Adrian Evans

Business Project in Theory

Senior Lecturer
in International
Management

2022
Key Information
• Module Code: UMCDVE-15-3
 
• Academic Year: 2022/2023
15-credit final year dissertation module
 
• Teaching Team: Adrian Evans (module leader)
Emmanuel Adu-Ameyaw
• Fazelina Hamid
• Dr Ellen Hughes
• Huyen Trang Le
• Yves Marien
Lindi Nikisi
Laura McAllister

• Assessment due: Research Proposal 2000 words 15/12/2022

Schedule
Overview of the Research Process
Choose a business issue and
conduct a systematic search of the literature

Write a critical review of the literature and define the research

question(s)

Design the research and write the proposal

(methodology and methods to fit your paradigm)

Collect the research data

(primary and/or secondary, qualitative and/or quantitative)

Analyse and interpret the research data

(qualitative or quantitative methods to fit your paradigm)

Write the research report

Collis and Hussey (2014), p. 9.

Learning Objectives
After studying this topic, you should be able to
o Differentiate between business issues, research problems and
research questions
o Use techniques for generating research problems and research
questions
o Understand the need for specifying and narrowing the scope of
your research

Seminar
o Identifying an interesting business issue.
Contemporary Business
Issues: Clarifying Ideas

Lecture 2
Lecture Outline
1. Choosing a contemporary business issue for your business project
2. Business issues, research problems and research questions
3. Practicalities
Contemporary Business
Issues: Clarifying Ideas

1. Choosing a Contemporary Business Issue for

Your Business Project
Lecture 1:
What Business Researchers Study
Economy

Business economics
Industry 1 Industry 2
International business

Strategic management
Organisation 1 Organisation 2 Organisation 3
Finance

Accounting
Business 1 Business 2 Business 3 Operations management
Marketing
Human resources
Functional Functional Functional Information systems
area 1 area 2 area 3 Decision science
Operations research

Person i Person ii Person iii Organisational behaviour

Adopted from Maylor et al. (2017), p. 7.

Lecture 1:
Dimensions of Issues in Business Research
Business issue

Context or Discipline or Problem Social group

setting sub-discipline

e.g. multinational e.g. marketing, e.g. recruiting • Individuals

companies, small- finance, and retaining top • Groups
or medium-sized economics, management, • Organisations
enterprises, third human resource customer churn, • Broader
sector, non- management, falling context
governmental operations, profitability,
organisations, consumer response to
high-tech behaviour, recession, growth
markets, fast- behavioural without capital,
moving consumer economics. aging workforce,
goods Provides demographic
‘theoretical lens’. change

Adopted from Maylor et al. (2017), p. 9.

Lecture 1:
Increasing Knowledge
Research is/has…
original • New or improved insights or evidence
• New or improved methods for doing research
• New or improved analysis of data
• New or improved concepts, or applications of existing
concepts or theories
• New or improved questions for further research
relevant • Practical problem: an issue that you have observed in a
real-life setting or identified in your courses
• Theoretical problem: an issue for which there is incomplete
information or different theories that provide competing
explanations
immediacy • Basic research: increasing knowledge without considering
future applications
• Development: taking an original idea (e.g. from basic
research) and looking for applications
• Commercial: taking an idea from the possibility of
application through to commercial usage
Generating Ideas for Your
Business Project
• Think of a research idea as an interest or a general area of enquiry
that you want to pursue, e.g.:
o a phenomenon
o a problem
o a question to study
o an area of behaviour
o a body of theory, an established framework or a selected concept.
• Write your ideas down as you go along, no matter how silly they
might seem, so that you don’t lose them.
• You may start with a project based on your previous studies or use
business and management research that has already be done and
published in books or academic journals.
• Many interesting ideas come from practical problems that business
and management organisations need to solve in the real world.
• Finally, don’t forget your own personal interests.
 The ‘Idea Cloud’ of
Contemporary Business Issues
• A list including contemporary business issues – the ‘idea
cloud’ – is available on Blackboard as a separate file.
• It covers important, contemporary and pervasive issues in
business and management research and practice.
• Please choose one topic from the list.
• Business & Management, International Business
Management, Business and Management with HRM
students can choose any topic.
• Business & Management with Marketing, Business
Events Management students must choose a Marketing
Topic.
• Business & Management with Accounting and Finance
must choose an Accounting and Finance topic.
• Business & Management with Economics students must
choose an Economics topic.
Selecting Ideas: A Checklist
1. Does the idea meet the project requirements outlined in the Business
Project Module Handbook?
2. Is the scope of this research project manageable?
3. Can we do it with the time and resources available to us?
4. Will our project be successful no matter what we find out?
5. Will our findings and recommendations satisfy all of my project’s
stakeholders?
6. Will we be able to get good marks on the project?
7. Will our project contribute to business and management knowledge?
8. Is it relevant to at least one theoretical problem faced by business
and management researchers?
9. Can we identify a research setting and research sample in which we
could gather data, and can we get access to it?
10. Am I (really and personally) interested in doing it?
Contemporary Business
Issues: Clarifying Ideas

2. Business Issues, Research Problems and

Research Questions
Lecture 1:
Business Issues
• Research starts with a business issue that ‘catches your attention’ -
something that presents a puzzle or is interesting.
• Good ideas for business projects come from many places: the
business and management world, the subjects you have studied in
your course, your own personal interests and the ‘idea cloud’ of
contemporary business issues included in Blackboard.
• A business issue is an interest or a general area of enquiry
that you want to pursue in the next months.
• It is not a research question!
• Once you have chosen the business issue you are interested
in you are required to develop your own specific research
question(s) with your group for your project, in consultation
with your seminar tutor. That means that several groups can focus
on the same business issue but each must specify individual research
questions.
Specifying and Narrowing the
Scope of Your Research

Business issue:
general area of enquiry

Research problem (topic):

practical or theoretical problem

Research question:
specific area of the research problem
Steps in Developing Your Research
Question(s) – An Example

Bryman and Bell (2015), p. 90

Restrictions
• Remember that a research question must end with a
question mark.
• We cannot answer all the research questions that occur to
us.
• We must select from the possible research questions
that we arrive at.
• In making our selection, we follow the principle that the
research questions we choose should be related to one
another.

Bryman and Bell (2015), p. 89

The ‘What, Why, and How’-Framework
for Crafting Research Questions

Bryman and Bell (2015), p. 93

Examples for Specifying the
Scope of Research
  Example 1
(Collis and Hussey, 2014)
Business Employee retention
issue
Research Effect of new career-break
problem scheme in Firm A on the
recruitment and retention of
skilled staff
Research How has the new career-break
question scheme contributed to
employment in Firm A?
Example 2
(Decker, 2016 JSBM in press)
Corporate turnaround
Factors affecting the turnaround
success of SMEs
How do savings banks as
influential stakeholders affect the
turnaround success of SMEs in
Germany?
Contemporary Business
Issues: Clarifying Ideas

3. Practicalities
Your Choice
• Choose a business topic.
o Get inspiration from what interests you and how it might
enhance your employability
o Consider how you will get access to research data (maybe
not necessarily in the UK)
• Read more by searching the literature (just an initial research
that may be unsystematic and exploratory) for relevant
information (more about a systematic literature review later)
• Focus your ideas, decide the scope and set the parameters,
e.g.
o a study of a particular group of employees, type of
business, industry, geographical location, period of time, …
o or using a particular theoretical lens or a novel dataset
• Use techniques for making your choice.
 Brainstorming and Analogy
Brainstorming – creative thinking by Analogy – design a study in one subject by
pooling spontaneous ideas importing ideas and procedures from another
o You need at least one other area where they are similarities
interested person with whom you o An example for adopting procedures
can discuss an issue. from another discipline:
o Jot down all ideas and review each Using historical data and archival
one in more detail later. methods for studying business model
o Ask simple questions: design and change in cultural
̶ What? organisations in Germany from 1979-
2016
̶ When? (Decker-Lange et al., 2017 ongoing study)
̶ Why?
̶ Who?
̶ How?
o These questions help you to narrow
the scope of the issue you are
interested in and identify a specific
aspect that is worth considering for
your business project.
Mind Maps

Collis and Hussey (2014), p. 27

Checklist for Clarifying Ideas
• Is your research question too general for a small, time-limited study?
• Is it more suitable for a doctoral thesis, or even a book?
• Do you have a specific focus for your research?
• Is it possible that your question is more complex than in looks?
• If you are intending to carry out an ‘evaluation’ or to gauge the
‘effectiveness’ of something, is that a realistic goal?
• Is it a question that lends itself to a predetermined structure (even,
perhaps, enabling you to use an existing research instrument or
measuring scale) or does it require exploratory/reflective analysis?
• Does the question fall within the agenda of the course?
• Have you thought about the likely cost to you?
• Might there be any problems of access to your research population?
• Will your project need the agreement of an ethics committee
Summary
• The starting point is to choose a business topic that
interests you and read the literature to identify a
particular research problem and research question(s)
to investigate.
• The project needs to be feasible. This is the purpose
of writing your research proposal.
• This all takes time: Please ensure you build enough in
and engage in the module.
Reading
• Bryman A. and Bell E. (2015) Business Research
Methods. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
o Please read Chapter 4, pp. 80-98.
 and
• Collis, J. and Hussey, R. (2014) Business Research: A
Practical Guide for Undergraduate and Postgraduate
Students. 4th ed. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
o Please read an excerpt of Chapter 2, namely pp.
21-27.