Wissenschaftliche Studie zu einem Praxisthema

Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften

Version 6.0 vom 04.09.2015

22M0778

Scientific Study on a Practical Subject

International Supply Chain Management (MSCM)

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The significance of projects and project management has increased strongly over the years. Nowadays, it is hard to imagine any organisation without well-functioning project management, as the number, size, importance and international scale of projects has steadily increased over the lastdecades. The expectations of the project promoter with regard to the performance of the project leader and the project team are high. However, a project is never started “just to do a project”. The project’s reason of existence is likely to be a specific key problem or challenge of the organisation regarding an important topic. Ample preparation is needed in order to successfully execute the project. Before a project can even be planned, it has to be determined which problem has be addressed, which questions need to beposed to find a solution and which methods are needed to collect the data required. In this course, the students will acquire knowledge and skills about applying scientifically grounded methods for developing a research proposal to address a key problem or challenge in their organisation’s practical domain. It is essential to do proper research in business organisations, in order to assure that the solutions proposed to be implemented in projects are indeed the solution to the right problem. For the course ‘Scientific study on a practical subject’, the students will individually write a research proposal for a problem or challenge from their daily practice. This problem or challenge should preferably originate from the context of their own organisation. The research proposal will be reported in the form of a written report and an oral presentation. The written report will beevaluated for assessment by the course leader.

• At the end of this course, the students are able to scientifically and systematically analyse key problems and challenges from the daily practice of a business organisation.
  
  The course is structured according to the following research process from the book of Sekaran and Bougie (2013).
• 1. Observation (Broad area of research interest identified)
• 2. Preliminary Data Gathering (Interviewing Literature survey)
• 3. Problem Definition (Research problem delineated)
• 4. Critical literature review
• 5. Deduction: Theoretical Framework
• 6. Deduction: Generation of Hypotheses
• 7. Research design
• 8. Data collection, analysis, and interpretation
  9a Deduction (Hypotheses substantiated? Research question answered?
  9b Induction (Research question answered?)
• 10. Report Writing
• 11. Report Presentation
• 12. Managerial Decision Making

Wissensverbreiterung
The students that successfully participated in this course have broad general knowledge regarding the use of scientific methods to study business problems and are able to use this knowledge in practice.
Wissensvertiefung
The students that successfully participated in this course have deepened their knowledge by individually writing a research proposal for studying a practical business problem of their choice.
Können - instrumentale Kompetenz
The students that successfully participated in this course are able to purposefully use the methods that are provided in this course to study problems or challenges in the daily practice of their organisation.
Können - kommunikative Kompetenz
The students that successfully participated in this course are able to present and discuss research proposals and the outcomes of scientific studies on a practical theme.
Können - systemische Kompetenz

The course will be conducted on the basis of a project from the student’s daily practice.

It is mandatory that the students have participated in the module Project Management and have a suitable project for use as a case study at hand.

van den Hoek, Ronald

• van den Hoek, Ronald
• Lückmann, Patrick

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Mandatory readingSekaran, U., Bougie, R. (2013). Research Methods for Business, 6th edition. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-119-
94225-2. (436 pages)

Advised readingBlumberg, B., Cooper, D.R., Schindler, P.S. (2014), Business Research Methods, 4th edition, McGrawHill. ISBN 978-0-077-15748-7. (780 pages)

If additional material is needed, this will be provided during class.

Projektbericht und Referat

Written report of max. 15 pages with a research proposal, written in English. (summative)Oral presentation of max. 10 slides with the core points of the research proposal. (formative)

1 Semester

Nur Sommersemester

Deutsch und Englisch