1. WRITING A THESIS Karen M. Olsen

2. 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

3. Finding a topic Look in textbooks, DN, the Economist, Financial Times, etc Look for on-going research projects, f. ex. - FOCUS – Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions (STR, INB, FIE) and Beyond Budgeting (BUS) - CSI – Center for Service Innovation (MBM, STR) - S T O P (STR, BUS, and FIN)

4. Requirements of a master thesis A larger unified piece of work 30 ECTS credits (workload 1 semester) Ca. 50-80 pages You have to write in groups of 2 students http://www.nhh.no/en/student-pages/thesis/guidelines-related-to- theses-in-the-msc-programme.aspx

5. 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 INB, ENE, BUS, SAM

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

7. Collect your own or use existing data? Collect own data - Experiments, surveys, qualitative interviews, observation, etc - Notification of master thesis projects to NSD: http://www.nsd.uib.no/personvern/om/english.html 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 www.nsd.no www.nsd.no

8. What to put on the application for supervisor 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’