Research Project (Management) (756N1)

Assessment Dissertation 8,500 words

The Research Project module provides an opportunity for students to undertake a significant independent piece of research, drawing upon the knowledge and skills that have been learned during the taught components of the course. Students will apply concepts, theories and research techniques, draw on internationally published literature, and develop and interpret knowledge about management theory and practice. Students undertaking this module will write a dissertation of 8,500 words (plus/minus 10%) in length. Each project will be supervised by a member of academic staff.

Students whose performance in the first term has been 60% and higher will have the choice to either undertake an unstructured research project (dissertation) or do a structured project. In unstructured project students will need to formulate a research question and plan their research individually following guidelines from their supervisor.

Students whose performance in the first term has been less than 60% are requested to do a structured project, information about which is presented in the following section.

Overview of the Structured Research Project

Choose a private, public or non-profit organisation located anywhere in the world in order to analyse and discuss the management of organisational change. You are free to select an organisation of your choice drawing upon case studies in the literature and articles in the press, which indicate a significant organisational change has happened.

In your research project you should draw upon secondary information but you may also gather primary data (subject to supervisor's approval). Please note that prior to the collection of primary data you should submit a research ethics application, information about which will be provided to you in due course.

The research project should make use of relevant bibliography (suggested bibliography is provided below for reference) and it should cover the following matters:

1. What were the reasons that led to organisational change and what was the purpose of change?

2. Who were the involved stakeholders and what role did each of them play in the process of change?

3. Describe, using relevant theory and/or framework, the process of change that occurred in the organization you've chosen.

4. Describe how the changing organisational context has influenced the changes that have been undertaken

5. How would you evaluate the outcome of change?

Your project should also analyse and discuss in more depth two issues from the following list:

I. Discuss the role that leadership played in this organisational change

II. Analyse the challenges of changing organizational culture

III. Describe the role that Information Technology played in organisational change

IV. Discuss the role of innovation (in products and/or services) in the changes that have been observed

V. Analyse the politics that occurred in the process of change and report instances of resistance to change

VI. Report on what were the lessons that we can learn from the reported organizational change

Research projects should be structured in the following way (please note that the word limit is an approximation only; you may go above or below this limit):

• Abstract (300 words)
• Introduction (600)
• Literature Review (2000)
• You are expected to review literature on organisational change (theories, frameworks etc.) in broader terms but also more specifically in relation to aspects such as leadership, information technology, innovation, culture etc. depending on the issues (as described above) you choose to discuss.
• Research Methodology (1000)
• You are expected to provide a description of the methods you used to gather information, the ways in which you analysed it, justification of the methodology you followed and reflection on the limitations of the project drawing upon relevant literature
• Case study (2500)
• You are expected to provide information about the company (background and profile) and to describe its organisational change responding to the five points mentioned above. You should also be mentioning here but not covering thoroughly the two issues (out of the six mentioned above) you will be discussing in the following section (for signposting).
• Discussion (1500)
• You should discuss and analyse in depth two issues of the organisational change your selected organisations has gone through using relevant literature. Ideally, the review of the literature should be discussed in line with your case study.
• Conclusions (600)
• References (not included in the word limit)
• Appendices (optional)

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course a successful student should be able to:

1. Develop and devise a suitable topic for a research project in the field of management and demonstrate a systemic and critical understanding of the relevant theory

2. Appraise, reflect, interpret and synthesise the relevant theory and previous empirical studies to inform own research

3. Critically evaluate methodological approaches in previous studies and develop an appropriate methodological design to meet the specified aim and objectives of the research project

4. Appraise, reflect, interpret and synthesise the evidence gathered

5. Demonstrate the ability to plan, execute, analyse and synthesise autonomously and think independently