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PhD in Business Management Assignment Brief

RES606B Research Design & Planning

This assignment brief constitutes part of a programme of work for preparing for your proposal defence and thesis research.

Purpose:

The purpose of this programme of work is twofold. Firstly, it is intended to help you to prepare for your thesis proposal defence, and secondly, it will form part of your final thesis. It is essential to communicate frequently with your DoS to complete this work. You need to meet with your DoS throughout the academic year. Sometimes, you will require regular meetings and you should arrange these to occur consistent with your study schedule.

The programme of work:

The work that you do for these assessment tasks should be directly relevant and actually contribute to parts of the text of your written PhD thesis. Consequently, it is essential that you develop a rigorous and comprehensive understanding of the theoretical background of your research field. In preparation for the proposal defence, all doctoral students are required to develop their research at least up to the point of data collection. These assessment tasks are designed to assist you with compiling your research proposal for the proposal defence.

Assignment 1:

Your poster must include the following items:

1. Proposed thesis title

2. Research context

3. Research problem

4. Research gap

5. Research questions

6. Research objectives

7. Tentative research design.

This component of assessment is weighted 10%. Please ensure that you obtain feedback on drafts of your poster presentation from your Director of Studies (DoS), module lecturers and student peers.

Your presentation should be a minimum of seven slides (no maximum number).

Assignment 2:

2.1 Developing the theoretical background. Minimum 6,000 - maximum 10,000 words (excluding appendices).

How is my proposed research based on the existing literature?

You are expected to provide a systematic review of the important literature published on your research topic. The objective is to review the literature that contributes to an understanding of the research problem you are investigating. According to Hart (1998), the literature review plays a vital role in guiding your research to answer the questions shown in the Figure below:

Accordingly, it isrecommended that you use the followings key pointers as a guide to develop the theoretical background of your research.

• Report on what has been done in your research topic. This is to demonstrate familiarity with the past and state-of-the-art developments in your research topic

• Review the research problems recommended for further investigation

• Identify existing gaps or discrepancies in knowledge on the proposed research topic

• Find out what needs to done in your research topic

• Establish the context of your research problem

• Clarify the structure of your research subject

• Develop the argument and supporting evidence for your research problem

• Find concepts and constructs relevant to your research topic

• Discover conceptual frameworks that might exist in the field of your study

• Explain the relationship between earlier studies and your proposed research

• Determine the rationale for the significance of your research problem

• Developing new lines of inquiry, i.e., the potential contribution of the research

To explore the above key pointers, you are required to carry out a systematic review of the literature. Your literature review must demonstrate knowledge of relevant literature and present a critical assessment with up-to-date references in relation to all of the key pointers mentioned above. This means that you should be selecting those authors who present theoretical foundations for your topic and, for empirical studies, the foundational theory from which these are designed.

You need to be able to identify which disciplinary sources are being used - business & management, international business, social sciences, economics, psychology, sociology, etc., and the particular schools of thought within those disciplines that are involved in the academic debates.

At the end of the literature review, you are expected to provide the following:

1. Issues learnt from the literature review

2. Line of argument developed out of the literature review

3. Research gaps

4. State how your research adds to knowledge about the existing and important research work in your field of investigation

5. Research questions

6. Research conceptual frameworks (if applicable)

7. Methods, tools and techniques for conducting the research for your PhD thesis

You must discuss and agree with your DOS, the structure and content of your literature review chapter(s).

Output

The output from the extensive systematic literature review should form 1-2 chapters of your thesis (the number of chapters will depend on your research topic, so please discuss this issue with your Director of Studies).

2.2 Developing the research agenda (Minimum 2,000 - Maximum 5,000 words)

You must use the outcome of your systematic review of the literature to consolidate and develop the following:

• Research problem statement

• Research questions

• Research aims and objectives

• Research hypotheses

• Research novelty and contribution

The work done in this section is expected to form the first chapter in your thesis. Thus, it imperative to clearly state the research questions, aims, objectives and hypotheses that your study will address. You should use the outcome of the literature review to support the rationale for these important aspects of your research. Up-to-date academic references must be used to support your case. You must work closely your DoS to refine and approve these important elements of your research.

Assignment 3:

3.1 Research conceptual framework (up to 5,000 words)

A conceptual framework is defined by Miles and Huberman (1994) as: "explains either graphically, or in narrative form, the main things to be studied - the key factors, concepts or variables .... and the presumed relationship among them".

Not all research projects necessarily lead to a conceptual framework. If you have already carried out the literature review to the standards required at the PhD level, you will have already a deep understanding of the research issues and concepts associated with your research project.

Research planning requires a good understanding of how the research concepts being investigated are linked. Also, you must be able to explain the relationships between the concepts associated with your investigation. Probably, you are already aware that you need to
follow logical research processes to generate the necessary information to support your investigation.

The literature review assists you to develop your topic knowledge on what to do. The frameworks help you to explain the why and how aspects of your research. It is also a very important tool to use to filter research questions, variables and methodologies. To do so, you
need to clearly understand how the elements of your research are mapped together on a sound theoretical scientific base. Thus, the necessity of a research framework to guide the direction of your thesis study.

Creating your research conceptual framework:

Essentially, the framework provides you with the structure and content for the investigation based on the literature and to certain extent in-depth knowledge of a student and his DOS. Developing research conceptual frameworks is an iterative process. The concepts and variables incorporated in the framework should be derived from the literature.

These should capture the underlying principles of the theories you want to investigate. The background studies (carried out in part one of this assignment) should help you to understanding the theories that describe relationships between your conceptual framework variables of interest. To create your research framework, you need consider:

• The research background to define concepts and their relationship. You also need to investigate how past researchers have framed similar research problems;

• Identify the key elements (e.g., independent and dependent variables) of your research;

• Represent the framework in the form of flow charts, mind maps, tree diagrams, mathematical equations, etc;

• Scientifically explain the association between the elements of your framework

If the framework is developed based on a solid background this help you to define and refine your thesis objectives, research questions, propositions, hypotheses and the methodology you need to deploy to investigate them.

Output:

This will depend on the nature of your investigation. It is most likely that you will end up with a chapter documenting the relationships and links between the key elements of your research.

This will help to define your research instruments, which are the next logical step in the development of your research study.

You must work closely your DoS and academics in your field of research to identify, develop, review and refine your research framework.

3.2 Research methodology (up to 5,000 words)

You need to justify the validity and robustness of the scientific methods you are planning to deploy to achieve your research aims and objectives. Precisely how you will approach this issue will depend on your selected research problem (and also the field of research) that you are investigating. Thus, you need to discuss with your DOS the range of possible methodologies.

Broadly speaking, in this section you must justify the scientific and philosophical theories that underpin the process and methods you are planning to choose to collect and analyse/model data to answer your research questions.

For example: are you using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods? Is the research theoretical or empirical? Does it develop new theory or find new applications of existing theory?

Output:

The output from this exercise will form the bulk of your methodology chapter in your thesis What research tradition are you going to be working in; and remember, you may be drawing on more than one field of research. You need to consider all the relevant intellectual traditions, theories, and types of analysis for your research.

You may use the following to help you to justify your research approach.

• Investigating an issue or problem?

• Applying a theory/theories or model/models?

• Developing simulation models

• Testing a specific hypothesis?

• Investigating a policy formation, methodology, approach or its implementation?

• Gathering existing research to revise, modify, or expand an existing theory or model?

• What relevant research methods exist to choose from?

• Why have you chosen the one you have?

• Why are the others not appropriate?

The answer to the above list of inquiries in conjunction with the literature review from Term 1 will help you to develop strategies for designing and implementing your research. This is the most important of part of your research methodology chapter. You need to assure the
examiners that the methods and tools you used to deploy you study, analyse and interpret your results are valid and reliable.

Ethical Considerations

You should demonstrate an awareness of the ethical and micro-political implications of working as a researcher and discuss how your own values and perspectives may influence your research approach and design. Use the ethics guidelines material from the core textbooks provided in RM1. Include in an Appendix the relevant ethical approval documents, e.g. letter of verification that the study has been submitted to the University's Institutional Review Board/Ethics Committee for review regarding research with human subjects.

Limitations

• What are the boundaries of your research project?

• What topics are you not researching?

• What aspects are you not covering?

• What subject groups are you not including?

• What locations or sites are you not investigating?

• What contextual factors are you not covering?

• What causal factors are you not including?

• What time period(s) are you not covering?