Business Research Project

Business Research Project

This assessment item seeks to ensure that all students enrolled in the Capstone Unit – Business Research Project – are competent at sourcing relevant and current literature using academic search portals, such as Pro-Quest, and other places where high quality secondary data resides.

Furthermore, this assessment requires students to not only read and summarise what other authors have already established, but also to become skilful at weaving together complementary or contrasting arguments relevant to their approved topic, research problem, and research question(s).

Relates to Unit Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 3 and 5

Purpose:

Assignment 2 Specifications

This unit aims to give you an opportunity to combine many facets of your acquired MBA skills into the production of a high-quality research project.

Assignment 2 - the Literature Review - is designed to ensure that each team member masters the skills of searching, locating, reading, summarising, and using relevant academic literature and secondary data to create a compelling discussion and/or argument, thereby creating the context for their further research in pursuit of the answer to their research question(s).

Your tutor will LEAD and FACILITATE you through the process, week by week. The learning will be progressive, so for best results you will need to be listening to the weekly recorded lectures as well as participating in the interactive tutorials and discussion board.

Assignment Structure should be the following:

1.    An opening statement of the Research Problem and research Question(s) – these should now be more detailed than what you had in your Topic Approval.

2.    Discussion of major theories, models or streams of influence around this topic. This provides your lecturer with evidence that you have gone deeper than your initial search now to find literature that leads you toward answering your research question

3.    Draw the reader’s attention to any contrasting views expressed in prior research in this area and give your view of how differing opinions can be brought together to help answer the research question and ultimately resolve the research problem. [the more comprehensive your literature review, the better. Whatever you do NOT find out in this literature review will leave you with more work to do when you move to the next part of the project, i.e. methodology]

4.    Report how it has brought you closer to an answer to your research question(s).

5.    Ensure all in text citations are correctly referenced.

6    Add a comprehensive List of References, in Harvard referencing style. [Students please be warned that errors in referencing attract suspicion of plagiarism/academic misconduct and may require detailed investigation, prompting a request for further information from you regarding your sources. It is always essential that academic integrity is upheld and any breach thereof may lead to a mark of ZERO and a report of academic misconduct. Don’t take a chance!]

7.    Append a statement indicating ‘who wrote which sections of this report’