The two versions of contextualization in MBA dissertation projects

The two versions on the notion of contextualization in consulting and academic types of MBA dissertation projects:

Version 1 of contextualization: In the consulting oriented type of dissertation project, contextualization is about depicting a set of  related management-concerns items (in the management-concerns diagram), which serves as the heeded real-world problem context to better comprehend the research objectives (in the theoretical framework level-0). In turn, such research objectives explicitly respond to the management-concerns as recognized in the management-concerns diagram. [note: I recommend the usage of the agile literature review approach to investigate the consulting type of research project).

Version 2 of contextualization: In the academic oriented type of dissertation project, contextualization is about how the academic ideas of your choice as related to your research objectives represent an intellectual response to other relevant academic ideas as identified in your literature review and associated research gap analysis. Such intellectual response more often not is original [non-overlapping with others' existing ideas] in nature (thus having good academic value). Your academic ideas could be supportive to or against others' academic ideas in the academic literature, which clarifies the context of your academic dissertation work.

Reference: two types of MBA dissertation projects.

A note on research objectives in the agile literature review approach

 A note on research objectives in the agile literature review approach (ALRA):

1. Research objectives (items as statements) are derived from management concerns (items as statements). For example: 

The management concerns item of : Worried about human resource development capability of ABC Ltd can be transformed into the theoretical framework item (i.e. a high-level research objective) of: To evaluate the human resource development capability of ABC Ltd.

2. The research objectives as derived from the management-concerns diagram now form the diagram of theoretical framework level-0.

3. Specifically, the theoretical framework level-0 comprises a set of related research objectives. These research objectives, in the context of theoretical framework level-0, are also called items in the framework diagram. They are also called the high-level research tasks. 

4. The theoretical framework level-0, comprising a set of related research objectives, serves as an agenda to do literature review. The researcher uses the key words in the diagram items to do literature search. The academic ideas so gathered into the diagram of theoretical framework level-0 produces theoretical framework level 1a.

5. Make sure that your literature review of the academic ideas in theoretical framework level 1a has been done both vertically and horizontally.

** A related reading is on the desirable features of research objectives in ALRA.

How to deal with a confusing dissertation proposal: a note

How to deal with a confusing MBA dissertation proposal: a note

Simplified mode vs systemic mode

What I learn from my MBA students is that, oftentime, when a dissertation proposal is considered confusing (notably viewed as too complicated), a common advice [from the dissertation supervisor] is to simplify the proposal, for example by mainly focused on studying a proposed solution, e.g. develop a more effective marketing strategy]. This represents the simplified mode to conduct research investigation, i.e. reduce research investigation confusion by simplifying the perceived problem definition(s), the respective research project scope and the intellectual response to the problem(s) to be addressed.

This can be an unhelpful way to formulate a dissertation proposal, as it can easily lead to more significant blind spots to investigate a  set of related major business concerns of an organization under review. Solving a complex business problem with a highly simplified intellectual response does not offer an effective way to study the chosen business problem(s). It is ineffective with reference to the Law of Requisite Variety. [On the other hand, solving a few simple problem problems do not adequately meet the academic requirements of the MBA programme].

In lieu of simplifying business problems to tackle, I recommend the following 7 guidelines based on the agile literature review approach (ALRA)  to study the MBA dissertation projects. This represents the systemic mode to conduct research investigation:

Guideline 1. To develop a complicated and holistic understanding of business problems to address

Guideline 2. To develop a complicated and holistic contextualization of the business problems to address

Guideline 3. To adopt core-focus in research investigation while endorsing holistic thinking.

Guideline 4. To adopt management-concerns research investigation

Guideline 5. To conduct research investigation in an agile way

Guideline 6. To endorse critical systems thinking in research investigation

Guideline 7. To study a set of related business concerns with the MBA programme design spirit.

The systemic mode represents an intellectually competent way to cope with the messiness (i.e. confusing nature) of the dissertation projects.

The recommendation made here is to reject the simplified mode and adopt systemic mode to conduct research investigation in MBA dissertation project works.

How does the synopsis document content draw on the agile literature review approach diagrams: a note

How does the synopsis document content draw on the agile literature review approach diagrams: a note

(re: the synopsis sample).

Project Title: 

An investigation of the innovation and managerial leadership capabilities [derived from the items of the core-focus-domain of the theoretical framework level 0] of the Wong Tai Sin (WTS) Branch of the Lion Bank: a mixed methods research

Project synopsis: 

The dissertation project studies the Wong Tai Sin (WTS) branch of the Lion Bank (Hong Kong). It offers retail banking services to the WTS residents. The Lion Bank is a subsidiary bank of the CG Bank Group. The Wong Tai Sin branch management is concerned about the weak innovation and managerial leadership capabilities which affects its ability to compete in the district of Wong Tai Sin [information comes from the management-concerns diagram, notably on the core-focus-domain items]. These management concerns are of practical significance to this student, who is the deputy branch manager of the Wong Tai Sin Branch [note: it is important to state your relationship to the client system under review].

The research objectives are: [objective 1] to evaluate the innovation capability of the WTS branch of the Lion Bank and [objective 2] to evaluate the managerial leadership competence of the WTS branch. For objective 1, this student will use the Excellent model of Richard Li (2010) and the Perfect model of Victor Li (2009), among others. For objective 2, the Power model of Michael Jackson (2004) and Forceful model of Michael Jordan (2003) will be employed, among others [research objectives + academic ideas: from the theoretical framework level 1a]. It is intended that the study will inform the WTS branch to strengthen its innovation and managerial leadership competence by achieving the two research objectives.

As to research methods, for objective 1, the main primary research methods to use are interview with the WTS branch staff and questionnaire survey with the branch customers; for objective 2, the main primary research methods to employ are: semi-structured interview with the WTS branch staff and participant observation in the WTS branch [research objectives + research methods: based on theoretical framework level 1c]. The overall research strategy is mixed methods research. 

References

XXXXX

YYYYY

ZZZZZZ

Note that at the synopsis stage (and the proposal stage), all the ALRA diagrams are preliminary and incomplete, except the management-concerns diagram, which should be largely fully developed early on; all the diagrams could be further refined in due course in the agile development spirit. The management-concerns diagram is important for the project work, because the other theoretical framework diagrams, the first one being theoretical framework level-0, are derived from it.

Finally, it is important to determine your unit of analysis at the very beginning of your project proposal formulation. Your unit of analysis can be at the industry level, organizational level or at the departmental/ team/ organizational functional level. It is relatively uncommon to do your MBA dissertation project at the individual level, e.g. to study the CEO of a specific company.

Some clarification about literature review with reference to theoretical framework levels 0 and 1a

Some clarification about literature review with reference to theoretical framework levels 0 and 1a: queries and answers

Query 1: "... confused about the definition of academic idea. SWOT, PEST , Sales Funnel, 7Ps of Marketing, psychological consumer behaviours are they academic idea?"

Answer: Yes, they are academic ideas; more specifically, analytical ideas or management theories. The video on "scientific claims" is a useful study material in this regard.

Query 2: ".... [academic ideas] must have some key words like model or theories ?"

Answer: Yes, all the academic ideas must clearly labelled in theoretical framework level 1a: e.g. the 5-Force Model of Porter (year), the open innovation model of XXX (year). The labels of them use harvard referencing (surname, year).  Note: do not use academic article titles or textbook titles to label an academic idea. For example, "Transformational Transparency in Supply Chains" of Searcy et al (2022) is not right; because this is an article title; the article does have a model called "a model of transformational transparency". The article info is : "Transformational Transparency in Supply Chains: Leveraging Technology to Drive Radical Change" California Management Review 2022, Vol. 65(1) 19–43, by Cory Searcy, Pavel Castka, Jakki Mohr, and Sönke Fischer.

Query 3: "What is the complexity of the above terms if they are academic idea?"

Answer: The classification exercise on idea complexity is a bit judgmental; while no strict model answer, you could consider the following guideline: 

(i) More element, more linkages between elements of the model, thus more complex [the 5-Force model has 5 elements (forces)];

(ii) More complex elements in the model means the overall model is more complex [Each of the five forces of Porter's model has ingredient conceptual elements; each element is relative complex too explain].

(iii) More steps involved in the model (academic ideas) in analysis means the model (e.g. core competence theory of XXX and XXX (year) is more complex, while the Systemic PEST analysis model of Ho (year) is much simpler.

Query 4: "What is the complexity of the above terms [e.g. PEST analysis and SWOT analysis] if they are academic idea?"

Answer: If the complexity scale is from 1 to 5, then they belong to complexity level 2 (they are mainly Diploma level ideas).

Query 5: "could these academic ideas extracted from newspaper, article or journals , or all are also acceptable?"

Answer: Best choice is from refereed academic journals; second best choice is from textbooks; third best choice is from professional magazines, notably Harvard Business Review; last option is from newspapers, e.g. an article from Wall Street Journal written by a famous university professor about {covering} a particular management theory.

Additional readings: 

(i) an illustration of academic ideas with regard to the topic of innovation capability. 

(ii) For producing a proper theoretical framework level 0, you may need to do a rough coding exercise on your management-concerns diagram so that your theoretical framework level 0 clearly refer to more specific academic terms as key words for literature search purpose. E.g. a management-concern item as:

"Item 3[MC] Concerned about senior Flight Dispatch as leadership to assist all the new joiner in ABC Airways Ltd"

Theoretical framework item as: to evaluate the leadership competence, with special regard to coaching new Flight Dispatch staff of ABC Airway Ltd".

The key words of leadership competence and coaching competence are more useful for doing literature review purpose.

e-learning materials on visual research methods

 e-learning materials on visual research methods, mainly for my Housing Studies students doing dissertation projects

1. Visual methods in qualitative research: a brief lecture. (Video 2 of it focuses on the steps involved, with examples).
2. What is visual research: a brief lecture.
3. * visual research. **
4. * Photo elicitation and photovoice as a research method. **
5. * photo-elicitation.
6. * photo-elicitation interviewing.
7. * photovoice training.
8. * photovoice presentation. **
9. * how to create a photovoice project.
10. * picturing social change: photovoice. **
11. * qualitative research using visual methods.
12. * Media analysis and visual methods.
13. visual research: how-to [for design purpose].

Two major ways to analyze interview research data: a note

Two major ways to analyze interview research data: a note:

The first way is inductive approach in nature, based on grounded theory. Codes, categories and themes are created in an emerging interpretive process as a kind of theory-building exercise. Take a quick look at this vide to learn the basic idea of coding. (also study this video on "codes, categories and themes: understand the difference"). As a consequence, new theories are created from the raw research findings.

The second way is deductive approach in nature. It is based on the outputs of theories and theoretical frameworks gathered and developed from your literature review effort (re: Chapter 2 of your dissertation report; also refer to theoretical framework level-1a of the agile literature review approach). In this exercise, interview research data are extracted as quotations and put into the different codes and categories of your theories/ theoretical framework; subsequently, you are to conduct theory-driven analysis of your interview research findings (note: mainly presented in Chapter 5: discussion of research findings of your dissertation report.

Note: for further info on the grounded theory, refer to the blog note on research methods.

Some recommended practices for constructing and using the management-concerns diagram

Some recommended practices for constructing and using the management-concerns diagram:

1. You need to conduct exploratory interviews with a few stakeholders to co-create (possibly to involve some negotiation with them) the management-concerns diagram.

2. The management-concerns diagram is embedded in the problem-situation of the case study, BUT it is not a rich-picture of the problem-situation and the management-concerns items and arrows in the diagram do not represent scientific claims; the items and arrows are only negotiated perceived management concerns that your project intends to respond to with research efforts.

3. Management concerns need to be labelled as MC (management concerns) and UMC (urgent management concerns). They need to be numbered, e.g. Item 1 (MC), Item 2 (UMC), etc.. My provisional view is that UMCs are those that are considered by a manager interviewee to be necessarily and seriously addressed in 1 to 5 months' time.

4. To establish a sufficiently complicated, contextualized and holistic understanding of the management concerns, the management concerns items need to be linked, including some vertical linkages between items (e.g. linkage perceptions) and quantity of items is also a consideration:

Zone 1: 2-3 items (make sure to have items in the external environment (not internal [organizational] environment).

Zone 2: preferably 3 items

Zone 3a: preferably 3 items

Zone 3b: preferably 2 items

{note: it is not easy to construct diagrams in MS word, my recommendation is to use Excel}.

5. You need to briefly mention (i) who have you discussed with and (ii) when was the discussion, for working out your management-concerns diagram in your dissertation report chapter 1.

6. In other to produce a sufficiently complicated management-concerns diagram, you need to do some preliminary literature review so that you are intellectually capable to "brainstorm" with your interviewees to produce a good quality management-concerns diagram to work with.

7. Do not use words such as "to evaluate", "to find out", or "to propose", etc... to express your management-concerns items, as these words are employed to produce the theoretical framework.

8a. Review your management-concerns items to ensure that they are not located incorrectly (e.g. a zone 2 item located in zone 3a).

8b. Try to come up with management-concerns items that are not very similar in nature, e.g. "weak managerial competence" and "weak leadership competence".

9. Formulate your management-concerns items at the coding or category levels preferably (e.g. weak team-management competence, with special regard to Gen Y and Gen Z staff), not at the interview raw data level (e.g. Manager, Mr. Ho, is a horrible boss).

10. Do not write more than 1 sentence to express your management concerns item.

11. Handle your management-concerns diagram with sensitivity; some managers have no problems to discuss with you on management-concerns in dialogue but, feel somewhat uneasy to have the viewpoints clearly stated in a management-concerns diagram.

12. State clearly the organizational unit in focus (or business process/ business function)  in your management-concerns diagram: e.g. The management-concerns diagram of the ABC Business Unit of XYZ Ltd. or the IT Department of XYZ Ltd, or the Procurement function of the HK Subsidiary of XYZ Ltd.).

13. After you insert your management-concerns diagram in your dissertation report, you need to write a few paragraphs to describe your diagram.

Note: also take a look at the related blog note on wordings used.

Zone 2 of the agile literature review approach for Housing Studies: a note

Zone 2 of the agile literature review approach (ALRA) for Housing Studies: a note

For Housing Studies, the zoning of the ALRA diagrams is as follows:

Zone 1: environmental drivers

Zone 2: Housing topic: nature and status

Zone 3a: Outcomes-related

Zone 3b: Solutions/ policies-related

This note is about Zone 2. Specifically, to examine a housing topic, e.g. housing affordability, we need to define the concepts and then figure out how to measure its status (which could be a dynamic view of it: its dynamic status). To perform the examination task, students should have some knowledge on (i) conceptual definition and (ii) operational definition [the embedded hyperlinks are Youtube videos for your e-learning of these terms]. After studying the videos on conceptual definition and operational definition, you should then find out the specific definitions of your research topic, e.g. housing affordability, via literature search and review.

Turning literature search failure into literature search success: a note

Turning literature search failure into literature success: a note:

Academic search failure (?): no relevant academic references and slightly relevant but stale references

When doing literature search, it often happens that easy literature search task does not succeed as expected. For instance, my dissertation supervisee wanted to find some academic articles on "sales competence", she soon realized that she could not find one academic article explicitly on sales competence, say, via Google Scholar search. Likewise, ebook search on sales competence did not identify books specifically cover sales competence. On top of that, those academic references that mildly touch on the sales competence topic were quite outdated (i.e. published more than 5 years ago). Naturally, the student felt quite disappointed because her research methods teacher (i.e. me) repeatedly stresses the importance of using updated academic references for literature review purpose. The literature search result is disappointing as the topic of "sales competence" does not look like an odd topic.

For that, I offer the following advice (3 points):

Point 1. If it is difficult to find relevant academic literature on the topic, e.g. sales competence", this can be argued to be a major research gap. Thus, a research objective "to evaluate the sales competence of ABC Ltd" has good academic value as the research project could contributes to filling this major research gap. As such the student's literature search is not a search failure but a literature search success.

Point 2. Well, how can it be a literature search success when no directly relevant academic references found, say, on the topic of "sales competence"? Now, consider this, do Google search on "sales competence". Happily you now found some very updated articles from practitioners on "sales competence". It is now time to carry on the next step on literature search and review.

Point 3. Select three frameworks or checklists, etc., on sales competence from Point 2 and pick up 3-4 academic ideas that can be associated, probably less directly, to the sales competence topic. Synthesize all the ideas and frameworks (as ideas)from Points 2-3 into an overall theoretical framework (which makes all these ideas and frameworks into a holistic framework).Such a theoretical framework is constructed in a way that should be responsive, e.g., to the research objective that is "to evaluate the sales competence of ABC Ltd". 

Now you have done a useful literature review with updated references (including academic references) that is responsive to your research objective under consideration. [A literature search and review success].

This discussion (the three points of advice) serves as a practice note for my MBA students to conduct literature review for their dissertation projects.

How to do a quick reading of an academic article for doing a Housing Studies assignment: an illustration

 

How to do a quick reading of an academic article for doing a Housing Studies assignment: an illustration

“Housing affordability: Proper Measurement for Informed Policy Making” Gennadi Kazakevitch & Luc Borrowman (2009). A paper. Business and Economics, Monash University.

My comments are made in the form of remarks # in the article abstract as follows:

Abstract: The broadly accepted housing affordability indicator [remark 1: the key analytical concept to examine] is calculated as the housing cost-to[1]income ratio. But this only takes into consideration two averaged variables: household housing costs and household income, both of which are ambiguous and misleading as an across-the-board average. [remark 2: the research gap identified] An alternative system of housing affordability measurement is suggested in this paper based on disposable income left after accounting for housing expenses [remark 3: the research objective that indicates originality value/ academic value]. In contrary to the broadly used conventional indicator, the proposed measurement takes into account different income groups, ages and types of households as well as the level of housing consumption. This indicator, combined with the "after housing poverty line" allows for the singling out of groups of households most in need of housing help, and therefore develop more informed housing polices. [remark 4: the research objective that indicates originality value/ academic value]. Based on the proposed system of measurement, an extensive empirical work is presented using the series of the ABS Income and Housing Surveys. [remark 5: research method used in this study] The results demonstrate, from a new angle, the dynamics of housing affordability in Australia during the recent decade which leads to policy implications different to polices currently in use. Key words: Housing affordability measurement, income after housing costs [remark 6: hints at main findings, research achievement and research finding implications]. JEL Classifications: H20, H12, R31, R38.

Suggestion on academic article reading for doing assignments:

1. Identify the key analytical concept considered in the article: An improved housing affordability measurement method.

2. Research gap analysis: the existing housing affordability measurement methods have limitations, suggesting room for measurement methods improvement.

3. Practical, originality and academic value of the study: An improved housing affordability measurement is proposed and its value demonstrated via a research method employment (specific empirical findings).

4. Your decision on how to use the information from points 1-3 [for  your own assignment work] to : (i) shape the formulation of your research objective, (ii) inform your assignment research design, and (iii) enables your theory-driven analysis on your assignment research findings.

Research objective formulation based on dissertation project type: a note

Research objective formulation methods differ by dissertation project type:

1. Consulting-oriented project type: research objective formulation is management-concerns driven. E.g.

Management concern: [urgent management concern]: concerned about the business model innovation competence of ABC Ltd.

The corresponding research objective is: to evaluate the business model innovation competence of ABC Ltd.

2. Academic-oriented project type: research objective formulation is research-gap driven. 

E.g. The research gap identified: The existing academic literature has little to say, e.g. lack of specific empowerment theories, about how to empower working mothers in the construction engineering field in Hong Kong.

The corresponding research objective is: to evaluate working mother empowerment practices in the construction engineering field in Hong Kong via the theoretical employee empowerment lens.

Further reading: videos e-resource on research objectives and research questions.