Diversity management and firms productivity or company pay structure and individual performance

Guide to prepare a scientific essay

 

Title

The title should not reflect the field of study, instead it should fix the main problem under investigation. So, the exact wording of the title is most often made after the work is done and main results are obtained, although one can start with the working title.

As the title should indicate what is being investigated, it usually reflects some relationships between chosen characteristics of the investigated object (e.g. diversity management and firm’s productivity; company pay structure and individual performance; team work and company performance; workforce demography and motivation to work; management style and engagement of employees, etc.).

 

Introduction

Although it is an introduction, it is also written in the end (once the goal is clear, the methodology is applied, and the results are obtained). This is because the introduction should contain the following components:

2.1. Reasons to choose this topic – these might be personal, but it is better to be scientific reasons, or both. In the second case it is recommended to show that some issues are insufficiently researched; the problem is investigated, but with some unsatisfactory or contradictory results, and so far, the reason could be also the emergence of a new paradigm or perspective on this problem.

2.2. The relevance of the topic, which is determined by its importance and / or usefulness for science, economy, or society, etc. The relevance is justified by pointing to some information sources – from literature or from practice.

2.3. Main goal – it is also formulated at the end, although there could be a working definition at the beginning. The main goal should reflect the resolution of an identified problem, reveal something that is insufficiently disclosed, or prove something (including the influence of some factors, elements, components, stages on the results of interest).

The main goal can be broken down into sub-goals or tasks that underlie the structure of the work. The first part of the work could answer one or two of these sub-goals, the second part – answer the others, etc. in order that in the end the main goal is achieved.

2.4. Research methodology (briefly presented in the introduction) – what theory or concept is shared; what methods will be used to collect data (interviews, questionnaires, etc.), how the data will be processed, what are the hypotheses, and shortly the obtained results.

2.5. On that basis, finally, in the introduction briefly outlines the structure of the work – what the first, second and eventually third parts contain.

 

1. Part one

This part contains always a literature review of the chosen topic. In practice, the work actually starts with this part. At the beginning one could refer to the basic books, and if these are considered insufficient, to continue with some scientific articles. Such articles are accessible from the university computers (in this case – in the faculty library) mostly from the electronic libraries like Science Direct, J-store, and others, for which the University has a subscription. These articles can be found by searching with key words (closely related to the chosen topic). The usefulness of consulting scientific articles is twofold. First, each article contains a literature review, which can help the student’s review. Second, many articles can suggest how to prepare and make your personal mini survey. Even you decide to repeat some other research by using other’s methods, etc. in different organisation or environment, it is acceptable.

 

2. 2. Part two

This part includes student personal contribution or personal mini-survey/research. The research may use qualitative methods, e.g. gathering information (data) through the interview with open questions, or quantitative methods, e.g. gathering information (data) through questionnaire with close questions (usually scaled from 1 to 5, where 1 = “completely disagree” and 5 = “completely agree”). The number of respondents in both cases for the case study could be around 8-10-15 etc. Rarely one could use other data (secondary data analysis), but very attentively, as often such data are not collected for your purpose.

Processing the qualitative data requires skills to make sensible interpretation, and to arrive to some concepts, new ideas, etc., while processing the quantitative data requires skills to work with Excel, SPSS, or other packages for statistical analysis.

After the obtained results are presented, these should be carefully commented. The comments may refer to the literature review, what from the obtained results is in line with the previous results, or what is different, and why such differences, etc.

This part my end with summarised conclusions, and based on these, with some recommendations.

 

Conclusions

Conclusions should contain a recapitulation of what has been done: what was the main goal and the tasks of your paper; what has been done to achieve the goal; and to what conclusions you came to the end.

 

Literature

Here one should show all the information sources used – books, articles, papers from the internet, etc. Important is to have the same number and the same sources in both the text and the literature. More citations in the text are shown, more positively the paper is viewed and vice versa – less citation in the text, more plagiarism is suspected

Ways of citing in the text: (Smith, 2015, p. 20-22; Smith, Koen, 2010, p. 341). For the internet sources: author, title, internet address, (retrieved: date, year).

 

Appendixes – here usually are attached questions for interviews, or questionnaire, organigrams of the investigated organisations, or other materials.

 

Volume of the paper – in this case minimum 8, maximum 15 pages, on average – 10 pages

 

Exemplary structure: Introduction = 1-2 pages; 1^st part = 3-4 pages; 2d part – 3-4 pages; Conclusion = 1 page.