Steps of Writing a Business Dissertation

Writing a dissertation is a complicated and challenging task, especially if it is a business dissertation. Nevertheless, this seemingly tough experience might become rewarding and even interesting if you approach the writing process cleverly. To do it, you need to be prepared to what is expected of you. This article is exactly what you need to get this information and become mentally and physically capable of creating a superb business dissertation.

Find a Right Topic

In the context of a dissertation, a right topic is an innovative one. Dissertations are about studying a problem and offering a unique perspective, interpretation, or solution to it. Of course, such a result is possible only if you research something new. Thus, to write an original paper, start with reading about something that you find interesting and exciting. In the process, you might detect an area or aspect that was not studied well enough or an obvious gap in the existing knowledge about the problem. This is what you were looking for! If you have a chance to close a loophole in modern science with the help of your dissertation, you should grasp this opportunity.

Pay attention that you should not make up a new topic about something that no one has ever discussed. It is too complicated and in many regards, impossible. That is why a new approach or method applied to the problem that is not new is acceptable and will be approved by a research committee, which is to consider your thesis or dissertation proposal. Furthermore, ensure that the topic, which you eventually choose, is neither too broad nor too narrow. Otherwise, you will either exceed the word count limit without any accomplishment done or will struggle to find at least some relevant information.

Useful note: As you read various literature in the process of choosing a topic, be sure to take notes about what you find and analyze the material critically. Such a proactive approach will help you to write an obligatory literature review and place your topic in the context with almost no efforts.

Create a Proposal

Once you are done with choosing a topic and formulating research questions and/or hypotheses to answer or test, you should proceed to write a dissertation proposal. It is a kind of an extensive outline of your dissertation. It is necessary to introduce your idea to a research committee of your educational establishment. To get their approval, you should accentuate the originality of your topic regardless of whether you are going to discuss something absolutely new or will simply adopt an innovative methodology.

The components to include in your dissertation or thesis proposal are as follows:

• Title Page. Although it is not its final version, a title page should contain your name, the name of your college or university, a degree that you expect to receive upon completing a dissertation or thesis, and, of course, the title of the work.
• Table of Contents
• Abstract. It is a summary of your proposal confined to 150-250 words. It should provide information regarding the problem under consideration, purpose of the research, significance of discussing the subject, and methodology that is to be used.
• Introduction. Here, there should be the statement of problem, the necessity of its consideration explained, background information on the topic, and purpose of the paper.
• Literature Review. It is a brief presentation of the literature read so far and used to place the topic in the context.
• Methodology. It is a section of expounding on the ways of approaching the problem.
• Conclusion. It should be a summary of all main ideas expressed in the proposal. The limitations of the research, which you can think of in this phase of writing, should be articulated too.
• Bibliography. Here, there must be a list of sources that were used in the proposal. It might be divided into two sections, i.e., that with primary sources and that with the secondary ones. The page should be formatted in accordance with the guidelines of a specific formatting style.
• Appendices. This section is optional. If you have additional materials, i.e., tables and charts, that are crucial for understanding the proposal, they should be included here.

Write a Dissertation

You have made two considerable steps forward and have made much progress so far. Nevertheless, it is high time to start getting deeper into the problem under discussion and begin the actual writing process. You need to read even more literature to find evidence and examples that support your hypothesis or, on the contrary, oppose it. You must gather as much data as possible in order to describe comprehensively the current state of knowledge on the topic. Keep in mind that you should give credit to all authors whose ideas you rely on or cite in your dissertation. Thus, assemble a complete bibliography formatted according to the guidelines of some style, e.g., APA, Harvard, Chicago, or MLA.

Apart from reading, at this stage, you should implement your original research using the chosen methodology. In business dissertations, it is necessary to collect new data or increase the amount of those gathered before by other researchers. Analyze newly acquired data, make notes about the results, and develop charts and tables, if applicable, to present them effectively. Once you are done with these tasks, proceed to structure your business dissertation. In fact, the structure is quite similar to that of the proposal:

• A title page. Just like in a proposal, the page should contain your name, a degree, which you aspire to obtain, your school, and the title of the work.
• A table of contents.
• Abstract. Again, it should be a summary of the entire dissertation, but this time, the abstract should be a bit longer and reach one page.
• Preface. Here, you need to provide the acknowledgment to those people who helped you to accomplish such an important thing as a dissertation, for example, a member of faculty who was supervising you.

• Introduction. It should be the extended version of the introduction that you have included in the proposal.
• Main chapters. You must review literature, describe the methodology, tell how the research was conducted, and present the results as well as their analysis and interpretation. The information should be divided in separate chapters; yet, they should be logically connected.
• Conclusion. As in a proposal, you should mention the limitations of own work and provide suggestion for future research.
• Bibliography. It should be the extended version of the bibliography that you have included in the proposal.
• Appendices, which is an optional part.

Finally, edit and proofread your dissertation. Only having done these crucial steps, you may submit the paper to your professor for feedback and approval. Be ready to revising and redrafting. These processes are an inseparable part of dissertation writing.