How to Write the Best Business Dissertation-Get professional Dissertation help
1 Introduction
As each individual dissertation is, by definition, a unique piece of work, it is impossible to give a precise indication of the content of each piece of work in this study guide. However, you should keep the points below in mind during the process of researching and writing your work.
1.1 Getting started
This is arguably the hardest part of the process! There’s some advice in this guide – see section 4.1 – and on the module’s NILE site. If you have any questions at this early stage, please contact Graham Wilkinson, as detailed above.
Further detailed guidance is available as shown below, but the starting point is to discuss your initial ideas with any of your tutors and/ or with the module leader at Northampton, Graham Wilkinson. You must then register your initial ideas for your research topic online via the NILE site and by email no later than 16/10/2017. This will enable us to allocate you a supervisor who will oversee and support you through the rest of your dissertation work. You will be told your supervisor’s name by email; it is then your responsibility to contact them to arrange the first meeting. Once this has happened, he/ she will become your first point of contact for your dissertation work. You MUST make sure that you discuss your progress with your supervisor at regular intervals; this will help you get a better grade in this double-weighted final year module.
Support for your work on the dissertation is available in several ways. These include:
- this guide;
- material on the BUS4001 NILE site;
- online and printed materials from Learning Development (formerly CfAP);
- information services staff;
- the Faculty librarians;
- the module leader;
- a series of lectures and workshops, especially at the start of the process – details of these are given below; and
- your supervisor – the most important source of help, you MUST meet regularly to discuss your work!
1.2 Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of the module students will be able to:
Knowledge and Understanding
- Outline and critically analyse key debates/theories/views associated with the chosen topic.
Subject-specific Skills
- Select and justify a topic, from within the discipline, suited to investigative analysis.
- Identify and justify the research design in the light of the chosen hypothesis or research question.
- Effectively apply statistical techniques (as and when appropriate).
Key Skills
- Identify and access a range of appropriate academic and other information sources.
- Effectively link empirical evidence to theory, generating conclusions which are clearly linked to the hypothesis/ research question.
- Produce a coherent paper which demonstrates effective communication skills.
1.3 Indicative content
The content of dissertations cannot be pre-set other than in general terms. These are:
- a substantial review of the literature pertaining to a problem or issue
- a considered choice of research or (where appropriate) survey method
- presentation and evaluation of secondary or (where appropriate) primary data
- conclusions pertaining to the aims and objectives of the work.
Actual content will, obviously, vary between dissertations and will particularly depend upon whether a student elects to gather primary empirical data or to conduct a largely conceptual study.
4.2 Developing a hypothesis/ research question
This is probably the most difficult part of the whole process! Students often struggle to write a precise hypothesis or research question at the start of their research. This may well be because they have a hunch that something is worth investigation, but the topic is still too broad and needs to be refined. For most people the initial idea may well be very broad: ‘I want to write something about women in management’, for example. This is fine as a starting point, but it is important to realise that the area to be studied must become more specific – and a precise hypothesis or research question developed – as time goes by and you read more material.
In this case it is necessary to reconsider the intended scope of your research. This should result in the adoption of a more tightly focused hypothesis or research question. The aim is to define the limits of your research and, thus, to define the areas about which you need to collect data. For example, the above idea might be re-written as: ‘Female managers show more concern for staff welfare than male managers’. In this case a research strategy would have to be developed to measure a manager’s concern for staff welfare. For example, you could undertake some primary research to survey a sample of male and female managers. At the very least, you would need to use secondary research techniques to find and analyse previous surveys.
4.3 Establishing your conceptual framework/ academic literature searches
Regardless of the topic of a dissertation it is important to identify some conceptual material – theory – which will aid analysis of the issue identified. This stage can be quite difficult if you have an idea of a contemporary business issue but are unable to identify any relevant theoretical writing. Make use of your supervisor to guide you through this process!
Hundreds of thousands of books and articles have been written on business topics in the past few decades. Several thousand articles have been written on topics of continuing interest such as motivation and job satisfaction alone. The student’s task is not to find and read them all, which is of course impossible. Rather, it is to locate some of the important ‘milestones’ in the literature on a topic. These milestones usually make up the key conceptual ‘building blocks’ of a topic; identifying (and discussing) them may be thought of as the main aim of your initial literature search.
Academic literature attempts to develop these concepts and models. In other words, it tries to confirm or disprove theories relating to business as a way of advancing knowledge. In particular, articles in academic journals generally attempt to report results of research and thinking by:
- testing hypotheses or examining research questions that help to support or contradict theories;
- bringing together knowledge and understanding in review articles of individual topics;
- developing improved research methods for use in particular fields such as strategy or organisational behaviour; and
- reporting the results of surveys and investigations.
Every field of business has a set of related academic journals in which research findings are published. An important task for the student is to locate the right set of journals for the topic under study. This has become (relatively) much easier with the development of comprehensive electronic databases – if you know where and how to access them. The Business School librarians are able to provide that assistance! Although it may seem at first as if journals contain a haphazard collection of papers, over time consistent themes emerge in them. In almost every field of business there are unresolved issues and continuing debate that academics pursue through conferences, journals and books. This is the material that you must get to grips with in your work.
For some students the hypothesis may come before the literature search – especially if primary research is contemplated. However, for many students it may take considerable literature searching until a workable hypothesis is developed.
4.4 Tips on Searching
There are two situations that students encounter at the start of a search. Firstly, the student begins with an interesting idea but cannot see how it links to established concepts in the literature. Without a set of keywords to look for the search becomes vague and imprecise. Important papers might be found but their relevance may not be recognised. Clearly, students need to clarify and articulate their chosen topic. A clear topic heading such as services marketing, racial discrimination, or team leadership will help the search. When a working ‘label’ is found, the search can continue.
Alternatively, the student might know the broad area touched on by a topic and be unable to locate anything specific enough. The problem here is often that the student has failed to define a sufficiently precise question or issue to examine.
Perhaps the commonest reactions from novice searchers are that there is nothing relevant or that they find too much. Finding too little often stems from an inability to identify the vocabulary used by academic writers and database producers to describe different topics. Try different spellings or different words; for example, searching for articles on ‘globalization’ and those on ‘globalisation’ may well produce very different results!
The other problem of finding too many records may stem from using broad search strategies in the database. This is commonplace when popular topics such as customer care are chosen for retrieval; the main way of limiting the search is by adding another specific keyword, eg adding ‘retail’ to ‘customer care’ to give only records in the retail sector.
4.5 Turning a literature search into an academic literature review: the ‘critical analysis’ element
Finding relevant academic literature is just the beginning. You should not take the literature as being definitive or unquestionable. Rather you should understand what it is saying, recognising both its importance and its limitations in your writing. Previous authors are acknowledged to have advanced thinking in a particular field and should be given credit for this. However, it is often possible to constructively criticise literature on the basis that previous findings may not be extendable to other situations or that findings which appeared sound at the time of the study may need re-evaluating in the light of changed circumstances such as market and labour conditions or, perhaps, that key assumptions underlying a piece of research may now be challenged. Being able to identify such things offers a way of devising an appropriate hypothesis worthy of further testing.
In final year first degree work the critical element should feature highly. The best way to understand how to evaluate literature on a topic is to read a few papers in leading academic journals. You should try to note different viewpoints and different opinions; it is this debate that is at the heart of the academic understanding of any given issue.
Students need to show evidence of analysis, synthesis and evaluation if they are to be high achievers. There is a simple way of looking back over your own material and looking for signs of critical thinking. Look for the indicator words and phrases in your discussion. These include such terms as:
because… ; therefore… ;
from the above discussion… ;assuming that… ;
this appears to be… ; consequently… ;
for example… ; if… then… ;
in conclusion…; to summarise… .
These words and phrases at the very least suggest that the writer is getting to grips with material and bringing his or her identity to the analysis. Remember: simply presenting ideas is the start of the process, you must also discuss and analyse those ideas using your own words.
4.6 Good Practice
For any dissertation the detailed content will depend upon the hypothesis or research question that you have chosen (to reflect your individual interests), the particular information available to you and your supervisor’s advice. However, there are a number of key points for all Business dissertations:-
- Your dissertation MUST be in your own words. All direct quotes – and paraphrasing – from other writers must be fully attributed and referenced, using the Harvard referencing system. For details of how to reference material correctly, please see either the library’s internet pages or material available from the Centre for Achievement and Performance. Failure to follow this advice is called plagiarism and is regarded as academic misconduct – see the University Student Guide for details of the procedures here.
- Analyse the topic – don’t just describe events. The question ‘Why is…?’ should be at the forefront of your thinking throughout the work.
- You must undertake secondary research from a wide range of sources. Textbooks are useful as a starting point, but you must use other sources, particularly academic journals in either printed or electronic form, as well.
- Primary research (via questionnaires, visits to organisations, etc) is not usually expected in this module, although this element may be appropriate in some cases.
- Make the most of your supervisor! He/ she is there to help you with your research and in structuring the written work. You must meet regularly with your supervising tutor to ensure that your dissertation is developing along the ‘right’ lines – do not leave things until the last minute.
Bearing the above points in mind, please note that higher grades will be given to dissertations which:
- show a good understanding of the academic issues/ theory that underpins the analysis, particularly via a well-structured literature review;
- demonstrate a high level of critical analysis – purely descriptive pieces of work are inappropriate;
- link theory and practice together effectively; and
- are logically developed within the parameters agreed between the student and supervisor.
Appendices should be used very sparingly (if at all).
4.7 Layout/ Presentation
All dissertations must be word-processed in one-and-a-half spacing on one side of the page on white A4 size pages. The inner margin should be not less than 2 cm wide and the outer margin not less than 1½ cm wide. All pages must be numbered. It is your responsibility to ensure your work is completed to the required standard. Note that work that does not meet the required standard of presentation may not be marked.
The work should be clearly structured and split into chapters/sections. It is not desirable for you to adopt a report format in which decimal numbering of all sections and all paragraphs is used. However, you must use numbered chapter headings and sub-headings to ensure your work is clearly and logically structured.
Your work must contain:
- a title page with your name, your student number, your course, the module code, the title of the dissertation, your supervisor’s name and the date;
- acknowledgements;
- a detailed table of contents (including a list of appendices, if any);
- an abstract (summarising the whole of the dissertation);
- an introduction (outlining the importance of the topic and the approach taken);
- a chapter explaining the methodology used;
- several chapters guiding the reader logically through the research that has been undertaken – the actual number will vary from one dissertation to another, but all must include a critical review of the academic literature;
- the conclusion (and recommendations, if any);
- numbered appendices (if any); and
- a full reference list of works referred to in the text and works which you have consulted even if they are not directly referred to in your dissertation.
Note that all chapters (but not sub-sections) should start on a new page.
Footnotes should not be used.
Appendices contain material which is not essential to the text – technical notes on methodology, long and/or complex tables, copies of questionnaires, etc. Do NOT attempt to include everything you’ve used in your research in the appendices (or in the text!)
5.3 The Dissertation
This work counts for 85% of your overall dissertation grade.
Hand-in date: 20 April 2018 (online only, via the module’s NILE site.)
(refer/ defer work: 1 August 2018)
Word limit: 10,000 words (+/- 10%) – please note that overlong pieces of work will be penalised.
As was said in the literature review section, each individual dissertation is, by definition, a unique piece of work with its own content and structure. It is, therefore, impossible to give detailed advice about the content of your work in this document; however, you should bear the following criteria in mind as they are relevant for all BUS4001 dissertations.
Your dissertation must:
- state the overall aims and objectives clearly e.g. (dis)proving something, applying theory to a real situation, setting up a hypothesis, etc;
- explain the research methods to be adopted and reflect upon their appropriateness e.g. relating the typical problems of using questionnaires or of interviewing, etc to your particular work;
- demonstrate a high level of critical analysis when discussing a range of relevant secondary research e.g. reviewing appropriate books and articles – purely descriptive pieces of work are inappropriate;
- discuss the research findings in the context of the academic literature – in other words, you incorporate a (reworked) version of the Initial Literature Review;
- come to conclusions/ recommendations which are consistent with the analysis
- be logically structured;
- reference all sources using Harvard referencing style; and
- be correctly presented in accordance with the criteria stated – work that does not conform to these standards will not be accepted.
