Business Research Strategy

School of Business and Economics

Business Research Strategy

Full course description

The course "Business Research Design" is developed as an advanced methodology course for students, who want to specialize in business research and who followed intermediate course on methodology previously. It prepares student to write a Ph.D. thesis or in becoming a specialist with substantial research tasks.
In developing this course we have assumed that students are already familiar with the basic principles of research methodology. For those who want to engage in research such knowledge is important but not enough. They should learn to understand the context in which research is done and the process by which it takes shape. Therefore, the focus of this course is on the research process and the various decisions researchers have to take.

Course objectives

The main overall objective of the course is preparing students to write a proposal for the master thesis, which is also the final assignment.
The following learning objectives support this overall objective.
Understand and learn how to design and conduct a research study by applying the appropriate methodology.
* Get acquainted with the different phases of research and the typical problems encountered in these phases.
* Understand interdependencies and trade-offs between different design choices.
* Learn to critically read a research report from a methodological perspective.

Prerequisites

Students should be familiar with methodological principles. Previous courses in business research methods at the Bachelors level provide usually the expected pre-knowledge. As this course deals with methodological issues at the advanced level, we strongly recommend that students have followed courses in research methods and quantitative analysis previously. In particular, we expect that students are familiar with the quantitative as well as qualitative methods at an intermediate level.

Business Research Strategy