The research proposal requires you to demonstrate your ability to identify, analyse a research problem related to business and management, and to set out a plan for a research project to investigate that problem. The aim of this assessment is to enable you to develop and demonstrate your ability to: (a) diagnose a problem in business and management, (b) arrive at the consequent research questions, (c) determine how to answer these questions by drawing on the academic literature, (d) assess the potential of different research methods and (e) plan a small-scale research project.
Your report is intended to form the plan for how you might use the literature (by drawing on the ideas and findings of others), design a research project and analyse the findings.
This report is among the most challenging assignments set during the M.Sc. programmes. You are being asked to anticipate the issues that will confront you in conducting a small research project. Thus it is quite different from, and more difficult than, writing a conventional coursework paper. The best reports are usually those produced by those students who have devoted considerable thought to the assignment before even beginning to write the report.
Your choice of problem for the project proposal report does not commit you to that topic for your dissertation. You can just complete the report as a free-standing exercise in which you are assessed on your ability to analyse a problem, grasp the arguments and the evidence contained in the literature and devise a suitable research design. You are free to select a different topic for your dissertation if you so wish, although there are obvious advantages in sticking to a topic to which you have already given thought and invested some work (although you must avoid cutting-and-pasting parts of the proposal into the dissertation).
The Research Proposal requirements
The report must include the following main elements:
1. Title. This can include a subtitle and should indicate what the research is essentially about.
2. Abstract. The abstract sums up the research problem/questions, research design and methods, and relation to the literature and/or practice.
3. Introduction in the form of a statement of the problem to be addressed. This introductory material will include a clear statement of the problem, the question(s) to be researched, the importance of those questions and an indication of the potential role of business and management theories in answering the questions.
4. A summary critical review of the relevant literature, both theoretical and applied. This section will indicate what can be learnt from the current literature and will seek to identify some of the strengths and weaknesses of that literature. You are not expected to provide a comprehensive guide to the literature but you are expected to communicate an understanding of some of the main ideas, theories and evidence relating to your topic. You must refer to the academic literature and not just to the professional literature (note that the former usually involves seeking an in-depth and critical understanding of problems while the latter is usually restricted to matters of ‘how-to-do-it’).
5. An outline of the proposed research design and methods. You should outline the research design and the likely methods, taking care to point to the strengths and weaknesses of your proposed research methods. You must demonstrate that the research can be done within the constraints of the M.Sc. dissertation process, that you have good reason to believe that the necessary data is available and can be collected, that your choice of method(s) is reasonable and likely to produce reliable and valid results, and that you have considered any ethical questions raised by the research.
6. Conclusion. The conclusion summarizes the problem, the purposes of the study, the research question/s, and the methodology. It should also acknowledge any ethical issues and the possible limitations of the approach (e.g. generalizability from limited number of cases).
