Lightweight academic-oriented dissertation project: a note for MBA students

Lightweight academic-oriented dissertation project: an ALRA note for MBA students

While consulting-oriented dissertation project type (in ALRA study), being management-concerned driven, is most suitable for MBA students to conduct, finding a case study and requesting a gatekeeper  (a topic in research ethics) to approve the MBA student to conduct the dissertation project in his/ her organization could be a serious challenge to many MBA students. In this case, a lightweight academic-oriented dissertation project appears more feasible. The initial steps are as follows:

1. Pick up a business management topic, e.g. talent management, AI application in business, and consumer behavior of generation Z, etc., and do some preliminary literature review of about 3-4 academic articles, plus a quick newspaper article study (about 3-4 articles).

2. Perform a quick research gap analysis to come up with 2-3 research gap statements. (All academic articles discuss research gaps in the introductory part of them in order to justify the study in terms of academic originality).

3. Convert the research gap statements into research objective statements.

4. Construct preliminary diagrams as specified in the agile literature review approach (ALRA) (for the academic-oriented dissertation project type).

Having done that, the MBA student should now be capable of producing a synopsis form and, shortly afterward, a dissertation proposal. 

Taking up an academic-oriented dissertation project avoids the necessity to do a case study research (and the need to gain the approval of a gatekeeper). Nevertheless, it is still expected to employ  at least two primary research methods, e.g. observational research, questionnaire survey, interview research and focus group research.

The lightweight guideline proposed here is mainly about how to produce a dissertation proposal in a lightweight manner.