Posted: April 17th, 2015

Is the Human Resources Function Essential in Achieving Successful Organisational Change?

You are expected to submit an 8000 word piece of writing based on extended reading and independent research. This piece needs to be focused, to relate to the academic disciplines of business, management or marketing and to be underpinned by an appropriate methodology in the conduct of primary and/or secondary research.
Dissertations might vary according to the topic and the methodology, but content wise a dissertation normally includes: specific research questions and objectives, a deep rationale for these, a relevant literature review, methodological steps conducted in order to provide insights to the research question, a presentation of the findings coupled with a discussion of these in the context of academic theories and a resulting conclusion, including recommendations.

Parts of the proposal may be used for the final dissertation if appropriate. However, more detail and refinement is expected at the final dissertation stage.

WHAT A DISSERTATION NORMALLY LOOKS LIKE
(Careful: These are only guidelines aiming to help you and not an absolute rule – particular dissertations might vary in form to a degree – in all cases, read the Dissertation Handbook and also discuss your structure with your supervisor)

General guideline~size:
The biggest parts of your dissertation would be these 2 chapters:
a) the Literature review and b) the Findings/Discussion

A VERY IMPORTANT NOTE TO REMEMBER:
This is an academic piece of work – your research needs to be informed by academic literature and to also follow rules of methods design outlined in methodology books. Everything you do needs to be argued and based on evidence (e.g. theories, findings from research articles, market reports etc.). You need to convince the reader that this is a well-thought out project that follows academic principles.

i. abstract (100-150 words)
A quick snapshot of the dissertation, including the main problem, concepts from theory (literature review) and main findings.
ii. acknowledgements
If you think it’s appropriate
iii. table of contents
Be detailed, include sections within chapters, list illustrations, diagrams, appendixes etc.

Chapter 1. Introduction
– mainly: your rationale for your study (why is it important to do this research? if you want, you can mention how you got the inspiration to do it)
-your research problem and research questions / objectives (with a justification as to why these questions need to be asked – this relates to your rationale above)
-how your research relates to existing knowledge and how it adds to/challenges that knowledge, what ‘gap’ do you fill or what relatively new insights are you offering?
-your methodological approach (briefly, no details, you’ll write these in your Methodology)
-plan of the work (explain the structure to the reader, how the dissertation unfolds).

Chapter 2. Literature Review
(Note the below are not separate – aim to synthesize)
-review the analytical/theoretical concepts relevant to your study (review of theoretical literature)
-review what previous research has been done in your area (review of research)
-based on the above, justify the need for your research: how will you add to the previous body of knowledge (if you haven’t done this in depth in tintroduction)

Tips:
-be current: seek out books, current academic articles, research reports etc.
-be focused! Consider how the literature related to your research question and avoid generalities (e.g. if you are looking into how colours in adverts impact on consumer behaviour, you will mention the psychology of colours etc, but you won’t need a lengthy history of advertising nor a discussion of all advertising models out there).
-structure the chapter into sections dealing with the major issues/concepts that relate to your study

Chapter 3. Methodology
This explains how you did the research – both collecting data and analysing it. You need to consult methods books and reference them for this section! It is also useful to look at previous research journal articles and see how they present their methodology.
– include research hypotheses (only if they are relevant to your study!) and provide a clear rationale behind these particular hypotheses – i.e. why do you expect things to be this way?
-describe and DEFEND everything in your research design – what you did and why you did it. e.g.
-what instruments did you use and why (e.g. why interviews and not questionnaires?) – connect this with your research question
– what was your sample – who did you study and why did you contact x and not y number of people, how did you get access? What was your sampling technique (e.g. snowballing, convenience sample etc.) and why? Provide an appendix with participants’ profiles using pseudonyms if doing interviews
– Explain your questionnaire or interview guide (e.g. how did you create the questions? open ended or close and why? what was the order and why? What were you trying to find out based on these questions? Link them to your concepts etc.).
– Give details of the research (e.g. if interviews, were did they take place and why, how long were they and why, were they recorded? etc.)
– How did you analyse your data? (e.g. did you transcribe or did you use SPSS? How did you make sense out of what people said? If you used SPSS or similar, what exact stats did you run?)
– Issues of ethics, reliability, validity (including: are there any possible biases in your study? and what are the limitations? how generalisable are your findings?)

Chapter 4. Findings and Discussion (This can be one chapter or 2 separate ones – discuss with your supervisor)
This is about what you found out after analysing your data. Remember: not everything you collect needs to be included, be focused and focus more on the points which answer your research questions.
– detailed analysis that moves back and forth between research questions and the issues/concepts identified in the literature review.
– relate your key findings back to the existing literature and highlight how this adds to/challenges what we already know.

Tips:
-by the end of this chapter the reader should feel you ANSWERED the RESEARCH QUESTIONS you were set out to answer.
-presentation: if you are doing interviews you will include quotes of the participants, but you will also explain in your own words what these mean, do not just add them on the page. Have a look at academic research articles (e.g. European Journal of Marketing) to see how quotes (participants’ words) are presented. You can include any images and graphs for quantitative research, but again explain what these mean, do not have them as window-dressing – a beautiful graph on its own does not mean anything.

Chapter 5. Conclusion
This is not just a summary of what came before!
-review the main findings relating back to the research problem
-critically reflect on the project (very important): if you had the chance to do this again, what would you do differently and why? Based on this, suggest directions for future research
– review the contribution of your work: what did you achieve and what implications does this have (Why is your work important to a marketing academic and/or a marketing practitioner? Any particular managerial recommendations coming out from your work? )
-in the end, do an overall evaluation of the whole dissertation: have you answered the question ‘So what?!Why was there a need to do your project and did it finally pay off?’

References
Be consistent and thorough. Follow Harvard Referencing or APA – this is extremely important! Reference within the text very carefully, do not just add a list of references at the end – otherwise you might face plagiarism issues!

Appendixes
Include here any research instruments (e.g. interview guide, questionnaire) etc.