WRITING A THESIS August 31, 2015 Karen M. Olsen

Agenda Finding a topic Requirements of a master thesis Take an ‘empirical methods’ course What to put on the application for supervisor FOCUS

Finding a topic Look for on-going research projects, f. ex. - FOCUS – Future-Oriented Corporate Solutions (STR, INB, FIE) - CSI – Center for Service Innovation (MBM, STR) - S T O P (STR, BUS, and FIE) - etc Look in textbooks, DN, the Economist, Financial Times, etc

Requirements of a master thesis A larger unified piece of work 30 ECTS credits (workload 1 semester) Ca. 80 pages You have to write in groups of 2 students theses-in-the-msc-programme.aspx

STR402A/405 – one of the ‘empirical methods’ courses Basic methodological preparations - What does a master thesis look like? - What are the requirements to conduct a scientific piece of work? - What is methods? - What does a methods chapter in your thesis contain? How will you learn about this? - Read about methods and analyze examples - Practical experience through exercises - Develop a project description Mainly students in STR, but also MBM, INB, BUS, ENE

Collect or use existing data? Collect data - Experiments, surveys, qualitative interviews, observations, etc - Notification of master thesis projects to NSD: Use existing data - possible sources - Official registers (SSB, stock exchange, Brønnøysund, etc) - Surveys collected by a company - Data collected in research projects - Norwegian Social Science Data Service

What to put on the application for supervisor Try to explain as accurately as possible what you intend to do Your choice of words will decide which supervisors are relevant Talk to potential supervisors Topic is not ‘cut in stone’

Over 50 Master theses by summer

Master’s thesis: FOCUS Topics - Management challenges in flexible work arrangements (STR) - Managing knowledge workers (STR) - Team leadership and relationships in teams (STR) - Leadership and change in small accountancy firms (STR) - Internationalization and integration (STR/INB) - Dynamic control systems/Beyond Budgeting (BUS) - Crowdfunding (MBM/STR) - Topics in finance to be announced (FIE) Conditions - Thesis advisor from the research project - NOK per thesis for travelling and other expenses Qualifications - Average grade B Deadline: Oct 15, 2015 For full text (from ca. October 1) see: or