Research Project in Human Resource Management (779N1)

45 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Summer teaching

In this module you have to see through an independent piece of research, starting with a research question and ending in the presentation and critique of findings.

To start off, you identify a strategic business issue and formulate an HR-related research question after rigorously reviewing and understanding existing research and literature.

You're assigned a supervisor and they work closely with you to develop the project and write up a 12,000-word Management Research Report. This must clearly outline the theoretical approach and foundations of the project, analyse data and generate well-supported insights linking theory and data. It must also recognise shortcomings and develop concrete HR-relevant proposals.

You are expected to draw on your entire training from the first two terms of the academic year, using both substantive and methodological knowledge from completed modules. You are then expected to develop the research project and essay based on your theoretical and empirical interests.

You're expected to independently work on all steps of the research and collect data as you go, although the nature of this data and how you collect it is down to you.

You will also deal with research access and ethics approval processes.

Research methods can include:

• face-to-face interviews
• focus groups
• participant and/or non-participant observation
• archival research
• discourse analysis
• textual and statistical analysis.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 450 hours of work. This breaks down into about 2 hours of contact time and about 448 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2023/24. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum. We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.