more challenging than any other method.

Works Cited
Gervais, Roxane. Global outsourcing strategies: An international reference on effective outsourcing relationships. Gower Publishing, Ltd., 2006.