Research Paper Proposal
Title –Impact of Work-From-Home Human Resource Practices on the Performance of academic staff in online teaching: case study of a higher education institution in UK during COVID-19
Research Paper Structural Guide
- Area of interest – it is about the scope of your study, especially the area that your study will be focusing on, e.g., level of management (top, senior, middle, frontline or organisation-wide), level of strategy (corporate, business/competitive, or functional/departmental strategy), individual or group.
- Objectives – explain the main purposes of your study and list out the key objectives that you want to achieve with your study, e.g., serious reflection on your career journey, attempt to theorise about your managerial experiences, explore possible solutions to key managerial issue(s) that you are facing.
- Research questions – your questions should be developed to address your study objectives. These questions should guide your study. For example, reflection on your career journey is one of your study objectives, you may reflect on the process and outcomes of a mega project that you had experienced or observed; why the project was failed or succeeded and what key lessons you can draw on from your reflection. Keep yourself to be open-minded and remain objective. Refrain from falling into self-fulling prophecy trap – setting research questions to confirm your belief.
- Significance of the issues to be explored in the paper – argue why the issues of your paper are worth researching, highlight possible contributions of your study to managerial practice and management theory advancement.
- Key words – state the key subject terms that you will use it for online library search for relevant literature and if other want to locate your paper they can find it with your assigned key subject words. For example, motivation, transformation leadership, organisation culture, business model, core competence, etc.
- Background – describe the context within which your case is situated. It may involve the organisation you involved, its business(s) & industry, key protagonists/characters, project(s) engaged, incident(s), etc. – any facts related to your study. You as a direct observer or actor might have a clear picture about the whole scenario, you need to describe it to the extent that the readers can have a common understanding about the scenario as a starting point.
- Case body – having drawn a clear overview of your case with the background section, with the same purpose – creating a common understanding about the insider story for your readers. If your study is to theorise with 3-H framework, you need to briefly describe the Heart, Head and Hand issues. Both background and case body should be factual rather than analytical based. You only do your analysis in discussion section.
- Theory/Model – state which model(s) your paper will anchor on and explain why it is relevant and useful to support your study. List out a few journal papers, books, website materials that you will review and cite in your paper in APA referencing format.
- Methodology – given the time constraint, it’s unlikely that you will conduct survey to collect data for your study. Often, students will adopt case research coupled with some interviews, if appropriate.
- Expected deliverables – what will be the outcome or ‘product’ of your study? For professional doctoral studies, the deliverables must be having a high level of academic rigour and sound practical value.
