How to Write a Dissertation in Management: Your Must-Read Guide

The dissertation is the last step that you have to take on your way to the MA degree. It provides you with an opportunity to show the skills and knowledge that you have gained through all academic years. Your dissertation is your chance to demonstrate that you’re well-versed in identifying the area(s) suitable for academic research: deciding on research objectives; gathering, organizing, and analyzing the relevant literature and secondary data; drawing conclusions, and if necessary, providing relevant recommendations for further research.

University courses in the field of management are among the most popular all over the globe, at both graduate and undergraduate levels of study. Writing a dissertation in management requires planning ahead, using the key terms appropriately, conducting thorough research, and writing text in plain English.

Step 1. Choose Dissertation Topic

The field of management includes a wide variety of issues and trends that you’re welcome to dedicate your dissertation to. Whether you choose to analyze new trends or simply research traditional and well-known issues, it is important to choose a hooking topic, and you know you’ll be able to research, analyze, and write about.

If you can’t come up with an attention-grabbing topic for a dissertation in management, check the following suggestions:

How Do Psychosocial Hazards Impact Workplace Risk Management?
Marilyn Ferguson: Traits of the New Paradigm in Leadership and Organizational Change;
The Risk Management Process: Business Tactics and Strategies;
Human Error in the Field of Project Management;
The Impact of Technology and Innovation Usage on Business Management?
Language Issues in Multinational Management;
Can Eco-Friendly Business Strategies Boost Profitability?
Entrepreneurial Management in Family-Owned Businesses;
How to Enhance Project Management Efficiency in Newly Established Businesses;
Gender Discrimination in the Delegation Task by Managers;
Management and Its Impact on Organizational Efficiency;
Managing Knowledge and Information in the Public Sector;
Employees Flexibility Towards New Job Positions with Knowledge Management Strategies;
Max Weber and Bureaucratic Management Theory;
The Impact of Work-Life Balance, Talent Management, and Retention Strategies in the Hospitality Industry;
Change Management and Its Impact on Business;
Investigation of the Underlying Principle for Team Working Effectiveness and Working Techniques;
Home-Work Interaction: A Challenge to HR Management;
An Investigative Approach to Power Balances in Management Structures and Leadership of Multinational Companies;
Public Sector Performance: Motivation, Management, and Measurement;
Multicultural Project Management: What Are the Reasons for Failure?
The Common Ways of Managing Change in Start-Up Businesses.

Step 2. Write a Management Dissertation Proposal

The term ‘dissertation proposal’ stands for a proposal for the final dissertation project that is aimed at persuading the committee that you are about to commit complex, interesting, and valuable questions. In other words, this is when you think of a significant issue and set up a plan for organizing information and writing the project.

There are some key points to pay attention to when writing a proposal for a dissertation on management:

What area is your project based on (supply chain management, sales management, public relations management, marketing management, etc.)?
What problem is your project going to tackle?
Why is it a problem for an academic or research community you belong to?
Why is it necessary to find the right solution?
How are you going to look for the answers?

If, for example, you’re writing a dissertation on the topic ‘Can Job Motivation and Satisfaction Influence the Efficiency and Performance of a Company,’ the objectives and aims of this project are the following:

To recommend operational models and strategies that can influence the organizational performance of the chosen company;

To determine the benefits to the chosen company following an increase in personnel job satisfaction;

To assess all the levels of motivational factors of the chosen company personnel that will enhance their job satisfaction, leading to organizational performance;

To determine the whole range of motivational implications to the organizational effectiveness of the chosen company.

The objectives mentioned above will help in providing the right answers to the issues relevant to the research question and sub-questions you’ve evaluated and analyzed on the basis of the related theories.

Step 3. Perform an In-Depth Research

At this stage, you set the overall development of your dissertation. It has to be effective since wasting your time analyzing and reading irrelevant sources may turn to be disastrous for your paper.

Here are some quick recommendations on how to go through the research stage:

Choose the right sources to look for information. Use the Internet as a starting point for your search. Use blogs, educational portals, forums, and articles. For the students engaged in marketing management, use the sources like Journal of Marketing Management. If it’s financial management that you write your dissertation on, Free Management Library will become handy. Human resource management issues, in turn, are available on the portals like Human Resource Management Journal or Harvard Business Review. However, make sure to double-check everything you read online to ensure it comes from a trusted place. Use Google Scholar to locate trustworthy resources of your interest. At the same time, don’t avoid regular visits to the library since librarians may provide you with some interesting publications.
Organize your resources. It is important to take notes. If not, you’ll end up confused, having not the slightest idea of where certain materials are located. You’re welcome to use Penzu, Evernote, or any other app to write down notes for your management dissertation together with the sources you’re going to reference.

Step 4: Write Your Dissertation in Management

Writing goes smoothly when you have a solid plan. For that reason, you have to make a dissertation outline. You’ve got the proposal now, which serves as a preliminary outline for the management dissertation. Still, it’s necessary to construct a more detailed outline for a complex project. If your research led you to some unexpected direction, ensure to include all new points in the outline.

Check the basic outline for the management dissertation:

The Introduction
The first part should provide a background of the issue, as well as a statement of the problem. Later on, you will specify and clarify the study purpose and the question of the research. Then, you’ll have to provide the definitions of each term that is relevant to your management dissertation. The authors are also welcome to give their expectations and assumptions about the final results. For instance, if you write on “A Study of the Impact of Organizational Culture on Motivation of the Employed,” your intro might include the following: ‘According to Graham & Bennett, Human Resource Management is one of the crucial elements of operation in management. HRM has three key functions, acquiring human resources, maintaining them, as well as developing them. Human Resource Management directs and maintains human resources and represents the proper climate and culture for the employed in the companies. Out of all assets in a company, HR is the most crucial and dominant, which provides organizations edge over others. Therefore, organizational management is buying commitment of the employed through successfully implementing motivation principles, rules, and policies.’

Literature Review
In this section of the management dissertation, you’re required to review your research process and the key acknowledgments that you have come to.

Remember that the literature review section should introduce and justify the questions and objectives of the research. It is not just a catalog of writers, authors, ideas, and frameworks but rather an introduction of a critical evaluation of the works of those authors.

The literature review usually takes from 3 000 to 4 000 words.

Methodology
This section of the dissertation on management is focused on how you located each resource and all the results’ implementation methods. If it’s the qualitative dissertation that you write, you’ll expose the research participants, questions, processes of data analysis, data collection, and setting. In case it’s a quantitative dissertation, this chapter will focus on the research hypotheses and questions, collection of data, and data analysis.

Findings
This is the most significant part of the management dissertation for the reason that exactly at this stage, you’re required to demonstrate your intellectual capacity. Restate your research questions and talk about the results you’ve managed to find. Diagrams, graphs, etc. are useful when it comes to presenting the results of your research and illustrating the key points.

Conclusions
In the last chapter of the management dissertation, sum up the research, and give some brief results. It is important to explain what kind of difference your findings make in the academic world and how one can imply your findings in practice.

If you’re writing a dissertation based on the business management issue, don’t confuse conclusions with the recommendations for the company that you investigate. If you’d like to provide a list of recommendations, provide a short separate chapter for that.
At the end of the final chapter, make sure to create the so-called ‘Recommendations for future research’ segment, where you address the issues for the further research and clarify why exactly you do that.

Bibliography
It is important to use the citation style that is recommended by your college or university, as well as include the sources that you have used at the writing and research stage.

Appendices
Appendices are used by the authors in order to provide some supporting evidence for reference. By using the appendices, you have an opportunity to prove the authenticity of your work or illustrate points of principle specified in the text, questionnaires, etc. It is important to mention that appendices should include only subsidiary material.

Don’t Skip Editing

There’s a particular difference between proofreading and editing: proofreading is focused on the paper form, while editing is based on the essence. Make sure to focus on the essence at first. The point here is that you can’t proofread your project and then begin to erase all needless parts and add more text.

It is highly recommended to see if there is a direct link between every argument throughout the text of your dissertation. Do you notice any gaps in the way materials are provided? Use the information that you collected at the research stage to fill in those gaps. Maybe at some point, you simply got carried away when providing research explanations. That’s not a problem. All you have to do is to cut those parts and clarify them as precisely as possible. After all, it’s all about quality and clarity, not the quantity.

The management dissertation writing process is time-consuming and challenging. However, that’s not something that college or university students can’t cope with once they have step-by-step guidance at hand. You have to keep in mind how far you have come in your studies, so you simply can’t go back. For that reason, ensure to tackle the dissertation stage by stage, and soon, you will cope with the more important project in your academic career.

Before you go and submit your dissertation in management to the committee, it is crucial to get some feedback. First, you might approach a colleague or a friend who has knowledge and skills in the field of management. It is important that you trust the chosen person since the dissertation is not an essay or book review. This is your intellectual property that is unique to the academic world. Get to know what they think about your piece and what suggestions for improvement they are ready to provide and why.
Finally, have a talk with your mentor about the final touches for your project. S/he will highlight all the weak points that your dissertation has, as well as provide you with the instructions on how to finalize the writing stage before getting ready for the presentation.