Addis Ababa University

College of Business and Economics

School of Commerce
Research Methods (MGMT-501)

Course Offered to: MA in Project Management

Cr.Hr:3; 7 ECTS
Instructor Name: Dakito Alemu, PhD
Contact address: [email protected]
Academic Year: 2021/22

Course Description
Business managers need data or information to make a wide range of decisions. For example,
restaurant managers experiencing high staff turnover and decreased customer satisfaction may
wonder where to begin to try to solve the problem. Human resources managers may wonder
whether pay by piece-work or salary-plus-bonus structure has more positive influence on
employee productivity in general. Project managers want to investigate the root cause for cost
over-run and deterioration of project qualities and as well as project delay. This course gives you
the knowledge and skills needed to conduct and apply research for business decision making.
You will learn how to identify and define researchable problems, how to collect relevant data,
how to analyse and describe the data, and how to communicate your findings. This is a “hands
on” course. You will become familiar with a diverse set of qualitative (e.g., literature search, in-
depth interview, and observation) and quantitative (e.g., survey and experiment) research
methods. Also, you will learn the differences between different research designs (exploratory vs.
descriptive vs. causal design). You will conduct live research with real companies in this course.
The course is intended to familiarise student and understand how a business related research can
be conducted, which is meant for both academia and industry consumption. In this regard, the
course will uncover different topics that would build the students capacity as well as to inspire
them develop interest to become a researcher in their domain of specialisation. Hence, the course
captures introduction and overview of research, review of literature and theoretical framework in
research, formulating and clarifying the research topic, conceptualization of research design and
choice, the research proposal, data analysis and report writing.
Course learning objectives
The course provides a strong grounding in understanding the research process enabling students
to either engage an external research organisation to undertake a study on their behalf in a
business environment or, alternatively, action and complete a research project themselves as
either the sole researcher or as part of a research team. In addition to the technical skills and
knowledge required to be successful in these endeavours, the course also provides students with a
clear understanding of the ethical considerations involved in undertaking research and the special
challenges evidenced in international and cross cultural studies. On successful completion of this
course students will be able to:
 Apply an advanced business research design options, methodologies and analysis
methods (both qualitative and quantitative), including respective terms, definitions and
applications to the design, implementation and evaluation of a research project.
 Distil an identified business problem into a succinct research problem (or problems) and
articulate this into a comprehensive research brief for investigation by a research team
locally or internationally.
 Apply a broad understanding of issues specific to undertaking business research across
international boundaries, including cultural, geographical, language and cost related
challenges and respective strategies and approaches that may be employed to solve them
to the design, implementation and evaluation of a research project.
 Recognise, and take account of, the importance of ethical conduct in undertaking
research, including potential implications for business relationships, effects on potential
respondents and sensitivity to cultural differences and honesty and integrity in analysis
and reporting in the design, implementation and evaluation of a research project.

Course content
Chapter 1: Introduction to Research
1.1 Concept and definition of research
1.2. Nature and scope of Business research
1.3. Purposes of Research
1.4. Significance of Research
1.5. Types of Research
 1.6. Research process
1.7. Ethics and Business Research
Chapter 2: Study Background and Problem Definition
2.1. Research topic/question
2.2. Background of the study
2.3. Problem definition
2.4. Research goals and objectives
2.5. Scope and limitation of a study
2.6. Significance of a study
Chapter 3: Literature Review and Hypothesis Formulation
3.1. Need for literature review
3.2. Sources of literatures
3.3. Methods of reviewing literatures
3.4. Hypothesis formulation
3.5. Relevance of hypothesis formulation
Chapter 4: Research Design I: Sampling and Methods of Data Collection
4.1. Research design
4.2. Primary and secondary data
4.3. Sources of data
4.4. Population Vs. sample survey
4.5. Sampling techniques
4.6. Methods of data collection
4.7. Editing, coding and data entry
Chapter 5: Research Design II: Analysis
5.1 Different research designs
5.2 Quantitative Vs. qualitative studies
5.3 Qualitative study
5.4 Quantitative study and statistical inference
5.5 Data analysis
Chapter 6: The Research Proposal
Chapter 7: Writing and Presenting the Research Report
 7.1 The Writing Process: Steps in Writing a Research Report
7.2 Types of Research Reports
7.3 Research Report Formats and Contents
7.4 Communicating the Research Results: Oral Presentations and Publications

Learning & Teaching Modes

In order to perform well in this course, students must have a strong command of the relevant
research theories and concepts covered in preparation and in class and successfully apply them in
their assessment and project. Therefore, students are expected to have completed all the
preparation and engagement work every week (including non-seminar weeks) and be fully
prepared. In addition, there is a strong assumption that students will engage in seminar
discussions in an informed way. The communication skills developed in seminars by regularly
and actively participating in discussions are considered to be most important by the School and
are highly regarded by employers and professional bodies.

Assessment
 Proposal Development,…………………………30%
 Journal Reflective Review ,…………………….20%
 Presentation ,……………………………………20%
 Final exam ,………………………………………30%

Required Resources
 GILL, John & JOHNSON, Phil (2010) Research Methods for Managers, 4th edition,
London: Sage.
 Neuman, W.L. (2011). Social Research Methods: Qualitative and Quantitative
Approaches, 7th edition, International edition, Pearson
 Yin, R. K. (2009). Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 4th edition,
Sage,Thousand Oaks, CA.
 Business Research Methods, 12th Edition (ISBN: 9780073521503) Cooper and
Schindler McGraw-Hill Irwin