My Final Year Dissertation Topic
Hello, friends! I thought that I mentioned in summer that I was thinking about the subject of my dissertation, but only a couple of days ago I realised that I did not even tell you about the meetings with my tutors (personal and dissertation) and what I decided with them in terms of participants, data, setting, methods, methodology and other aspects. For my department, the dissertation module has 30 CATS, which is similar to taking a 2-terms module with no exam. The word count is 10.000 words, which is something all of us(or most of us) already knew.
I am motivated to do this dissertation on this subject because I found it fascinating to work in a business setting and I now wish to investigate in more depth several aspects in the workplace that I have experienced but had not gotten the chance, or had the time to analyse during my short stay at the company last summer.
The general research question will revolve around the role of leadership in motivating team members or colleagues in a startup company. In terms of specific questions that I am interested in asking and finding out more about the company’s culture, those are: What is your role? How is your relationship with your colleagues? How do you manage your team in to work effectively and efficiently? Are there specific phrases or keywords that you use in your speech as a manager/ as a team member? What is leadership to you? Do you use your leadership skills to motivate and inspire your colleagues?; it will be so interesting to explore the business workplace from an angle that no other researcher that has looked into management communication has tackled as of yet.
If I would have to make a short abstract out of it so far it would look something like this: Management communication is about the speaking skills and tactics that managers use to get work done with and through people. This is directly related to language, culture, and communication and throughout my case study, I will try to investigate how managers originate and receive oral and written texts from multiple groups i.e. co-workers, team members and upper management. Effective management skills will be determined according to communication in transition, communication ethics, listening and feedback, nonverbal communication, intercultural and international communication, managing conflict, performance in business meetings. This study will contain interview extracts and analysis from two middle managers, two top managers and many members of the teams they(both top and middle managers) are in charge of. From the interviews and the inherent analysis, there will be some hypothesis generation about the ways in which middle managers form rapport, gain trust, bring high performance and are seen as productive in a smaller company within teams consisting of 5-6 team members, supervised by two top managers.
I sure hope I did not confuse you and it was all straightforward, but to make it a little less academic and complex, my dissertation will look at the way managers use specific language tactics to influence, motivate, encourage and support their subordinates. Moreover, it will also look at relationships within a business team and how members of a team perceive their manager(s). One more aspect that I will look into is the effectiveness of each manager and what makes an effective manager in terms of skills, leadership and communication styles. The main keywords are Leadership, Employee Communication, Trust, Loyalty, Performance, Management Communication, Teamwork.
Why bother or why do I think the management communication field needs my input on the issues under scrutiny? I believe that I can bring an in-depth analysis that no other management communication researcher has engaged in so far. Right at this moment, I am still working on my second draft consisting of Introduction, Literature Review, and Methodology, but once I gather my data I can do the actual analysis and coding. I am very excited and curious to find out where my data will take this case study. If you would like to read more about my final year journey, then please stay tuned because my second blog post will follow shortly!
