The need to master sophisticated management theories for doing dissertation projects: a note

The need to master sophisticated management theories for doing dissertation projects: a note on literature review and managerial intellectual learning

I notice that quite some MBA students have difficulties to comprehend relatively sophisticated and less familiar management concepts in literature review. As a result, they fall back on using management concepts that they feel more confident and knowledgeable with to employ in their dissertation projects. However, more often than not, the management theories they intend to employ are old-fashioned, simple, superficially understood and irrelevant to their research evaluation tasks. For examples, students like to use Porter's 5-Force Model, whatever research tasks they are dealing with; they also like to use simple checklist and classification-style concepts, such as SWOT analysis , PEST analysis, and Boston Consulting Matrix. Finally, they also tend to use old models in an uncritical way, e.g., Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. These models are certainly not a major problem to use in dissertation projects, but relying primarily on them as the major theories to use in a dissertation project at the MBA level is highly unimpressive, to put it in a polite way. So, instead of giving up learning more updated and more sophisticated management theories for application in dissertation projects at the MBA level, I encourage students to consider two ways to master the more sophisticated and updated management concepts:

1. The self-help approach: spend more time to learn these more difficult concepts with the e-learning support from Google searching and YouTube videos, notably on brief lectures.

2. The private tutorial approach: employ a private tutor to teach you the complicated management concepts that you intend to employ in your dissertation projects. [Note: bear in mind that your dissertation project supervisor is not your tutor in this context; they give brief feedback, not tutorials to you].

It is not advisable to use crude conceptual and analytical tools/ theories, especially in an uncritical way, as the main theories to employ, in your MBA dissertation projects. Needless to say, doing so substantially increase the risk of dissertation project failure, even though you feel that, by doing so, you have already tried your best (and worked very hard) to employ relevant management theories in your dissertation projects.