Description

                      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.