Asking AI to come up with an MBA research theme and dissertation proposal: on conglomerate business decline

Asking AI to come up with an MBA research theme and dissertation proposal: on conglomerate business decline (information from perplexity.ai)

My question 1: "Please suggest a concrete MBA research theme, via the pragmatism lens, based on the following key words: reasons and predictions of business decline in the property development-related conglomerated case study of New World Development Company Limited of Hong Kong (新世界發展有限公司), multilevel theory building on business decline."

The reply: "A pragmatist MBA research theme centered on New World Development Company Limited (NWD) would prioritize actionable insights into business decline drivers and recovery strategies, drawing from real-world consequences of conglomerate diversification in Hong Kong's volatile property sector. This approach integrates multilevel theory building—from firm-level decisions to market and policy dynamics—while emphasizing practical problem-solving over abstract theorizing.

Proposed Research Theme

"Navigating Decline in Property Conglomerates: A Pragmatist Analysis of New World Development's Strategic Missteps, Debt Traps, and Multilevel Recovery Pathways in Hong Kong's Post-2025 Property Slump."

Pragmatism guides this theme by focusing on interconnected experience, knowing, and acting: analyzing NWD's historical diversification (e.g., from property to infrastructure and telecom post-1997 Asian crisis), recent net losses (HK$6.63 billion interim in late 2025), and worsening net gearing (57.5% by December 2025) to produce usable knowledge for executives and policymakers. The study would employ mixed methods—quantitative financial metrics (EVA, CAPM for divisional costs) alongside qualitative stakeholder interviews—to trace practical consequences of actions like asset disposals amid investor confusion and Beijing's uneven stimulus.

Pragmatism Application

Pragmatism's three principles anchor the methodology: actionable knowledge targets NWD's indeterminate debt crisis (net debt HK$124.6 billion), urging strategies like core property refocus over luxury projects (e.g., Deep Water Pavilia's price wars). It recognizes experience-acting links by multilevel theorizing—micro (executive decisions), meso (conglomerate synergies), macro (HK housing policies, US rate shifts)—to predict decline trajectories and test interventions via scenario modeling. Research outcomes emphasize transferability, such as pragmatic diversification audits for other HK developers facing 2025-2026 slumps.

Key Research Questions

• What experiential habits (e.g., aggressive expansion) drove NWD's decline, and what actionable shifts could reverse 98% debt-to-equity by 2026?
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• How do multilevel factors (firm debt, market downturns, policy stimuli) interact, per pragmatist inquiry?

• What practical predictions emerge for conglomerate resilience in HK property?

Expected Contributions

This theme builds multilevel theory incrementally: grounded in NWD data, it generalizes pragmatic frameworks for decline prediction (e.g., gearing thresholds as early warnings) and offers MBA-relevant tools like decision matrices for "what-if" acting scenarios. For Hong Kong's market, it delivers policy briefs on stimulus timing to avert broader conglomerate failures."

My question 2: "Please offer a proposal with the following information: 

1. Dissertation report title

2. 3 research issues (including research gaps) and 3 Hong Kong public media reported issues

3. 4 research objectives and 3 research questions

4. 2 primary research methods and 1 secondary research method (notably also studying other cases of business conglomerate decline in the Hong Kong property development-related sector [secondary data])

5. 1 contingency-based organization management-related academic theory and 2 business decline-related theories (with a reference list in Harvard reference format) 

6. A brief justification of the dissertation proposal in terms of academic, practical and originality value."."

The reply: "New World Development Company Limited (NWD) faces significant business decline amid Hong Kong's property sector challenges, and a pragmatist MBA dissertation can dissect this through multilevel theory building focused on actionable insights.

1. Dissertation Title

"Pragmatist Multilevel Inquiry into Conglomerate Decline: Unpacking Reasons, Predictions, and Recovery Pathways for New World Development in Hong Kong's Property Crisis."

2. Research Issues and Media-Reported Issues

Research Issues (with Gaps):

• Gap in multilevel integration: Existing studies overlook how micro-level executive decisions interact with macro-policy shifts to predict conglomerate decline trajectories.
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• Limited pragmatist applications: Few works apply pragmatism to link experiential habits (e.g., diversification) with practical decline predictions in property firms.

• Absence of predictive modeling: No frameworks combine financial metrics with stakeholder experiences for forecasting recovery in HK conglomerates.
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Hong Kong Public Media Issues:

• Massive losses and debt surge: NWD reported HK$6.63 billion interim loss (H1 FY2025) and net gearing at 57.5%, worsening to 98% debt-to-equity by mid-2025.

• Leadership instability: Dual CEO transitions in 2025 (Adrian Cheng's exit) amid asset sale pressures like K11 Art Mall.

• Market-policy mismatch: Luxury projects (e.g., Deep Water Pavilia) falter despite Beijing stimuli, with HK$16.3 billion annual loss in FY2025.

3. Research Objectives and Questions

Objectives:

• Identify experiential drivers of NWD's decline via pragmatist analysis of diversification strategies.
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• Build multilevel theory linking firm, market, and policy levels to predict business trajectories.

• Develop actionable recovery frameworks tested against HK property conglomerates.

• Evaluate contingency-based interventions for pragmatic resilience in volatile sectors.

Questions:

• What multilevel factors explain NWD's debt escalation and losses post-2024?

• How can pragmatism integrate experiences to predict decline in HK property conglomerates?

• What contingency strategies reverse conglomerate decline based on NWD evidence?

4. Research Methods

Primary Methods:

• Mixed-methods case study: In-depth NWD analysis using quantitative financial modeling (e.g., debt gearing trends) and qualitative executive interviews for experiential insights.
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• Scenario-based workshops: Engage HK property stakeholders to test predictive models pragmatically.

Secondary Method:

• Comparative archival analysis: Examine secondary data on other HK property conglomerate declines (e.g., Henderson Land, Sun Hung Kai) for patterns in diversification failures and recoveries.
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5. Theoretical Foundations

Contingency-Based Theory: Contingency theory posits organizational effectiveness depends on aligning structures with environmental contingencies like market volatility.

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Decline-Related Theories:

• Decline phase theory (McKinley et al.): Outlines inertia-driven phases from early entrenchment to crisis, applicable to NWD's debt spiral.
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• Retrenchment theory (Robbins and Pearce): Advocates cutback strategies (e.g., asset sales) contingent on decline severity, tested in NWD's context.
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Harvard Reference List:

Kelly, L.M. and Cordeiro, M. (2020) 'Three principles of pragmatism for research on organizational processes', Qualitative Research, 20(6), pp. 688-705.

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McKinley, W., Latham, S. and Braun, M. (2014) 'Organizational decline and innovation: Turnarounds and downward spirals', Academy of Management Review, 39(1), pp. 88-110.

Robbins, D.K. and Pearce, J.A. (1992) 'Turned on by turnaround: A study of adaptability and business distress in small firms', Journal of Business Venturing, 7(5), pp. 371-386.

6. Proposal Justification

Academic Value: Advances multilevel theory building through pragmatism, bridging gaps in decline literature with HK-specific empirics.

Practical Value: Delivers executive tools (e.g., debt prediction matrices) and policy briefs for HK developers amid 2025-2026 slumps.

Originality Value: Pioneers pragmatist lens on NWD's conglomerate case, incorporating comparative HK declines for transferable, action-oriented insights unavailable in prior positivist studies."

My question 3: "Briefly highlight 5 main ideas of the multilevel theory in business management and a brief history of the academic development of this topic."
The reply: "Multilevel theory in business management examines phenomena across nested organizational levels, such as individuals, teams, firms, and industries, to explain complex interactions driving outcomes like decline in conglomerates such as New World Development.

Five Main Ideas

• Hierarchical Nesting: Organizational entities form nested structures (e.g., employees within teams, teams within firms), where lower levels are embedded in higher ones, influencing behaviors like strategic decisions in property conglomerates.

• Top-Down Effects: Higher-level contexts (e.g., industry downturns or policies) directly moderate or constrain lower-level actions, such as executive choices amid Hong Kong's 2025 property slump.​

• Bottom-Up Emergence: Individual or group attributes aggregate to shape higher-level properties (e.g., employee habits forming firm culture), enabling multilevel predictions of decline trajectories.

• Cross-Level Linkages: Theories specify bidirectional relationships between levels (e.g., firm debt affecting individual morale and vice versa), bridging micro-macro gaps for holistic analysis.

• Homology and Integration: Principles maintain consistency across levels while integrating micro (behavioral) and macro (structural) perspectives to model dynamic processes like conglomerate retrenchment.​

Academic Development History

Multilevel theory emerged in the 1990s from organizational behavior and psychology, with Klein and Kozlowski's 2000 seminal work formalizing top-down/bottom-up models and emergence concepts. It built on House's 1996 "meso" paradigm advocating micro-macro synthesis, gaining traction post-1999 via Klein et al.'s Academy of Management Review article on barriers and benefits. By the 2010s, applications expanded in strategic management (e.g., Hitt et al., 2007) with multilevel modeling techniques like HLM, addressing real-world fragmentation in fields like business decline. Recent advances (2019+) emphasize opportunities in management research, including pragmatic integrations for cases like Hong Kong property sectors"

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