BSc (Hons) Business & Management

BSc (Hons) Human Resource Management &

Leadership

2017YL-NX9637 KND01
Research Dissertation
(40 Credits)

Pre-submission Checklist
4th September 2017 to 14th May 2018

To be submitted by 2:00 pm UK time on

Monday 14th May 2018
Guidance for submission of your Dissertation

Dissertations should not exceed 10,000 words +10%, with an additional 1,000 word executive
summary not including references and appendices. Your U K Dissertation tutor will not read
anything beyond this limit. Please insert the word count on the title page (use the ‘word
count’ tool found in most word-processors).

There are no firm specific rules for content and presentation. Different parts of your
dissertation will have a different weight provided in the assessment brief depending upon,
for example, the nature of your project and the availability of background literature and
therefore it is not possible to give exact guidelines on the number of words that should be
in each chapter. However, dissertations will normally comprise of:

Checklist Element Tick

Cover page
Acknowledgements
Table of contents
Executive Summary
Introduction
Literature Review
Methodology, Methods and ethics
Research Strategy
Research Design
Limitations
Results/findings/analysis (you can include discussion of findings in
this section or in a separate Discussion chapter)
Discussion
Conclusion
References
Appendices

A Cover Page (this is essential) including the title of your dissertation, your name and degree
course, module title and code, module leader and tutor, submission date and the institution
awarding the degree. T h e title should be succinct yet clearly specify the content of the
report. This should be brief, descriptive and explicit rather than poetic or implicit. Thirty (30)
words is normally the maximum length. It should be agreed and finalised as part of the final
draft. It may be different from the original working title.

Your title page MUST include the word count for the Executive Summary and the Dissertation.

Acknowledgements
Acknowledging any help, advice or support – especially from people outside the Business
School – and mentioning any specific difficulties encountered in carrying out the project
which may have detracted from the outcome.

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A Contents Page
Should provide details of all of the chapters and sub-headings in a logical structure.

Executive Summary
This section should provide a summary of the overall research project: its rationale, aims and
intended outcomes; a review of relevant underpinning theories, frameworks and principles;
the methodology planned and undertaken; project outcomes; reflections; conclusions and
recommendations for personal and organizational practice.

An Introduction (essential)
The purpose of this chapter is to introduce and contextualize the study – this means that the
significance or importance of the topic is set out. If there is no apparent importance to the
study to any external reader, the topic may not be appropriate. Personal interest may inspire
selection of the project topic, but ultimately, its importance to others should be specified. This
can best be done by positioning the dissertation in relation to other work that has been
published, whether in agreement with that work or otherwise – in other words, you should
summarise here the main points from the next chapter, the Literature Review. This
Introduction should also describe the setting in which your research was undertaken, and
discuss the questions your dissertation addresses. This section should also tell the reader how
the topic will be unfolded and the order of forthcoming material.

Literature Review – The literature review should be a separate chapter. It should review the
relevant literature in order to provide a framework within which your empirical material can
be evaluated. It should be succinct (i.e. you should not attempt to describe a whole body of
literature in detail, but focus on those areas which are relevant to your aims and questions)
and should link directly to your own investigation. Be critical in your approach: be clear about
areas of disagreement, in terms of views or research findings. A good literature review does
more than simply restate the literature. It discusses it thematically. It should bring out
consistencies and controversies in the literature, and will ideally develop an argument that
justifies your research question/issue/problem.

Methodology, Methods & Ethics – The data collection proposals

Research Strategy - The academic underpinning and justification for your methodology.

Research Design - Details of you research experiment i.e. data collection, sampling, analysis.

Results or findings: these should be clearly presented. Avoid over- burdening the reader with
masses of data: produce summaries of the main findings. Depending on your methodology,
these might take the form of appropriately headed numerical tables with descriptive accounts
of their content in the text, or qualitative analyses with examples of material to enable the
reader to judge the relation between those data and the conclusions drawn. Where statistical
procedures are employed e.g through SPSS, these should be described (data, calculations and
computer printouts should be in the appendices.)

Discussion this should summarise your findings, and indicate their implications for your
research questions. They should show how they support or challenge views in the literature.

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Do not overstate your conclusions: remember that your methodology may be deficient or
incomplete, or your sample unrepresentative, and that others might draw different
conclusions from your data. Acknowledge here any deficiencies in the way you designed the
research or practical difficulties in carrying it out in the way that you intended. Draw the
reader’s attention to any ambiguities in your data or alternative ways of interpreting it. You
may also want to discuss alternative methodologies that could be employed to gather data
relevant to your questions. The discussion functions as an appraisal and criticism of your work
in relation to the issues and hypotheses raised in the introduction. It should not simply repeat
chunks from your introduction or findings. There are of course exceptions, especially with
these two main chapters on Findings and Discussion. For some styles of dissertation, for
instance ethnographic, historical or case studies, it may be more appropriate to integrate
Discussion with the presentation of empirical material.

Conclusion (essential) a brief statement of any conclusions you have reached as a result of
your enquiries. What do you want the reader to know as a result of having read your
dissertation? How do your findings and/or discussion relate back to any broader issues you
have raised in the Introduction? The conclusion may also suggest further work or study
needed on the topic, as well as ways the new work can be used or applied in other cases. It is
not meant to be a summary or restatement of the entire project, which belongs in the
abstract. If you have developed any strong personal opinions about the subject which seem
appropriate to relate, this is the place where such content is appropriate.

References a complete list, properly set out and detailed. All references cited in the text should
be included here - and vice versa. Please use the APA 6th Edition Referencing System.

Appendices if appropriate. As a general rule, if figures, tables, charts or quotes are less than a
full page and can be conveniently included in the text, you will want to do so, since reference
to appendices is awkward for the reader. All such material, in the text or at the end, should
be titled and sequentially numbered.

Tabular material which is presented in landscape format should be bound with the top of the
table to the spine. Appendices are labelled alphabetically, although if there is little such
material and it is all of a similar nature, it may all be included in one Appendix.

You must include copies of questionnaires and/or interview questions in the Appendix,
without this the reader will not know what questions have been asked of respondents.

If you have undertaken interviews, you should also include one anonymized example
transcript in the Appendix.

Assignment and dissertation layout

Writing Style
The level of writing must be appropriate to a level 6-degree qualification. Specifically, acute
attention should be paid to correct spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure and
clarity of style.

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Remember that the Second Marker for your dissertation (and possibly the External Examiner)
will not necessarily be a specialist in your topic, so do not rely heavily on specialist language.
It is your responsibility to edit the text for typing errors.

You must write in the third person (the author).

Page Layout
Pages should be numbered at the bottom right. This is especially important when giving draft
copies of chapters to your supervisor. Draft copies must include your name.

It is helpful for the reader if you start new chapters on a new page.

Margins
Please leave sufficient margins to allow for binding for your final dissertation.

Tables and charts

These should be numbered in sequence by chapter, e.g. Table 3.1 is the first table in Chapter
3. Each figure should be accompanied by a descriptive title which completely explains the
contents of the figure.

Legibility
The dissertation and assignment must be word processed, and hard copies if requested must
be on A4 paper. Line Spacing must be at least one-and-a-half lines and not more than double-
spaced. Font should be Calibri, Arial or TNR size 11 or 12

Referencing in your assignment and dissertation

A most important feature of academic work is the proper acknowledgement of the work of
others in relation to your own work. When planning any kind of study the first thing to do,
after defining your subject area, is to review the literature available on the subject. It may be
helpful to consider recording all the information that you have consulted as a database on a
computer or on index cards. This will save a lot of time later on, and in particular it is important
to note where you found the information as well as the details of the reference itself so that
it may be traced again.

Definitions

A reference is any piece of information (book, journal article, or video) to which the writer of
a dissertation refers directly either by quotation or by the author's name. A reference gives
information about the source (usually an original source) from which the writer of the
dissertation has taken or used material. The purpose of a reference is to enable the reader to
locate that information as easily and quickly as possible.

Individual references used in the text are, in addition, compiled in a reference list at the end
of a piece of written work. This is not the same as a bibliography.

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A Bibliography is an extended list of references dealing with particular subject matter, and may
include not only the references made by the writer in the text of a dissertation, but also others
the writer has found useful, perhaps as background reading, even though they are not directly
referred to in the written work itself.

In summary, students will be expected in their written work to refer directly by source and/or
author to any material that they have used in their dissertation, and to provide a list of those
references on separate pages at the end of the dissertation in other words, NOT within
footnotes.

Why write references?

References are needed both to give credit to authors whose work has been used and to enable
readers to find out where material came from in which they may be interested. Readers may
wish to check that the reference is a correct citation of a source, and to follow up by reading
that source.

References help support an argument and validate any statements that are made. Any
phrases, sentences or paragraphs taken from another source must be acknowledged, as must
ideas from such a source; if the acknowledgement is not made it is called plagiarism and your
own work will be discredited, and sanctions imposed if this is discovered.

Plagiarism

The intellectual work of others that is being summarised in the dissertation must be attributed
to its source. This includes material you yourself have published or submitted for assessment
here or elsewhere. It is also plagiarism if you copy the work of another student. In that case
both the plagiariser and the student who allows their work to be copied will be disciplined.

When writing dissertations and essays, it is not sufficient to just indicate that you have used
other people's work by citing them in your list of references at the end. It is also not sufficient
to just put "(Bloggs 1992)" at the end of a paragraph where you have copied someone else’s
words. It is essential that the paragraph itself is IN YOUR OWN WORDS. The only exception
to this is if you are quoting a source. In that case you must put the quotation in quotation
marks and cite the source, including page reference, immediately afterwards. If the quotation
is longer than a sentence, you should indent and set off the whole passage; when the
quotation is indented in this way it is not necessary to use quotation marks, but, as always, the
author, date, and page number should be cited.

It is assumed that all ideas, opinions, conclusions, specific wording, quotations, conceptual
structure and data, whether reproduced exactly or in paraphrase, which are not referenced
to another source, is the work of the student on this dissertation. If this is not the case, an
act of plagiarism may have occurred, which is cause for disciplinary action at the programme
or University level.

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APA 6th Edition Referencing System

There are many methods of writing and arranging references so that they may be accurately
and systematically recorded. We believe that the APA 6th Edition system is the most
appropriate to use for your dissertation, and it is mandatory – you must use it. The APA system
is based on the author's surname and is easy to use and to check. Do NOT mix it up with any
other referencing scheme (such as ones using numbered references in the text).

If you are still unsure about referencing, please contact the staff at the library, who are experts
in referencing. Please do not expect the module team or your tutor to reference your work
for you.

Assessment and Marking Criteria

Word Count

Research Dissertation 10,000 words, plus a 1,000-word Executive Summary.

Overall Weighting

80% of the final mark

Executive Summary (weighting 5% - separate word count of 1000 words)

This section should provide a summary of the overall research project: its rationale, aims and
intended outcomes; a review of relevant underpinning theories, frameworks and principles;
the methodology planned and undertaken; project outcomes; reflections; conclusions and
recommendations for personal and organizational practice.

Introduction, Aims and Objectives (weighting 10%) 750 to 1,200 words

This section should provide a brief background to give the reader enough information to
understand the context in which the research project has been carried out. A rationale should
also be included here. Explain why you selected this topic for your project.

Details of your aims and outcomes should be listed and discussed in this section to enable
the reader to make links between context, rationale and intentions of the project.

Literature Review (weighting 20%) 3,000 to 4,000 words

In this section, you should make a critical evaluation of, and demonstrate application to your
research project of, theories, frameworks and principles, drawn from a range of relevant and
appropriately referenced academic and practitioner literature. You must demonstrate wide
reading from a range of sources.

Research Methods (weighting 20%) 1,500 to 2,000 words

In this section, you should supply information about how you planned and carried out your
research project.
Demonstrating your understanding of research methods you must discuss your chosen
research philosophy, methodology and methods.
Discuss how you gathered information, what hurdles you overcame, why you approached
the project in the way you did e.g. questionnaire rather that interview. You should provide
enough information to tell the story of how you planned and carried out your project.

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Research Ethics (weighting 5%) 300 to 500 words
It is important you discuss how you ensured your project was aligned to the ethical
requirements of NBS and University guidelines. Remember to include signed documents
relating to informed consent from an organizational and individual perspective.

You should discuss the importance of research ethics, approaches to ensure research was
carried out in an ethical manner and detailed discussion of how you have ensured ethical
research.

Findings, Analysis and Discussion (weighting 15%) 1,500 to 2,000 words

In this chapter, you should present research findings.
You should identify the purpose of each question and how questions asked have been shaped
by literature in your literature review, summarise key trends or messages from each questions
findings and analyse the findings presented making appropriate reference to how they support
or contradicts specific theories or models in the literature review.

Conclusions and Future Research (weighting 10%) 1,500 to 2,000 words

In this chapter, you should reflect upon how the project objectives have been achieved.

You should also provide a detailed reflection on literature discussed in the literature review,
discussing how findings have supported or contradicted this literature. Try to reflect on as
much literature as possible without re-writing it. Do not include any new models or theories.
Integrate your discussion.

From this synthesis, you should then identify overall conclusions drawn from the study. You
should also discuss the limitations of this project and discuss how you could build on this
research.

Recommendations (weighting 5%) 500 to 750 words

Clearly, concisely yet comprehensively detail appropriate recommendations – these could
identify areas for consolidation, development and future planning,

Presentation, Structure, Engagement with the Guidance Process and Academic Writing
Style (weighting 10%)
You should ensure your report is free from spelling, punctuation and grammatical error and
that your writing style is detached and passive (remember to write gender free and in the 3rd
person). The layout and format must be consistent with project guidelines.

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Mark General Criteria
First Exceptional scholarship for subject.
(80 - Outstanding ability to apply, in the
100) right measure, the skills necessary
to achieve highly sophisticated and
fluent challenges to received
wisdom.
First Knowledge and understanding is
(70 - comprehensive both as to breadth
79) and depth. A mature ability to
critically appreciate concepts and
their inter-relationship is
demonstrated. Clear evidence of
independent thought. Presentation
of work is fluent, focused and
accurate.
Upper Knowledge base is up-to-date and
Second relevant, but also may be broad or
(60 - deep. Higher order critical
69) appreciation skills are displayed. A
significant ability to apply theory,
concepts, ideas and their inter-
relationship is illustrated
Lower Sound comprehension of topic.
Second Reasoning and argument are
(50 - generally relevant but not
59) necessarily extensive. Awareness of
concepts and critical appreciation
are apparent, but the ability to
conceptualise, and/or to apply theory
is slightly limited.
Third Knowledge is adequate but limited
(40 - and/or superficial. In the most part,
49) description/assertion rather than
argument or logical reasoning is
used. Insufficient focus is evident in
work presented.
(30 - Minimal awareness of subject area.
39) Communication of knowledge
frequently inarticulate and/or
irrelevant.
(0 - 29) Poor grasp of topic concepts or of
awareness of what concepts are.
Failure to apply relevant skills. Work
is inarticulate and/or
incomprehensible.
Module Assessment Criteria
Excellent articulation of the organizational issue
or project topic. Excellent level of analysis from
a critical perspective. Clear interpretation and
critique of research findings against models and
theories. Robust recommendations based upon
critical analysis. Provides evidence of extensive
reflection and learning.
Succinct formulation of the organizational
issue or project topic. Impressive level of
analysis from a critical perspective.
Research findings and theory clearly
interwoven. Recommendations clearly
specified and aligned. Provides evidence
of considerable reflection and learning.
Clear articulation of the organizational
issue or project topic supported by
relevant research and theoretical
analysis. Recommendations clearly
aligned. Provides evidence of reasonable
reflection and learning.
Clear articulation of the organizational
issue or project topic. Research findings
and relation to theory clear in most
areas. Recommendations sound.
Provides evidence of acceptable level
reflection and learning.
Descriptive piece detailing the
organizational issue or project topic.
Portrayal of the organizational analysis
rather unsophisticated. Methods of
research are loosely applied to the
theoretical concepts. Generally lacking
focus. Recommendations lacking focus
and relevance. Provides evidence of
limited reflection and learning.
Incoherent description relating to the
organizational issue or project topic.
Research methods, findings and analysis
lacking coherence. Recommendations
not appropriate.
Irrelevant and inaccurate organizational
issue or project topic. Report muddled
and vague. Fails to provide evidence of
reflection or learning.
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Late submission of work

Where coursework is submitted without approval, after the published hand-in deadline, the
following
penalties will apply.

For coursework submitted up to 1 working day (24 hours) after the published hand-in
deadline without approval, 10% of the total marks available for the assessment
(i.e.100%) shall be deducted from the assessment mark.

For clarity: a late piece of work that would have scored 65%, 55% or 45% had it been
handed in on time will be awarded 55%, 45% or 35% respectively as 10% of the total
available marks will have been deducted.

The Penalty does not apply to Pass/Fail Modules, i.e. there will be no penalty for late
submission if assessments on Pass/Fail are submitted up to 1 working day (24 hours) after
the published hand-in deadline.

Coursework submitted more than 1 working day (24 hours) after the published hand-in
deadline without approval will be regarded as not having been completed. A mark of zero
will be awarded for the assessment and the module will be failed, irrespective of the
overall module mark.

For clarity: if the original hand-in time on working day A is 12noon the 24 hour late
submission allowance will end at 12noon on working day B.

These provisions apply to all assessments, including those assessed on a Pass/Fail basis.

Word limits and penalties

If the assignment is within +10% of the stated word limit no penalty will apply.

The word count is to be declared on the front page of your assignment and the assignment
cover sheet. The word count does not include:

• Title and
• Reference list • Appendices
Contents page • Appropriate tables,
• Quotes from figures and
• Glossary • Bibliography interviews and illustrations
focus groups.

Please note, in text citations [e.g. (Smith, 2011)] and direct secondary quotations [e.g. “dib-
dab nonsense analysis” (Smith, 2011 p.123)] are INCLUDED in the word count.

If this word count is falsified, students are reminded that under ARNA page 30 Section 3.4
this will be regarded as academic misconduct.

If the word limit of the full assignment exceeds the +10% limit, 10% of the total marks
available for the assessment (i.e.100%) shall be deducted from the assessment mark.

Students must retain an electronic copy of this assignment (including ALL appendices)
and it must be made available within 24hours of them requesting it be submitted.

Note: For those assessments or partial assessments based on calculation, multiple choice

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etc., marks will be gained on an accumulative basis. In these cases, marks allocated to each
section will be made clear.

Academic Misconduct

The Assessment Regulations for Northumbria Awards (ARNA) contain the Regulations and
procedures applying to cheating, plagiarism and other forms of academic
misconduct.

The full policy is available at:

http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/sd/central/ar/qualitysupport/asspolicies/

You are reminded that plagiarism, collusion and other forms of academic misconduct as
referred to in the Academic Misconduct procedure of the assessment regulations are taken
very seriously by Newcastle Business School. Assignments in which evidence of plagiarism
or other forms of academic misconduct is found may receive a mark of zero.

Programme Leader contact details

Dr Les Tickner PhD, BA (Hons), FHEA, F Inst L&M, MBAPT, MCMI, Dip RSA.
Programme Leader for BSc in Business & Management / BSc in HRM & Leadership (IDL)
Corporate and Executive Development Department
Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University
Room 419 City Campus East, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 8ST, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0) 191 227 5126
Mobile: +44 (0) 7784 186 043
Email: leslie.tickner@northumbria.ac.uk

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