Introduction to the week

In this short course, we are going to set the scene for developing research projects that are important in the field of management.

In particular, we are going to focus on how you can go about identifying the question that you want to answer through your research. This is fundamental to any research project because without a central issue or question your research will lack focus and you will struggle at each stage to work out what you need to do next.

By the end of this week, you should be able to:

• Identify and justify a complex research question or business issue of relevance to your programme of study
• Critically evaluate the key concepts involved in the research project, and identify and apply appropriate theories to form a coherent research proposal, including structured and focused research objectives appropriate for study at postgraduate level

Meet the team

Your lead educator on the course is Dr. Joanne Carlier, an assistant professor in Human Resource Management and Organisational Behaviour.

Your associate lecturer is XXX, an XXX

You can follow them by navigating to their FutureLearn profile pages and selecting ‘follow’. That way, you’ll be able to see all the comments that they make.

Checking your progress

When you reach the end of a step and have understood everything, select ‘mark as complete’. This will update your progress page, and help you keep track of the steps you’ve completed. Any steps you’ve finished will turn blue on your to-do list.

You can check your progress page by selecting the progress icon at the top of the step. There you’ll see what percentage of the course steps you’ve marked as complete.