UCD Graduate School of Business

UCDGraduateSchool of Business
Masters of Business Studies Programme

MIS40010/MIS40250:

Research Dissertation/ Research Essay

Semester 3, 2006/2007

Provisional Guidelines

Proposal Guidelines

This document presents a generic guideline for the submission of a research proposal for both theresearch dissertation(MIS40010)and research essay (MIS40250) modules. Since this represents a generic guideline, your supervisors may request additional or less information to enable them to evaluate your work appropriately.

Structure of the Proposal

General guidelines that apply to written submissions still apply for the research proposal. You will need to include a cover page withyour name, studentID number, supervisor’s name, module title/number, date and dissertation/essaytitle for ease of identification. The general preferred formatting guidelines are 12 point Times Roman font, double-spacing and 1 inch (2.5cm) margins. The proposal should not exceed 3,000 words for the dissertation and 2,000 for the essay (inclusive of references).

Title:

The title of the proposal should be a working title for the dissertation/essay.

Introduction:

The introduction gives the background, justification and direction of the research. It should describe thecontext of the problem to be researched and domain in which it occurs. It should include key research questions, including sub-questions, where necessary. It should also includea justification of the need to investigate this topic, e.g. to remedy a “gap” in the literature, to propose a new way of viewing a familiar topic, to provide insights into a previously under-researched area, and so on.

Literature Review/Theory:

This section allows the student to demonstrate what knowledge they may already possess about the topic from previous researchers in the area. It should ideally comprise a synopsis of key articles (e.g. 2 or 3 influential papers) that are relevant to the research problem.

This section should also outline, where possible, a likely theoretical approach that can be used to investigate the problem e.g. based on approaches used previously by other authors in the field or based on suggestions or research orientations of your supervisors and so on.

Research Method (dissertation only):

This section outlines how data will be collected and analysed, whatresearch methodology will be used and provides a justification for that approach, e.g. will an in-depth case study methodology be adopted or would a survey by questionnaire be more appropriate or is it a problem requiring a mathematical modelling solution, and if so, why?

Expected Outcomes (dissertation only):

This section explains how the expected results may provide answers to your research questions.

Proposed Schedule:

This section should be an outline of the timeframe in which the work needed to fulfil the requirement for the dissertation/essay is to be completed. Key events such as creation of interview protocols or questionnaires, timing of field work, literature research, interviews and the write-up period should all be noted. Bear in mind the deadline for submission of dissertations/essays is 31st August.

Resources:

This section outlines the key resources that will be used, e.g. access to an ongoing project, an organisation, an expert with knowledge on the subject, availability of key readings, and so on.

References:

This section is simply a list of references cited in the proposal.

Online resources for research proposals (these sites are in no way related to UCD):