How to Write a Research Essay in Management with Ease

Writing guide
Posted on August 9, 2019

In contrast to the common belief that management is the kind of a skill that is required only by leaders, every person needs it. Various management concepts such as coordinating, organizing, and planning are a must for those willing to work for a large company or organization. Thus, it is important for all employees to forearm themselves with strong management skills no matter what position they aim to take. In theory, management skills might seem easy to gain and while college students tend to make the same mistake all the time – they believe that they can use academic journals and books in order to master various concepts involved in the field. Nonetheless, as a skill, management is being developed outside the classroom and usually requires various practices needed to comprehend its importance. Achievement of the main targets and goals, goal setting and interpersonal relations all together depend on management. Therefore, it is a significant element when one is trying to achieve success either in professional or academic environment.

Basic Tips on Management Research Essay Writing

Research essay writing in management is a key test that college professors use in order to evaluate their students’ knowledge. However, in contrast to the other essays and exams, management research essays seek to find out whether college students are familiar with the concepts of the field and have practical skills gained during the course. Research essays in management seek more than just how much you can recall, and call for critical thinking. These assignments seek to test how much information you can execute or apply when dealing with various management issues. At the same time, management research essays are used to understand your application skills and your ability to execute what you learned during the course in theory. A research essay in management can be hard to handle if you’re used to simple questions and book-like straightforward answers.

Research Essay in Management: Basic Structure

All essays should be well structured to guide both – you and your readers. Research essays in management use the traditional essay format, which means that they include the introduction with a thesis statement, the body with the supporting arguments, and at the end, the conclusion that reiterates your argument or research question. Structuring a research essay is not a difficult task. However, if your paper lacks proper structure, it hence looks incomplete and the chances are that you may get poor grade for your work. So, how does a good research essay outline looks like?
All research essays consist of three parts:

  • the introduction;
  • the body paragraphs;
  • the conclusion.

The Introduction:

  • this paragraph goes first in your essay;
  • starts with a general statement about the chosen topic;
  • gives background information for your reader;
  • concludes with the thesis statement (the last sentence of the introductory section).

The Thesis:

  • the thesis statement is the last sentence of the introductory paragraph;
  • includes one sentence only;
  • is a strong statement that the writer can prove;
  • is the answer to the essay’s research question;
  • is the controlling idea of your management research and is a “road map” to the research essay;
  • is specific and states one significant idea about the subject.

The Body:

  • this is the section where you present the evidence to prove the thesis;
  • the body includes the information that supports/proves the thesis;
  • your supporting information can be evaluation, analysis, persuasion, argument, and/or comparison/contrast;
  • the body of the research essay is well organized with every paragraph containing the topic sentence, the supporting and concluding sentences, as well as the transition to the next paragraph;
  • make sure to cite all support for your thesis, whether paraphrased or quoted.

The Conclusion

  • place the conclusion into the last paragraph of the research essay and sum up how your project proved the thesis;
  • restate your thesis statement/research question;
  • leave your target readers with a something to think about;
  • do not provide any new information in this paragraph.

Choose a Win-Win Research Topic

Sometimes, freedom is not something that you can easily handle, especially when the question is about writing a research essay in management. Even though you may complain about the topics that your professor assigned, selecting your own topic to write an essay about is must more difficult. Without the right recommendations, you can end up choosing a topic that you’ll fail to research and explain even in 50 pages, or one that can be explained in one paragraph only. Here are some helpful guidance on how to pick an interesting management topic for the research essay in a particular sub-field of management.

Human Resource Management

HR management is known as the process of managing people in companies and organizations. Human resource management (HRM) involves recruiting and retention of people, performance management, and so on. The topics in the area may include the following:

  • Challenges and New Directions in Reinventing Human Resources Management;
  • Strategies to Eliminate Sexual Harassment among the Employees;
  • Challenges in Human Resource Management in Developing Countries
  • Fitting Personality or Professional Qualities: What Is More Important?

Matrix Management

Matrix Management is an organizational structure where you’re required to report to more than one leader or supervisor. More broadly, it is about the management of cross-business and cross-functional groups that don’t maintain strict vertical business units. To write about Matrix Management, consider the following topics:

  • Management of New Technologies for Global Competitiveness;
  • Analyses, Foundations and Theories of Organizational Behavior;
  • The Nature and Consequences of the Multidivisional Structure;
  • Quantitative Models’ Challenges for Project Planning, Scheduling and Control.

Green Management

The field is aimed at developing and improving the personnel responsible for environmental communication and activities. The topics that you may do your research on include:

  • Management of Air-Borne Diseases in Indian Villages;
  • The Green Wall: Environmental Leadership, Strategy and Change Management in Business;
  • An Investigation of Hotel Performance in Sustainable ‘Green’ Environment;
  • How to Reach the Balance between Urbanization, Environmental Sustainability and Changed Lifestyles?

Research essay writing also includes many other topics in the sub-fields. Globalization, new technologies, and the range of the associated ethical implications provide many of the issues, such as the management of nonprofit, sports, arts, healthcare, and so on that you can discuss in your research essay.

Narrow Down Your Topic

Depending on the topic that you choose to work on in the field of management, you may already have something specific to research, or you may simply be required to write about a general subject or theme. If your professor doesn’t specify your topic and you have time to brainstorm, try to choose a subject that is not only interesting to you, but also specific. If you choose a specific issue to debate, you will have plenty of material to work with.

Beware of choosing the topics that are too broad. If you do so, you might end up having an essay that has no particular point. To avoid such situations, make sure to narrow down the topic that is on your mind. Are you going to write about hiring the HR managements? Good choice, but the topic is too vague. Consider writing about the fact that hiring talented employees remains the number one concern of CEOs or about discrimination and harassment in HR field in the third world countries.

If you’re writing the research-based essay in management, you might look for some inspiration from major sources on the topic – Questia, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and many others.

Transform Your Research

While a research essay in management is heavily based on the in-depth research, the premise of the paper is not to just restate what the others have already discovered. The number one goal of writing this kind of academic paper is to transform the research in order to make it your own, showing to your college professor and everyone else that you perfectly grasped management theories and issues and thus, learned to apply them when working with a real-world problem or issue.

To transform your management research, make sure to create a list of questions at the beginning. Then, you will have to refer back to them when you’ll be creating your outline. Finding the right answers to the questions from the list will serve as the solid base for the primary points that you’ll make in the body. Add your personal experience with the field of management to transform your research into a compelling academic project.

Cite Your Sources Properly

If you are going to use information or ideas of some other writers (you definitely are!), you will face the necessity to credit each source of information. This is true when you need to directly quote another source or sum up someone else’s ideas or words. The way you’re going to do that will depend on the citation style your professor would like to see in your research essay. Usually, students are required to write the authors’ names, the titles, the publication date and the information location.

Before you cite, make sure to find out what citation style you have to use. There is a range of various citation styles that may be used in the field of management. Approach your college professors to ask them to provide you with the style to use. The most popular academic styles that students deal with include American Psychological Association (APA), Modern Language Association (MLA) and Chicago styles. Before you use any of the guides we gave above, check the rules if citing in one of the online guides. As a rule, college students are required to give full citations at the end of the research essay. Typically, the citation lists are called the ‘Reference List’ or ‘Bibliography’. When it comes to the body of the research essay, you have to use there the in-text citation in order to let your target readers know that the information that you just used isn’t your own. The in-text citation will let your readers know where the full citation is, i.e. – at the end of your research essay.

On the whole, you don’t have to cite the things that are well known for people around. For instance, you definitely don’t have to explain what management or HR is, as well as you don’t have to cite a source if you say something like, “Management can be defined as the range of the tasks and activities that are usually undertaken in order to archive a goal or an objective by the assortment of continuous activities”.

The Last Thing

When you look for the tips for the research essay writing in management, two things tend to be always there. These are revision and proofreading. Once you are through with the research essay in management, it’s important to give it to your family members or friends who can help you to find all the mistakes and misconceptions within the text. Who knows, maybe they will be good enough to find even some mistakes in your research findings? Research essay revision is important because it helps you to submit the paper that is free from the most obvious mistakes and factual. Moreover, it is important to proofread your essay in order to avoid grammatical mistakes. Even the best writers on earth make mistakes when they write their masterpieces. Without a doubt, there will be one or two sentence structure, punctuation or grammar mistakes in your research essay. Submitting such an imperfect assignment will definitely lead to the bad grades. Therefore, it is necessary to proofread the paper before you submit it, and make certain that it has no trivial or obvious mistakes.

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