Impact of leadership on business performance

Enclose attachment of full and clear instructions within the additional materials
It is important that you first assess its viability as a project. Some questions you might wish to consider are:
* Does it fall within the field of Business or closely-related fields such as project management i.e. relate to
managing projects or resources?
* Is the topic of personal interest?
* Does it provide opportunities for career development?
* Is the topic seen as a problem or issue by the organisation and will the organisation be supportive?
* Where appropriate, does the organisation keep records and in an accessible form where such data are
central to the research?
* Is the organisation willing to provide access to relevant documents, records or people to whom you may
wish to speak?
* Does a significant literature exist in the selected field?
* Could the topic (or aspects of it) be seen as ‘sensitive’?

Research Report
Title: Impact of leadership on business performance,
It is important that you first assess its viability as a project. Some questions you
might wish to consider are:
* Does it fall within the field of Business or closely-related fields such as project
management i.e. relate to managing projects or resources?
* Is the topic of personal interest?
* Does it provide opportunities for career development?
* Is the topic seen as a problem or issue by the organisation and will the organisation be
supportive?
* Where appropriate, does the organisation keep records and in an accessible form
where such data are central to the research?
* Is the organisation willing to provide access to relevant documents, records or people to
whom you may wish to speak?
* Does a significant literature exist in the selected field?
* Could the topic (or aspects of it) be seen as ‘sensitive’?
Format for this report should be as follow;
1. Introduction
2. Literature review
3. Methodology
4. Research and Findings
5. Conclusions
6. Recommendations
Bibliography/References
Appendices
You should also provide a brief to preface the Research Report.
1. Introduction
This need not be long (say around 3 pages), but it performs a number of important
functions regarding the Report as a whole.
Introduction should cover the following:
* Clear statement of aims for the research
* Brief but relevant data about the organisational context (further detail can go
into the Appendices), with the business rationale for selecting the topic (i.e.
the need for the investigation) ‘thoroughly critiqued’
* A set of clear research questions (commencing why?, what?, etc.) or
research objectives (commencing with an active verb e.g. ‘to investigate’ or ‘to
evaluate’, etc.); the number of these is likely to be in the range of 3 to 4;
hypotheses may alternatively be used, but are not mandatory
* An overview of the theoretical/conceptual framework and primary research
methods to be used (a more detailed discussion will appear in the
Methodology chapter)
*A summary of the overall structure to be employed in the report.
The specification of your research questions/objectives is particularly critical. You may
initially select these on the basis of your perceptions of the organisational issues. These
initial perceptions may, however, change once you have completed your Literature
Review and you may wish to revisit and refine your research questions/objectives as part
of an iterative and reflexive process that synthesises concepts and practice. The
specification of research questions/objectives is also important because they ‘drive’ and
give coherence to the remainder of your report. Each research question/objective should
be specifically addressed in your Literature Review, possibly by incorporating the themes
in sub-headings. How you plan to research empirically your research
questions/objectives will also feature in your Methodology chapter. Each of your research
questions/objectives will also form the basis of your Research chapter, will be revisited in
your Conclusions and addressed in your Recommendations.
2. Literature review
The usual practice in most research projects is to commence with a literature review: this
is known as a ‘deductive’ approach in which the researcher uses theories, concepts, etc.
to structure their primary research. It is also possible to adopt an ‘inductive’ approach
which reverses this process ie primary data are gathered first and then the literature is
used to contextualise and integrate the results of the primary research.
The starting point for investigating an issue is to carry out a review of the literature
relevant to the topic in hand. This implies that the organisation and the issues specific to
it are left to one side and a chapter is presented which consists purely of the findings of
an exploration of the relevant published material (e.g. books, articles, databases) relating
to the topic. It is therefore highly unlikely that your organisation will even be mentioned in
this chapter, except possibly in the introduction to the chapter which might usefully
explain the purpose of the literature review for your research. One of the main purposes
of the literature review is to address specifically each of your research questions and
identify what the literature says about them. Thus, it is a highly focused review and not a
summary of everything that the literature has to say generally about a topic area. Your
literature review should be structured around your research questions, using each as a
sub-heading.
Some of the broad aims of the literature review may be summarised as follows:
 Helps you to refine your research questions
 Increases your knowledge/expertise in your chosen topic area
 Locates your research in the context of what is already known,
 Aims to ensure that your knowledge on the topic area is up-to-date
 Helps to identify current trends, issues and debates in your chosen topic area
 Helps to identify thinking about ‘best practice’
 Helps to identify relevant theories, models and key concepts for application to
your topic area and the leading authors associated with them
 Provides a means of validating criteria to be measured and analysed in your
primary research
 May generate themes which will be followed in both the literature review and
throughout the rest of the report
Students sometimes ask how many literature sources should be referred to in a
Management Research Report. There is no definitive answer to this, since it will
depend (amongst other things) on how extensive the literature is in a given field.
However, a minimum number of is likely to be in the range of 20-30 in order to do
some justice to the literature in your chosen subject area, but a more thorough
exploration of the literature in a high quality Management Research Report might
refer to over 30.
3. Methodology
Methodology is defined by Jankowicz (2005: 387) as “the analysis of and rationale
for the particular [research] method(s) used in a project”.
The writing of the methodology chapter requires you to read relevant texts on
business and social science research methods, weigh and discuss what is contained
in these sources about alternative research methods and apply these to the
decisions made about your selected methods, their strengths and weaknesses and
why certain methods were selected and others rejected, thus providing a rationale
for the methods used.
The methodology chapter is likely to include discussion of the following:
(1) Research philosophy; ontology and epistemology; alternative philosophies e.g.
qualitative/quantitative, positivist/phenomenological or interpretive; a rationale for
methods selected (as noted above)
(2) Research design and its validation e.g. issues in questionnaire design or semistructured interviewing in theory and in practice and how these issues were
addressed; a validation of each question asked, usually by reference to a cited
source which has already been discussed in the literature review.
(3) Sampling: information about the sample, and sample size, how was it selected,
what roles did respondents have, why were these included, was the sample
representative in some way, how many respondents and non-respondents and
any implications of the latter, integrating references to the literature and research
practice?
(4) Ethics: A discussion of research ethics by reference to the methodology
literature and how ethical principles were incorporated into practice.
(5) Limitations: Any concluding comments on weaknesses found in the methods
used and their implications.
4. Research and Findings
The criteria for assessing your primary/secondary research chapter are set out in the
marking guidelines.
A good primary research chapter is likely to:
 Be closely structured around the research questions/objectives
 Report findings clearly, possibly (where appropriate) through the use of
tables, charts or other pictorial devices
 Provide a written interpretation and analysis of the findings (i.e. not allow
tables, charts, etc. to speak for themselves)
 Report all findings faithfully (and not consign important data to Appendices)
 Provide integrating reference to the literature
5. Conclusions
It is important to note that conclusions precede recommendations, not the other way
round. The conclusions should specifically address each of your research
questions/objectives, providing a summary analysis of what has been found out from the
primary/secondary research, with integrated reflections on how the findings either
compliment or differ from those reported in the literature. Conclusions also provide a
logical bridge between the body of the report and any recommendations. It is important
to note that conclusions (and recommendations) should not contain any material or
ideas, either from the literature or primary research, which have not already been
presented in the body of the report. If you find it necessary to raise something of
significance in your conclusions not already discussed in the body, then the body of the
report needs adjusting to take account of this: no ideas should appear ‘out of the blue’ at
this stage of your report. Your conclusions need not be long, but they should do justice to
all the important points raised in the body of the report.
6. Recommendations
Research Reports should finish with recommendations for action. Ensure they are
clear, precise and pragmatic, with, at minimum some cost implications.
Recommendations need to address all the issues identified in the conclusions,
unless they are thought to be impractical or unfeasible in the current organisational
context (and if this is the case, this needs to be stated, since it may represent a
limitation to what might ideally be achievable). Logically, the recommendations
should address the research questions/objectives that have been the drivers of the
report as a whole. Recommendations should contain a clear action plan, stating what
should be done, in what timescale (if appropriate) and, if further investigation is
thought necessary, this should be explicitly stated. Recommendations should contain
some cost and, ideally, some estimates of potential cost benefits (although it is
recognised that the latter may not always be possible). In many organisations,
uncosted proposals are unlikely to be acceptable. It is also important to note that
recommendations never appear ‘out of the blue’. Only issues specifically addressed
and data specifically generated in the primary research and summarised in the
conclusions can legitimately appear in the recommendations.
References
This should appear after the recommendations and before, not after, the appendices
(if there are any). It should contain all the published sources referred to in the report,
no more and no less. It should not consist of a list of sources of reading which you
have picked up during the course of the project which you may have browsed, but
have not actually referred to specifically in your report. Following the ‘Harvard’
convention, referred to earlier, your references to books consulted should ideally be
presented in alphabetical order by author or first author surname.
Appendices
These are not, of course, compulsory, but will often be appropriate in Research
Reports. The question that students often ask is what should go into appendices and
what should go into the body of the report. As a general rule, the appendices should
contain detailed documents or tables which, if placed in the body of the report, would
have the effect of breaking up the logical structure and flow of the discussion.
Examples include copies of company policy documents or lengthy or detailed
statistical tables. In the case of the latter, it may need to be decided which data
tables belong in the body of the report and which in the appendices. There is no
absolute rule about this, but where statistics arising out of your findings are central to
your discussion in the body of the report, tables may belong there provided that they
are not long and complex. Alternatively, you may use the body of the report to
summarise the main findings and cross-refer the reader to detailed tables in the
Appendices. Whichever of these is chosen, it is important that your statistical
findings are discussed somewhere in the body and are not just consigned to
Appendices where they may not be read by a busy manager and their impact will be
lost. All Appendices must be relevant to the discussion in the report and all must be
cross-referred to and explained in the report. If they are not relevant, do not include
them.
Must be covered within this research for extra credit;
 Secondary and Primary data, how and what is it
 Suitable, factual, credible and recent data sources used
 Method suitable secondary v primary
 Attendance, Matrix
 Data sources (which and where it came from)
 Employee satisfaction measures
 Market research companies
 Identifying organisation (who is collecting)
 Do rigidity and control
Marking Criteria;
Introduction 10%
Literature Review 15%
Methodology 20%
Research and findings 25%
Conclusion 10%
Recommendations 10%
Coherence and presentation 10%