DISSERTATION REQUIREMENTS
Please note the Graduate Business School
reserves the right:
• Not to grant an extension due to
technology and/or computer systems that crash
• Not to grant an extension if you have
failed to maintain regular contact with your supervisor without good reason,
which must be evidenced by a medical certificate or any other satisfactory
documentation
• Not to grant an award if you fail to
submit your dissertation
Storage of Records
All documents, records and files relating
to your research must be retained by the student from the start of the RM
module until the formal notification of the awarding of the master’s degree.
This includes all hard and soft copies of notes, drafts, copied articles, data
collected, analysis, statistical files, correspondence, memos, supervisor
meeting notes, etc. It is suggested that you keep these in some logical order.
It is possible that you will be required to submit for review all of this
documentation at some stage during the process or after submission of the
dissertation, or by the external examiner at exam board time. Material in soft
copy must be submitted via a link to a Cloud storage facility. It is advisable to
backup all files on a regular basis during the research as “lost computer
files” is not an accepted excuse for missing working papers. Failure to
produce working papers when requested by the College constitutes academic
misconduct. If it is not possible to establish, by inspection of the
working papers, the sources of material in the dissertation, the award of the
degree will be delayed until the matter is resolved. Working papers include the
following:
§ Handwritten notes (e.g. research diary or notebook)
§ Photocopies of articles, book chapters, other documentation; copies
of web pages or electronic documents, white papers, etc.
§ All correspondence (letters, emails) with companies and individuals
including your supervisor
§ Drafts
of chapters
§ Earlier
drafts of questionnaires
§
Completed pilot questionnaires all completed final questionnaires, etc.
§ Links to
online questionnaires, etc.
§ Audio tapes of interviews, if used, and their transcriptions
§ Analyses of data and other calculations.
Research timetable
The
following is an example of a timetable of work. This outlines the critical
stages of the research, data analysis and writing-up process and aims to
complete the required work within the timeframe of approximately 12-15 weeks.
Structure
of the Dissertation
This section provides a structure (chapter
outline) for a typical dissertation and also reflects the research activity
that results in the production of each stage (or chapter) of the dissertation.
The following is a useful model and
indicator of word count for each section:
• Introduction
and Objectives - typically less than 1,500 words
• Critical
literature review – approximately 5,000 words
• Conceptual
Framework – typically part of the literature it may be somewhere between 500-1,000
words
• Research
Methodology and Methods – approximately 2,000 – 2,500 words
• Presentation
and Analysis of Findings – approximately 5,000 words
• Conclusions
and Recommendations - typically somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 words
This is a guide on how to manage your
writing. Usually dissertations vary in word count from 15,000-18,000 words. It
is good writing practice to be clear and concise. This should help you to keep
your writing within the word count.
Before providing an outline of the content
of each chapter and stage of the dissertation, it is worth providing a note on
the writing style to be used in the dissertation.
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