When formulating dissertation topics in business study, most students are able to identify a topic area but have difficulties to formulate a specific issue in dissertation proposals. My question is: how to formulate a specific issue so that it can be used to derive corresponding dissertation objectives and questions that are considered as meeting dissertation work requirements?
To start with, students should start with a concern or an issue that catches their attention. Students could of course choose a topic area, such as human resource management or logistics management. But this is not enough. Students need to come up with a concern or an issue; if they cannot think of a concern or issue, they do not have the basic mindset to do dissertation work at all. They can browse through some business journals, academic journals or internet portals to get some stimulation from these sources. Students can also refer to their subjects' textbooks and take a look at the "questions for discussion" sections various chapters of these textbooks.
The issue must be complicated, controversial and must be of concern to specific stakeholders. The issue should be formulated in such a way that it is related to certain management theories and/or concerns being examined in the academic world. If the issue is trivial, it does not require much research effort. Naturally, it is not a good issue to study. Once this view on what kind of issue is worth studying in dissertation work is formed, I can further point out that 5 management notions are highly relevant for formulating the issue in the initial phase of dissertation proposal preparation, namely, (i) the notion of "wicked problem", (ii) the notion of "rich picture" in Checkland's soft systems thinking; (iii) the notion of "a mess" in Ackoff's interactive planning, (iv) the notion of "strategic issue" in strategic management and, finally, (v) the topic of "crisis management" in business study. All these notions in systems thinking and business studies deal with issues that are complicated, controversial and significant. Here I am not suggesting that students should use all these notions at the same time to examine the nature of the issue, though it is a good idea to study these concepts to strengthen our skills in comprehending business problems.
Without going into details, it should be obvious that these 5 notions are also related to specific management approaches and practices that guide us to study these notions, e.g. Checkland's soft systems methodology, cognitive mapping, strategic issue management and crisis management, etc. At this point, students should also conduct preliminary literature review so that their formulation of dissertation issues, objectives and questions can be related to certain management theories other than the 5 notions mentioned. These literatures can be related to supply chain management, human resource management, and organizational learning, etc..
Finally, I suggest that students should read around these topic areas early on so as to make the best preparation to take up dissertation work. I highly encourage students to develop a genuine interest in learning these topic areas via reading these writings as leisure reading. When students are genuinely interested in a topic area, they can easily come up with interesting topics and research questions. Such mode of learning is conducive to effective professional development.
Some dissertation supervisors ask students to adopt academic article cloning in dissertation work, ie to imitate a specific academic article in dissertation proposal formulation. I think this is a feasible approach to do dissertation work but such kind of effort is not about research work. It has very low value in professional skill development. It is also clear that academic article cloning is mainly about efficiently getting a pass in dissertation work. I will not ask my students to do that, and I have no interest to supervise dissertation work of this kind.
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