No ideas on what dissertation project topic to do: some suggestions

No ideas on what dissertation project topic to do: some suggestions:

Student A: I have no ideas what dissertation project topic to do and, to make matters worse, I have just lost my job. Any suggestions?

Professor: [step 1] try to find a case study to do; the potential case study sources can be: from your ex-employer, your friends, and your own new venture [or potential new venture], your family member. Step 2 is to learn the nature of the business of the case study, especially its SWOT issues. Step 3: extract a subset of the related SWOT issues [re: step 2] that you are interested in studying. outcome is a management-concerns diagram. Step 4: convert your management-concerns diagram into theoretical framework level 0.

With the management-concerns diagram and the theoretical framework level-0, your dissertation project topic now becomes quite concrete and proper. In short, you (i) don't imagine a dissertation project topic, but to identify a topic you are interested in from an organization's SWOT issues and (ii) adopt a dissertation project topic, the nature of which is depicted in the management-concerns diagram and the derived theoretical framework level-0.

Student A: IC; so I do not need to withdraw from my study and ask the university to refund my school fee...

Professor: you are talking about a non-academic topic; kindly discuss direct with the university admin for that. Nonetheless, to develop the intellectual competence to work out a useful dissertation project title, you need to keep strengthening your "business sense".

Note: there are students who have difficulties to do a detailed case study of a company. In this case, the core-focus-domain can cover two items in Zone 1 [environmental drivers], leaving the Zone 2, 3a and 3b items as non-core-focus-domain items. An example is to study the servicescape of a fast-food-restaurant chain with participant observation and consumer interviews as the core-focus-domain, and the brief interview research with a few branch managers on the restaurant chain strategy [zone 3b item] and managerial competence evaluation [zone 2 item].