Determination of your standpoint in your dissertation work

When doing dissertation works, sometimes, students just formulate a dissertation topic and a few tasks to perform without clarifying their standpoints  in their dissertation works. The omission to do so makes the dissertation aims and the context of the study vague. For example, you could not just state that your dissertation report is to apply 5-Force model to study the hotel sector in Hong Kong, because it is not clear why you are interested in the topic and who would benefit from reading your dissertation report. This problem of vagueness in formulation of proposal aims and questions could be addressed by clarifying your standpoint as a researcher in the study. For example, you could state that you are interested in the hotel sector because you are working in the hotel sector and that you intend to study the topic so that you could produce some valid and relevant knowledge for certain type of hotels in Hong Kong. You could add that the topic is worth investigating because this type of hotels in Hong Kong has certain problems facing them that you are aware of from reading the newspapers. In other words, you clarify your intellectual interest in the study as well as the targeted readers of your dissertation report. This goes in some way to explain your standpoint in the study. When your standpoint is clear, the dissertation questions, if well formulated, become more appropriate as well as easier for the report supervisor and other assessors to understand. To put it an another way, once you determine your standing position and identify your object of investigation (ie your standpoint), you start to exert effort on focusing with your eyes so as to obtain a sharp image of your observed object.

The main notions and main issues considered when a researcher's standpoint is clarified are described in the following diagram:

To recap, just to state the main tasks you are going to carry out in a dissertation report is not sufficient, even if you have identified the main management theory to use, such as: to conduct a five-force analysis of a certain industry. You need to also clarify your standpoint in your study as a researcher.