Developing a Research Proposal for Business and Organizational Issues

Formulating research aims, questions, and objectives/hypotheses

1.Formulate as appropriate, research aims, questions and objectives / hypotheses for the proposed research study

2.Critically evaluate academic literature relevant to the field of proposed study to inform the research rationale and design

3.Design research methodologies and methods to achieve stated research aims

4.Evaluate the suitability of  particular research approaches and methods to analyse business and/or organisational issues to achieve research aims Critically discuss key ethical issues related to the proposed research study

This assignment requires you to develop a research proposal. You are expected to formulate a research aim to address a business or management issue, which could form the basis of your dissertation, and research question(s)/hypotheses and a research methodology to study that research aim and question(s). You may choose to use purely secondary research data, if appropriate. Within this  assignment you must:

1.Present your research aim and research question(s).

2.Discuss the key area/s of literature upon which your dissertation/thesis will draw and identify how your research will contribute to scholarly knowledge of the topic; you need to provide convincing justification of the need of your research and highlight the academic gap you are attempting to fill in.

3.Detail your research methodology and strategy (e.g. inductive/deductive; positivist/interpretivist; qualitative/quantitative etc.) and state why these choices are appropriate to your research aim.

4.Detail your specific research methods (e.g. telephone interviews, postal questionnaire survey) and why these are appropriate to your research aim.

5.Identify the possible limitations and the likely ethical issues of your chosen methods, problems you might encounter in implementing them, and suggest how you might address these.

6.NOTE: If you are proposing to use only secondary research you must (Failure to do so with result in a H grade):

a.Explain and evaluate your choice of secondary research as the sole research method, and

b.Identify the sources of data that you intend to use.

c.Evaluate the research methods used to generate at least one of the secondary data sets you identified above.

The assignment should act as a standalone assignment; as such, it will be marked independently from the dissertation that is being proposed. It is therefore imperative the assignment includes enough detail for the marker to understand what is being proposed. Therefore, it is not simply enough to say statistical/qualitative analysis will be used without explaining what form of analysis will be used and how it will answer the research question(s) proposed. A good indicator as to whether it contains enough detail is that a marker who is not aware of your proposal beforehand, should be able to undertake your proposed project and analysis after reading your proposal.  

will present to your colleagues via PowerPoint. You can structure the presentation as you think it is appropriate in order to achieve the learning outcome.

The project plan is to be submitted as a professional report. The word count for this assignment is 3000 words. This includes everything in the main body of the text. Everything before (ie abstract, acknowledgements, contents, executive summaries etc) and after the main text (ie references, bibliographies, appendices etc) are NOT included in the word count limit.

There is no fixed penalty for exceeding the word count, but the marker will not consider any work after the +10% word count has been reached, within the allocation of marks. You may therefore be penalised for a failure to be concise and for failing to conclude the work within the word count specified.”

You should structure your work in a clear and professional manner. You are encouraged to attend all the sessions as the tutor will give you guidance on presenting your work.  

1.Grading Matrix

2.Executive Summary - Excluded from the word count.

3.Table of Contents - Excluded from the word count.

4.Main Body of the Assignment  

a.Research aim and research question(s)

b.Previous literature

c.Underpinning methodology (including justification of their suitability)

d.Proposed research methods (including justification of their suitability)

e.Limitations and Ethical Issues