Formulating a suitable MBA dissertation project topic and research design: some advices

Formulating a suitable MBA dissertation project topic and research design: some advices:

1. The main type of dissertation projects is case study research, notably on a single organizational unit (an established company, a department of a company or a business startup).

2. Your relationship with the client organization could be: 

(a) an existing employee of the organization, 

(b) an ex-employee of the organization, 

(c) a friend of someone who work [or own] in the client organization, 

(d) a founder of the startup, or 

(e) the owner of the organization.

Other considerations:

1. If your case study is on a business sector, not a single organization, you most likely need to do multiple-case study research.

2. If you study a company solely because you know the CEO of the company [but the CEO does not know you] or you possess some articles and reports of the company [i.e. some secondary data and archival records of it], you should not conduct your dissertation project on this company.

3. It is useful to have some knowledge about case study research: see the reference of R. Yin. At the same time, it is useful to have some knowledge on mixed methods research.

4. There are specific research ethics consideration for case study research. The topic is to be covered in research methods workshop; students could also take a quick look at the blog note on research ethics at this stage.

5. The agile literature review approach (ALRA) is highly compatible with cases study research and mixed methods research.

6. A related topic is on cultivating business sense for doing MBA dissertation project.

7. Your MBA dissertation topic should be related to your MBA programme study scope.