Assignment Task
Basic requirements for your assignments
Consultancy Project Report
This module will be assessed by the submission of a consultancy project report which delivers practical and realistic recommendations to address a business-related strategic challenge, supported by appropriate reference to theoretical and conceptual analysis.
Other than in exceptional circumstances which you would need to discuss with your supervisor and the programme manager you are expected to do your research on the topic and with the organisation and method set out in your research proposal for the Advanced Research Methods module. If you do switch topics at this stage, you will need to make sure that the new topic still falls within one of the two approaches discussed earlier under ‘Choosing a topic’.
Recommended structure for written assignments
This section sets out a recommended structure for your project proposal and also for your consultancy project report, with indicative word lengths for each section of the report. You must decide how you manage your work and produce your assignments. However, the approach recommended here is based on many years of experience and, if followed, should lead to well-balanced, coherent pieces of work that meet the learning outcomes and assessment criteria for each module. If you depart from this model, you must be aware of how your work will be assessed. If you do not include content which is relevant to an assessment criterion then you risk not meeting the required standards.
Consultancy project report
This section sets out a recommended structure for your consultancy project report, with indicative word lengths for each section.
i. Title page
The title page should include your project’s title, the name of the programme, the awarding body,
You should follow the usual format of academic research titles. The first part of the title should state the management/business topic which is the focus of the proposal; the second part should mention the organisation/sector and possibly also the proposed method, typically a case study. The two parts of the title should be divided by a colon. Here are two examples:
Innovations in digital marketing strategy: A case study of ABC Ltd
The expected impact of Brexit on staff recruitment in the UK hospitality sector: A case study of the Paramount Hotel, London.
ii. Contents page
Use you automatic Word contents page template – keep this to the main headings and hyperlink the pages to this page for ease of reference.
Introduction
The Introduction will not be marked and should largely copy and paste relevant material from your project proposal. The chapter is mainly to give the reader the context of your research, why you chose the topic and what you are trying to achieve. So it should set out the background to the study and the nature of the problem/issue/opportunity being examined, explaining why the research is needed. You should also include your aim and objectives at the end of the section.
Background Research/Literature Review
This section should set out the background research you have done on the problem/issue/opportunity. Your background research may be based partly on an analysis of secondary data from the organisation itself – for instance, management accounts, staff survey results, training feedback forms or web analytics data. This will normally be combined with a literature review. Sometimes there may not be sufficient.
company data, or you may not be able to gain access to a specific organisation. Under such circumstances the background research will take the form of a literature review alone.
The literature review element of this section has two main purposes:
To find information which will directly help address your chosen problem/issue/opportunity (e.g. by identifying a specific change that might help the organisation, such as identifying what is regarded as best practice in HR terms when implementing a major organisational change); and/or
To guide your primary research (e.g. by identifying key questions that need to be followed up, such as identifying the key areas to be covered when measuring customers’ perceptions of the organisation’s brand).
Method Explanation
You have already justified your primary data collection method in your project proposal, so there is no need to cover this again. Instead, this section should explain the primary data collection and analysis techniques that you used when undertaking your primary research, so that the reader can see that your results are likely to be valid. The section should typically include:
Access – how you gained access to the organisation or why consent was not needed
Sampling method and sample size
Primary data collection instrument used – the content and format of the questions asked and how these link to the literature. A clean copy of your questionnaire or interview questions should be included as an appendix Data collection administration – how you went about setting up and conducting your questionnaire survey or your interviews
Data analysis approach – how you went about analysing the collected data
Ethical issues relevant to the research – what these were and how you addressed them, updating as necessary the corresponding section of your project proposal.
Results and Discussion
This section should set out and analyse the results of the primary research that you conducted. The content of the section will vary depending on whether you have used a qualitative approach (e.g. semi-structured interviews with staff or managers) or a quantitative one (e.g. a questionnaire survey of staff or customers). However, whatever your method, this section must:
Analyse and evaluate the data, not simply describe it;
Include suitable comparisons with the literature;
Set out your conclusions about the data, supported by the evidence presented.
It is generally better to incorporate your discussion of your results into the same section that sets out those results, rather than presenting the data first, then discussing or analysing it later in a separate section.
