Course overview
This course equips students with the awareness and skills to conduct scholarly research at an advanced level. It is based around two interlinked themes - 1. theoretical issues of research (eg philosophy, epistemology, ethics etc) and 2. practical considerations of research design. The first of these provides an essential framework for quality research, necessarily underpinning all professional research activities and guiding participants through a critical journey of engagement with the inevitable limitations and delimitations of research in the 21st Century. Candidates will be introduced to a number of research issues and controversies (eg debates around deductive, inductive and abductive approaches; qualitative and quantitative methods, cross sectional and longitudinal strategies; archival, observational, survey-based or experimental techniques; sampling, data collection, data analysis and dissemination). The course's overall aim is to prepare candidates, more generally, as academic researchers.
Course learning outcomes
- Apply methodological theory to critically evaluate existing research in business and related research.
- differentiate between alternative research approaches, philosophies and strategies in business oriented research and identify their limitations and implications.
- explore relevant ethical issues and apply (systematise, defend, recommend and implement) ethical principles to the conduct of scholarly research.
- plan and design a scholarly research project.
- reflect critically and transparently on their own research preferences, philosophy and ideology when evaluating existing research and conducting their own investigations.
- engage in scholarly discussion and debate within the academic community in the spirit of collegiality.