THE RESEARCH PROPOSAL

The dissertation is the most substantive piece of work that you will undertake during your
studies at the Management Centre. It will allow you to apply and evaluate the theories and
concepts covered during your course and provide an opportunity to demonstrate project
management skills. The first stage is the preparation of a Research Proposal. This will be
handed in to the Management Centre Full Time Office on or before Friday 24th March
2006. Please remember to attach an AGC form to the Research Proposal. The Research
Proposal will be graded pass or fail. Students will be required to pass this part of the
course before they are allowed to progress with the dissertation.

Pro-Forma Structure of the Research Proposal

The Research Proposal will be prepared in conjunction with attending classes on the
Research Methodology module taught by Michèle Bowring. On completion of this
module students will be equipped to prepare a Research Proposal of approximately 2 000
words, which should include all of the elements indicated in the following Pro-Forma
structure. Further guidance will be given during the Research Methodology module.
Please note that the Proposal needs to be fully referenced throughout and that details of all
sources used in-text should also be given in a references list at the end (NB this does not
count towards your word limit). It is not considered appropriate to rely solely or heavily on
Internet sources

1. Name of Student:

2. What is the title of your dissertation? This should outline the main 15 words
research topic that you are interested in, in a straightforward way and, if
possible, with style. You may want to use a title and a subtitle, separated by
a colon – eg ‘Work-family conflict in the UK: the experience of male
workers’. Please note that titles such as `The World Trade Organization and
China’ or `The World Trade Organization and the UK’ are far too unfocused
as they don’t specify what it is that will be studied.

3. What are your research questions? Here you need to specify the main 100 words
question/s that you want to ask or issue/s that you want to address in your
research – in the example given above, the key question would be to assess
to what extent work-family conflict poses a problem for men in the UK.
Ideally you should specify an overarching research question and then break
it down into sub-questions/objectives to be addressed.

4. Rationale for the research (you need to cover all three sections)
a) Why do you personally want to do this research? This might be because it 150 words
will assist you in your chosen career, or because past experience suggests that
this is an important issue, for example.
b) Why do you think it is important to do this research now? What is its 150 words
contemporary relevance? This is the point at which you would identify, for
example, its usefulness to managers, the potential that it has to address
specific organizational problems or improve particular organizational
processes or procedures.
c) How does your research relate to existing literature on the topic area? Here 400 words
you need to locate your research in the existing literature (e.g., on work-
family conflict) by referring to work that has already been done on the
subject – i.e., presenting a short literature review. You should also identify
the ways in which your research makes a contribution – that is, does something
which has not been done before or adds to what is already available (e.g., by
exploring work-family conflict in relation to men, as opposed to focusing on
women).

4. The methodology you plan to adopt with regard to this research and why. 750 words
Here you need to tell us which method or methods you have chosen (e.g.,
self-administered questionnaire/ structured interview/ semi- or unstructured
interview/ observation – and will the observation be participant or non-
participant? structured or unstructured? covert or overt?/ secondary data
from sources such as government surveys, organizations’ personnel records,
annual reports, newspaper articles or academic research) and why. If you
intend to gather primary data, you also need to discuss your sample (i.e.,
who you plan to gather data from, how many and how you will select these
people) and why you have made these choices; and, if you are using
questionnaires or interviews, you should indicate your channel – e.g., postal/
fax/ online/ distribution and collection by hand for questionnaires or face to
face/ phone for interviews – and, once again, why you have made this
choice. This section of the proposal should also reflect on the ontological
and epistemological assumptions underpinning your methodology.

5. Details of any resources that you will need to do the research. These might 100 words
include money for photocopying and postage for a postal questionnaire, to
buy a tape recorder or dictaphone to record interviews, to pay any associated
travel costs or to purchase software for data analysis. Specify how much you
need and for what. Please also remember that there is no departmental
budget to support MBA students’ research: you must fund your research
yourself so it is important to be realistic about what you can afford to spend,
if anything.

5. Plan - this should show roughly when each element of the research will be 100 words
carried out. List dates against major steps or milestones, either in bullet points
or diagrammatic format. Make sure you include commitments such as holidays
and allow enough time for your supervisor to approve your research proposal
and to read your draft.

6. What problems might you encounter and what are the possible solutions? 250 words
For example, you may get a low response rate to a postal or online
questionnaire or experience difficulties in gaining access to the organization/s
you want to study, the literature that you need might not be available in the
library, you may want to investigate controversial or sensitive areas like ethics
in auditing or workplace bullying, there may be translation problems if you are
using literature or gathering data from a country where English is not the first
language. Ways in which you might resolve these problems include reminder
letters to increase questionnaire response rate or using what is known as
‘back translation’ where there are language difficulties.