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Course: MSc Human Resource Management
Stage 2 module code: BUSN 8105 HRM Project
Assignment Task
This assignment is a HRM project report. The report will be 8,000-10,000 words and is worth 100% of the final mark for BUSN8105.
Assignment Guidance
Choosing a Topic
When choosing your topic, you should identify one that is in an area that interests you and has a precise organisational focus and clear boundaries. You also need to think about how manageable your project is and ensure that you will be able to access the relevant people and documents to complete it. Your project may involve having to negotiate access into an organisation and you should therefore ensure that the topic is manageable in terms of the time available to gather data. Think about the skills you have or the skills you feel able to develop during the project. For example, some projects lend themselves to quantitative analyses, such as gathering data on productivity; you would therefore need to consider how comfortable you are with statistics before embarking on such a project.
Structure of the Dissertation:a
Title page, author, addressee, date and word count
Acknowledgements (optional)
Contents list
Executive Summary
Introduction and Aim
Critical Literature Review
Hypotheses (quantitative projects only)
Method
Findings/Results
Discussion and conclusions
Recommendations
References
Appendices
Title Page: The title should capture the attention of the reader and should, if possible, generate interest in the importance of, or curiosity about, the content of the report. Good titles tend to be between 1-12 words. The title page should also include your name, submission date, the university name and the title of the qualification (MSc in HRM).
Acknowledgements: This is a polite way of thanking individuals and/or organisations that have assisted you in the writing of your report.
Contents list: You will only be able to put this together when you have completed the report, but it should accurately reflect the structure of the report and allow the reader to find their way around the report easily. It should indicate the page numbers and the main elements of the report. It should also show a list of charts and diagrams (where appropriate).
Executive Summary: Provide an overview of the dissertation in one page.
Introduction: This sets the scene, outlines the problem and tells the reader how you plan to structure your report. It should state the resources you plan to use and where these will be coming from. It is an important part of the paper. As you write the report you should always be checking to make sure that you are adhering to the structure you set out in this introduction. This section may also include the organisational context, including its history, finance and people, and/or information on the business sector. You should link this information to the rationale of your project.
Aim: This is crucial. Get the aim of the report wrong and you will fail. The aim defines the problem/issue that the report is being written for and the rest of the report should be focused on achieving this. You need to think about why you chose the aims, what the problem you are investing is and how it is defined.
Literature Review: The purpose of the literature review is to present an overview of what research has already been done in the area you are exploring in your project. This includes research on the specific issue you are investigating and may also involve reviewing relevant theories and the evidence that supports them. You should also discuss what current good practice is and whether it reflects what has been found in the academic literatureImportantly, the literature review should be a critical evaluation of published material. You will need to think about what research has been done, what has not been done, criticisms of existing literature and any areas that need to be improved. By the end of your literature review you should have identified a key gap in the literature, which is directly linked to the rationale of your project. Primarily, information for the literature review should be sourced from academic journal articles and books, but can also include information from government reports professional publications, newspapers and the internet. Try to ensure you read widely, do not rely on a handful of texts. This should be a thorough review of the existing literature related to your topic.
Method: This section is used to explain to the reader how you conducted the research. You need to discuss why you chose the method you did and consider alternative approaches and methods. You should also identify any potential ethical concerns or practical concerns. If you based your study solely on secondary data, you should use this section to justify this choice of approach and demonstrate awareness of the limitations of relying on data collected by others.
An example structure of the methods section could be:
Participants: This section should include information about the organisation, and/or the people who participated in your research. For example, you should provide a summary of the average age, gender, level of education, type of work.
Procedure: You should use this section to summarise the process you went through to obtain data.
Measures: This section needs to detail the measures you may have used. This could include information about established questionnaires and/or how you worded questions to obtain organisational information.
Analyses: Whether you use qualitative or quantitative analyses, you will need to include informatoin about what techniques you used, what were the alternatives and why your choice was the most appropriate.
Findings/Results: In this section, you should present the results of any analyses, whether this is quantitative data analyses or qualitative findings. Carefully decide what information you want to use to support your arguments. Think about where this sits – the main body or in the Appendices. If you are going to use data then make sure you refer to it. Too many tables and charts in reports either have no bearing on the report itself or are never referred to. Make sure all tables and figures are given titles and are numbered.
Discussion: This is the section where you draw together the whole project. You should start the discussion by reminding the reader what the topic of the project is and why it is important. It should then move on to summarising your findings in non-technical language and how they link to the original aims. You should then discuss how they relate to the existing research, did they support any theories? Were the same/different to findings from similar research studies? And what are the practical implicatoins of this? You should also consider the limitations of your research and how these could be overcome. You may also want to provide the reader with your suggestions for future research or how your research could be extended.
Conclusion: If you get the structure right then the conclusions will naturally fall out of the work you have done so far. This pulls the report together. Don’t introduce new material into this section and make sure that it does reflect what you have been saying so far. Be careful of writing conclusions that do not reflect the main body of the report!
Recommendations: In most cases your report will be based upon a business problem and you cannot complete the report without making recommendations. This is a key part of the report and many busy executives will look at the executive summary, conclusions and recommendations only. Again, these need to stem from what you are saying. Don’t make a recommendation that would come as a complete surprise to the reader. Make sure that your recommendations are also realistic! The recommendations should include the cosƟ ngs or a discussion of the issues of implementing your recommendations.
Appendices: These give you the opportunity to provide more detailed information for a reader if they wish to access it. If you undertake questionnaires or surveys (primary data) you may wish to put a copy of the questoinnaire in the Appendix. Clearly the analysis of the data will be in the main body! If you are looking at financial data, (secondary data) the accounts may be in the Appendix, but you would extract what you need for your arguments and place this in the main body. If you are placing material in the Appendices, remember to draw the readers’ attention to it.
References: This is where you record all the sources of data you have used. It is not difficult but is often done badly. Remember Kent Business School uses the Harvard referencing system and you should review your notes from the research methods classes if you have forgotten. In addition to the References section, ensure that you reference correctly in the report itself. You will be penalised if you do not use this system!
Word Limit
Word limit guidance was already suggested in module BUSN9201 Research Methods and Consultancy Skills as per the below slide:
Deadline for the Dissertation:
The deadline for submiƫ ng your dissertation is 16th August, 2023 12 o’clock!
The BUSN 8105 moodle page will be created for submiƫ ng your dissertation. You will be rolled onto this Moodle page in the summer, after your Stage 1 results are confirmed by the Board of Examiners.
Working with your supervisor
• Your supervisor will provide you with 8 hours of supervision. This includes 2 hours to mark the final project and one draft, with 6 hours for all email and video communication and providing feedback for your BUSN9201 coursework.
• You carry the responsibility for the identification of the topic, conduct of the reports their preparation and submission. The role of the supervisor is limited to that of providing guidance, on the process by which you address these. In particular, the supervisor is not responsible for the "quality" of the final submission; that responsibility is yours.
• It is your responsibility to plan your work schedule for the reports.
• It is your responsibility to arrange meetings with your supervisor.
• Since supervisors have many other calls on their time, it is important to organise meetings well in advance and to negotiate a time that is convenient to the supervisor. Some of you will be doing these by distance and relying on e-mail communication. This is fine, but do not expect instant responses. Your supervisor will let you know their schedule and when they can be contacted. You must stick to the schedule and attend all scheduled supervisory meetings. Primarily, please make sure you begin early and discuss feasibility of the project with your supervisor. In doing so you may wish to plan out your project and the tasks that need to be completed well in advance, and make sure you can collect the data that you need to collect, rather than assuming it can be collected.
• Students should arrange to meet/correspond with their Supervisor at least twice in the summer term to ensure that their reports are on schedule for completion by the hand in date. When you meet with your supervisor you should come prepared with specific questions to ask.
• Supervision will end 31st of July.
How Dissertations Are Assessed:
Each dissertation is assessed by two internal examiners (one of whom is your supervisor). They will provide feedback and will agree on the final mark after assessing the dissertation separately. The joint decision of the examiners will then be communicated to the Board of Examiners which takes place in October and to the student. The examiners will make a recommendation about whether the dissertation is of pass, merit or distinctoin standard. If they are not satisfied with the dissertation, they may fail it, generally with the opportunity to revise and resubmit the dissertatoin on one further occasion (this would be then at a ‘capped’ mark unless there is approved mitigating evidence). The pass mark for the MSc dissertation is 50. Similarly, the minimum mark for a merit is 60 and for a distniction is 70. A sample of dissertations will be sent to external examiners (senior academics from other UK University).