WRITING A THESIS Karen M. Olsen January 31, 2014

Agenda Finding a topic Requirements of a master thesis - Be prepared – take Methodology for master thesis STR402/405! What to put on the application for supervisor Writing a master thesis in FOCUS (Fall 2014)

Master thesis: relevant for your job? «Peacekeeping machine»

Finding a topic Look in textbooks, DN, the Economist, Financial Times, etc Look for on-going research projects, examples.. - FOCUS – Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions (STR, INB, FIE) and Beyond Budgeting (BUS) - CSI – Center for Service Innovation (MBM, STR) - Crisis, restructuring, growth (Krise, omstilling, vekst) (SAM, ECO and STR)

Requirements of a master thesis A larger unified piece of work 30 ECTS credits (workload 1 semester) Ca pages You have to write in groups of 2 students theses-in-the-msc-programme.aspx

How to write a master thesis? STR402/405 Basic methodological preparations - What does a master thesis look like? - What are the requirements to conduct a scientific piece of work? - What is methods? - What does a methods chapter in your thesis contain? How will you learn about this? - Read about methods and analyze examples - Practical experience through exercises - Develop a project description Mainly students in STR and MBM, but also ENE, BUS, SAM and INB

The process of writing the thesis Research question Theory Model Design Data collection Data analysis Reporting

Collect your own or use existing data? Collect own data - Experiments, surveys, qualitative interviews, observation, etc Use existing data - possible sources - Official registers (SSB, stock exchange, Brønnøysund, etc) - Surveys collected by a firm; ex. employees or customers - Data collected in research projects - Norwegian Social Science Data Service

What to put on the application for supervisor (March15 th ) Try to explain as accurately as possible what you intend to do Your choice of words will decide which supervisors are relevant Talk to potential supervisors Topic is not ‘cut in stone’

Master’s thesis: FOCUS – Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions Topics - Management challenges in flexible work arrangements (STR) - Team leadership and relationships in teams (STR) - Leadership of knowledge workers (STR) - Internationalization and integration (STR/INB) - Change capacity (STR) - Dynamic control systems/Beyond Budgeting (BUS) - No specific topics - apply to department (Finance) Conditions - Thesis advisor from the research project - NOK per thesis for travelling and other expenses Qualifications - Average grade B Deadline: March 15, 2014 For full text, see: or pages/thesis/master-topics.aspxhttp://blogg.nhh.no/focus/ pages/thesis/master-topics.aspx