Guidelines on How to Write the Perfect Postgraduate Dissertation

© 2012 by Theocharis Vagelis

All you current and prospect Postgraduate students, take my word for it. This is a concise but also complete guide for the perfect dissertation. I know. I have to know as the past 9 years, I have been working – among others - as an MBA Professor for three (3) Universities. Take my advice, follow the procedures and format I am proposing and avoid common mistakes, mistakes that I face every day as a Professor, Supervisor and Dissertation Grader and Coach. The only thing that you will not find in this guide is your Dissertation topic. This is up to you. Think of something innovative, interesting, useful and attractive and you will easily succeed. I wish you my best.

The aim of a dissertation is to offer the students the opportunity to apply critically what they have learned in the taught programme to a topic of their own choice. Please note that the key for a successful dissertation is your own critical thought. Do put your own thoughts, mind, character and personality in to the dissertation.

A dissertation should be clearly focused on a specific topic. This topic should identify a problem being addressed. Dissertations can take a number of forms, for example:
• study of a particular problem in an organisation and/or industry,
• a case study of a particular corporation (i.e. a business plan, a marketing plan, a success story),
• a critical review of an area of literature,
• theoretical development of a technique or issue,
• empirical work (i.e. quantitative analysis).

It is a fact that each of the above requires a slightly different approach, but it is useful to have in your mind the following general points:
• Dissertations must involve personal contribution. It should be a logically and properly argued issue based on reading a wide variety of references and on unique ideas that the student has developed.
• Case studies or other dissertations that involve interviews with managers and other personnel, should be carefully prepared at an early stage and in consultation with the supervisor.
• Literature review should always be done in a critical way.
• Wherever data collection and/or data processing is involved, carefully plan the following steps:
• Data identification
• Data availability
• Data obtaining
• Data analysis

You should contact the teaching staff as early as possible in order to finalise an appropriate topic, the dissertation’s structure and future meetings. Programme instructors should be primarily concerned with:
• suitability and scope,
• development of an appropriate structure,
• depth of discussion,
• adequacy of source material,
• the style of English.

According to Robson’s “Real World Research” (2002), the general structure to adopt for a research report is the following:
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology
• Results
• Conclusions
• References
• Appendices

This structure best fits the deductive approach. However, if your research is essentially inductive, you may want to structure your report in a different way. The precise structure you adopt is less important than the necessity assessment criteria.

The abstract
The abstract is a short summary of the complete content of the dissertation. According to “Research Methods for Business Student” (Saunders et al, 2003) it should contain four short paragraphs with answers to the following questions:
• What were my research questions, and why were they important?
• How did I go about answering the research questions?
• What did I found out in response to my research questions?
• What conclusions do I draw regarding my research questions?

The introductory chapter (10% of report)
The introduction should provide a clear idea about the central concern issue in your research and also a rationale as to why you felt it necessary to conduct this research. It should also include a clear statement of your research questions and research objectives. You might also think about including a brief background of the organization (if you are researching one).

The literature review (20%-25% of report)
The literature review chapter sometimes comes after the method chapter. However in most dissertations the literature review is there to set your study within its wider context and show the reader how your study adds something to the work that has already been done on a specific topic. For a Masters dissertation, this section should include at least twenty or more named references of others who have conducted research in this field. These references may be drawn from journal articles or textbooks. Try to avoid extensive use of Internet references. The title of your literature review chapter should reflect the content of the chapter. Try to avoid calling it just “literature review”. This section of the dissertation may well be more than one chapter, particularly if it is a critical overview of topic.

The methodology chapter (15% of report)
The methodology chapter must be in sufficient detail to make an estimate of the reliability and validity of your methods. You should provide in this chapter an explanation of why you collected certain data, how you did so (i.e. research, interviews, questionnaires, etc), what data you collected (i.e. primary or secondary), from where you collected it (sample, population, characteristics of sample and population, etc), when you collected it and how you analyzed it. Another way of presenting the findings is in a thematic way with the themes in descending order of importance.

The results chapter(s) (30% - 40% of report)
The report may contain more than one results chapter. Here you will have the opportunity to report the facts that you discovered via your research. This is where you include tables and graphs that illustrate your findings. If there is a large number of graphs and tables, put some of them in the appendices but make sure you refer to them in the appropriate page so that the reader can refer to them easily. Remember, this chapter is to present the facts. You do not need to provide opinions of the facts at this stage. You should also return to your research objectives and let these dictate the order in which you present your findings.

The conclusion chapter(s) (10% - 15% of report)
This part of the dissertation is a description of the main lessons to be learnt from your study and what future research should be conducted. It is your conclusions that will demonstrate whether you have answered the research questions. This is also your chance to demonstrate imagination and originality. Do not just present your findings, this is inadequate. In this chapter you have to make judgements.

References
Note a detailed, alphabetical list of the sources from which the information has been obtained and which have been cited in your text. Two of the most popular are the Harvard or the American Psychological Association (APA) systems.

Appendices
Try to keep the appendices to a minimum.

Good Luck!

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