Course Brief

The course is designed to facilitate and support students to:

  • Develop an individual research project relevant to management practice;
  • Demonstrate a critical approach to existing and published research;
  • Demonstrate their understanding of what research is, how it is designed, carried out, and reported on;
  • Acquire and try out data collection skills;
  • Analyse and interpret data;
  • Demonstrate their competence in writing a well-structured and elaborated research report.
  • This course is offered in 120 hours

On successful completion of this course a student will be able to:

  1. Understand the process of planning, researching and writing an original piece of work;
  2. Manage a large, sustained task independently and to plan and control a project over an extended period and to meet deadlines;
  3. Define and analyse a complex business problem, along with an ability to integrate academic knowledge and practical applications;
  4. Critically assess theoretical concepts and formulate appropriate conceptual frameworks, synthesize and reflect upon a range of sources, learn from experience and apply theory;
  5. Search for appropriate academic journals, and disseminate information effectively;
  6. Make judgements about the quality and authenticity of data, to be sensitive to ethical issues related to
    research activities;
  7. Recognize the importance of research ethics and design a research approach which complies with ethical principles;
  8. Use appropriate research support software tools;
  9. Collect data following research guidelines;
  10. Develop high standards in interpreting research data accurately; present and discuss data appropriately;
  11. Draw meaningful conclusions and, where appropriate make viable recommendations;
  12. Format an academic manuscript effectively.

  • How to find a research question
  • How to conduct a literature Review
  • Understand different research approaches (qualitative versus quantitative research)
  • How to design questionnaire?
  • How to design an interview protocol?
  • What are ethical issues related to research?
  • How to analyse your data?
  • How to write a dissertation?

Students sign-up with a supervisor at the beginning of the academic year. In term 1, groups of students have weekly sessions facilitated by their supervisors, where students develop a research design for their individual projects. In term 2, when students start carrying out their research projects (collecting and processing data, and write up their dissertation), students have both one-to-one with their supervisors as well as group sessions, depending on the particular needs of students. In terms 1 and 2, weekly lectures are provided to support the student-supervisor relationship, offering introductions to methodology, methods, chapter structure, referencing. A number of tools and example-dissertations are available through Moodle to further support the student-supervisor relationship.

Literature Review, Research Ethics, Dissertation

  • The course is designed to facilitate and support students to:

    • Develop an individual research project relevant to management practice;
    • Demonstrate a critical approach to existing and published research;
    • Demonstrate their understanding of what research is, how it is designed, carried out, and reported on;
    • Acquire and try out data collection skills;
    • Analyse and interpret data;
    • Demonstrate their competence in writing a well-structured and elaborated research report.