Research Methods for Business Students by Dr Mark Saunders et al

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satisfactionuk
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Hi,
What does research mean to project manager, well project managers may actually be running a research project but more than likely they will be wanting to use the vast array of principles and skills of the professional researcher to gather information about their particular project. At the beginning of the project the project manager needs to research the project to find out how closely it fits to the companies strategic goals. Acute attention to detail in this section of what can be termed discovery is essential if the project it going to start off on the right track. Further research needs to be carried out to solicit the opinions and attitudes of key players and decision makers like the board executives and line managers who can either speed the project along or cause severe obstructions to its successful completion. Researching the customers and end users provides crucial information regarding the formulation of the end product or services that need to be provided by the product. Researching the suppliers capabilities and past performance will have a direct impact on project quality and timeframe while researching the accounts of external suppliers will provide information on whether they have the necessary capital to see their part of the project through to completion.

This book will provide you with a step by step process through detailed information from real life case studies and detailed information and exercises that teach the theory-based research techniques in a practical context will provide you with a complete research toolkit.

The book covers, how to select the appropriate research topic, the formulation of clear research objectives, data collection techniques and choice of suitable methods of data analysis, the use of appropriate integrated IT and finally presentation skills.

This is a really good book on the subject and will be of great help to any person wanting to conduct research in a more professional manner.
Kind regards

Stephan Toth
Mohamed.Benmerikhi
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Hi Everyone,

Indeed, I have the book and did use it when i first started in management research. It gave me a great insight into the intricacies of undertaking a research project. I still believe that this book is very informative in terms of providing the reader / researcher with an adequate knowledge base to get started. However, when you get to conducting your first steps, i.e. problem formulation, your research questions, epistemology, methodology...etc, you soon realise that a lot more knowldge is required and move on to other books.

This is a short list that I find very useful:

Research Design by Creswell
Engaged Scholarship by Andrew Van de Ven
Method in Social Science, a Realist Approach by Andrew Sawyer

Kind regards
Mohamed
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