(Proposal question: 750 words, original work- plagiarism free – Do not
copy)

This week you are
exploring the role of epistemology in research and the philosophical
assumptions that provide insight into management research. You are gaining an
understanding of how your own philosophical assumptions can influence your
research and even the process of selecting a problem or issue to study. In this
week’s assignment, you will begin to generate a broadly specified topic for the
management dissertation project that you will eventually carry out.

Dissertation Topic:

Fracking for Oil and Gas is a Highly
Contentious Issue: How Can Oil and Gas Shale Extraction Companies Address Corporate Social Responsibility
Issues Successfully?

In this first week, you
are required to think about some of the key parameters that may have influenced
your choice of topic and to communicate initial ideas to the module Instructor
for comment.

After receiving Instructor feedback, you will review and refine your choice of
topic, and that refined outline will then function as a foundation for
subsequent work to be carried out in the module.

In this week’s submission, you should address each of the following points:

1) Outline the general management topic or problem that you plan to address in
your dissertation. Use the attached file “Management dissertation notes
and guides” to help you with this.

2) Explain how your selection of the topic or problem is influenced by your
epistemological perspective(s).
This assignment will support the draft of Section 1 of your Proposal. Remember
to write concisely.

This document is intended to
provide some guidance on the development of the Proposal. Carefully read the
following as you begin to plan your work.

1. Remember the key rules about
   Harvard citation style and presentation:

1. All fonts must be
   either Arial 12 or Times New Roman 12
2. All text must be
   left-justified (meaning you cannot have a straight right margin)
3. All references are to
   be in Harvard citation format .
4. References are never
   indented or right-justified

Length

The text of this proposal shouldbe between 3,000-3,500 words in length, excluding the front page and the Reference
List.

1. Aim, objectives and feasibility
of the dissertation

This section should include:

1.
The
research aim, the research question(s) and the research objectives

2.
Feasibility:
Do you have the necessary resources(such
as access to requisite data, consent of your organisation, some indication of
the willingness of subjects to be questioned or interviewed, etc.)?

3.
Justification
of the topic: Why you are researching this topic, what the potential benefit is
to your firm or industry, and what actions may result from the valuable
insights gained, etc.

In
this section, explain your topic area. Include appropriate background information and an explanation of why this topic is of
interest to you (and why it
should be of interest to others). What is motivating your research? What is the potential benefit to your
firm or industry? What actions may result from the valuable insights gained?
What is the academic angle of your research? How does it tie in with your
management studies from your modules? What underlying academic theories and
constructs are of particular relevance to your research?

Next,
clearly state the aim of your
research. This should be a general but concise statement indicating the purpose
of the study. Then, consider what you intend to achieve through your
dissertation (i.e.present your
research questions).Follow this with the research objectives.
What specific objectives (analyse, investigate, explain, etc.) do you intend to
meet during the course of the research to achieve the aim of the study?

Finally, include a brief discussion of thefeasibilityof
your study. Do you have the necessary resources (such as access to requisite
data, consent of your organisation, some indication of the willingness of
subjects to be questioned or interviewed, etc.)? You will need to be able to
demonstrate that this is feasible for a4-month
project.

2.
Literature review

In this section, you will
discuss how your work fits with the existing published work. Find at least
10 sources of academic information (references)
connected to the work you propose to do and analyse them to show how your
research may fill or extend an existing gap. Compare and contrast the sources
with each other and with your approach. Remember that you must paraphrase the
articles in your own words (appropriately referenced, of course) and synthesise
their potential contribution to your research; they should not be presented as
a ‘list’ of articles. At least half
of the sources must be from refereed academic journals, which will be found
in the online library. Citations
from the main textbooks used for your modules are NOT sufficient here.
However, you may find it useful to use the bibliographies in these texts
to point you in the direction of some initial, more detailed, academic papers.

List your references in a bibliography
at the end of your Proposal, using theHarvard referencing system. These references will comprise part of your full bibliography
once your dissertation gets started. They can also be included in your literature
review chapter of your final submission.

3. Research methodology and methods

Your dissertation gives
you the opportunity to explore in detail some aspect of theory, knowledge or
skills that you have encountered during the taught modules of your degree. The
research process that you will undertake will require you to engage in some way
with theory and its relationship to managerial practice. However, there are
different ways that you might approach this task. In this section, you will
discuss your research methodology. Consider the epistemological approach that
you intend to take—is it positivist, relativist or constructionist? Your epistemological approach will inform the
research design you choose (action research, survey, case study, etc.). Next,
consider the research methods that you will use to collect both the secondary
and primary data. Will you undertake a pilot study? What about your
questionnaire design and sample?You must be able to justify
your choice in terms of your learning objectives, your research question and
your research approach.

5. Why You Are Doing This Topic

8. The reference list

The reference
list should:

a)
Include only sources you have cited above; and

b)
Comply fully with our Harvard referencing requirements.