756N1 Research Project

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Research Project (Management) (756N1)

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 a traditional dissertation or do a more structured project. Traditional dissertations require that students formulate a research question(s) and plan their research design individually, following guidelines from their supervisor.

Students whose performance in the first term has been lower than 60% will 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 all the questions below:

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):

• 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.

• 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

• 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).

• 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.

Learning Outcomes

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

Knights, D. & Willmott, H. (2012) Introducing organizational behaviour and management (ed), 2nd edition, Cengage Learning EMEA.

Linstead, S. Fulop, L. & Lilley, S. (2009) Management & Organization A Critical Text, 2nd edition, Palgrave Macmillan

Burker, W. (2014) Organization change: theory and practice, 4th edition. SAGE.

Demers, C. (2007) Organisational Change theories: a synthesis, SAGE

Module Delivery: a User’s Guide

1. This is an individual research-based assignment that relies heavily on independent research.

2. You will identify the case study or your research question individually and also in collaboration with your supervisor, if and when needed.

3. You are responsible for initiating contact with your supervisor. You are expected to do so early in the summer term. The supervisor will provide advice and guidance throughout your research project through emails and online meetings, given Covid-19 social distancing restrictions. Please be advised that your research project takes place during the summer term, when most faculty staff are on annual leave or on conferences. Meetings will thus need to be arranged on mutually agreed days, times and modes.

4. You will be receiving helpful feedback on the basis of which you are expected to revise and improve your work. Please note that your supervisor will also be marking your project. Feedback on dissertation drafts a few days before submission is discouraged.