Identify an open question related to behaviour in organisations and propose a research plan to answer it.

The brief includes all the information. In addition, I have attached another file with ‘HELP NOTES’ for this assignment so please go through that as well. The rubric is also included in the brief, so please hit every point in the “Excellent (80-100)” section.

Referencing must be done using Harvard style. I need in text citations and pages with referencing. To save on words, you can also always use “Ibid.” whenever referring to the same source multiple times in a row (https://www.wikihow.com/Use-Ibid).

Please prioritize peer-reviewed academic papers first and foremost. You can also consider other reputable sources (e.g., major media companies, polling firms, reports from consulting firms) and use those to help explain how the issue you’re studying works in the real world. I would be most cautious around using information from single, unverified sources (e.g., blogs, random “educational” sites).

The word count is 2000 words. Footnotes, appendices, tables, figures, diagrams, charts ARE included in the word count. I do not wanttable of contents, but please add headings/titles in our research proposal instead.

Additional help:

In general, the more specific you can be, the better. It should be clear from your research question what exactly you’re going to test or measure in your proposed study. You can relate this specific approach to broader concepts in the other parts of your Introduction, but at no point should your reader be confused about what exactly you’re proposing to test. For example, instead of stating your research question as “How do bonuses impact productivity?” (extremely broad and impossible to answer in a single study), you could pose a question like, “Does giving a £10 gift card (vs. not) to baristas before a shift increase the average speed of coffee making during that shift?” (much more specific and easy to test).

Also, you should do whatever you think makes your writing most accessible to the reader. Importantly, though, your literature review should be more than just a summary of existing research. You should explicitly connect relevant research to your research question and state how your proposed research stands to teach us something new.

I would follow the structure of the coursework brief and try to separate the managerial relevance and scholarly contribution. If one section is a little longer than the other, that’s fine, but you should be able to discuss both.

You don’t need to explain in bullet points how your outcome meets the SMART criteria. You should just make it obvious to the reader that it is. For example, you could ask a friend to read what you write (or imagine yourself as the reader) and ask questions like, “Is it clear what I’m talking about?” “Do you think it’s something I can easily measure?” and so on. So long as they answer yes to all five questions, you can feel confident that you’ve met the SMART criteria.

It’s rare to find a scenario that perfectly fits a researcher’s needs, so it’s common to adapt an existing scenario or even create a new scenario tailored to the needs of the study. You are welcome to do either, noting that adapting existing materials may save you a little on the word count so long as you cite the materials you’re adapting.

Also, where the brief asks, “What are the boundary conditions of your predictions?” It is asking about moderators. Specifically, a boundary condition is the level of a moderator at which an effect turns off. For section 2d, It just wants to see that you’re able to think of a plausible moderator (it doesn’t necessarily have to function in this “boundary condition” way) and that you can explain why it might impact the relationship between your predictor and outcome variable.