Business Research Course of MBA at Hitotsubashi University
ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy
[Term 3] Business Research (C. Ahmadjian) (2009/Term 3&4 (Spring&Summer))
This course is a how-to course in conducting and evaluating business research. Many of you will be required to do research in your post-MBA careers—in consulting, marketing, equity analysis, competitor analysis, etc. All of you are likely to be consumers of business research. Whatever you do after business school, you will probably be reading Nikkei Business, the Harvard Business Review, or The Economist. At the very least, you will be consumers of business research prepared by management consultants or securities analysts. Hence, the objective of this course is not only to prepare you to do research but also to prepare you to be wise, and critical, consumers of business research.
One special focus of this class will be on logical and critical thinking. If you think that you need more practice in becoming a more logical and critical thinker, this course will help you. One warning: This course may ruin your life! Students in previous years have said that after taking research methodology, they have trouble believing anything that they read, because we learn how to evaluate claims made by consultants, journalists, and politicians.
Course Structure
The course begins with several sessions on general issues in research design: inductive and deductive approaches, measurement, and sampling. We will then cover four main research methods: surveys, experiments, research using available data, and field or case study research. We will also consider research ethics.
In the course, we will evaluate research produced by consultants, business school professors, equity analysts, and journalists. My main focus, however, will be to give you a very firm grounding in the basic principles of research. We will examine issues such as how to choose a sample that is appropriate and will give accurate and generalizable results, how to design a survey that is not biased, and how to define a research question that makes the research process efficient and focused.
There will be two textbooks. The first is How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. Of course, I am not teaching you how to lie with statistics, but this book points out some commonly used tricks, and teaches us some fundamentals of research methodology. You should buy this if possible - it is a short paperback. The other text is Approaches to Social Research by Royce A. Singleton, Jr. and Bruce C. Straits. This book is hard core, and is used in many PhD courses in research methodology. I have assigned two chapters from this book. You don’t need to buy it - it will be on reserve in the library.
Research is much easier to read and criticize than to do. Therefore, there will be three written assignments in which you have an opportunity to do research and provide constructive criticism of others’ work. First is a short, half-page paper listing three research questions. This will be very easy. The second is a longer paper (8-10 pages), in which you will be asked to come up with a research question, and two different research designs to answer that question (you may choose between survey, experiment, available data, and field/case study). You don’t have to do the research, just come up with the design. This will be more difficult than you expect, but you will be glad that you did it. The third assignment will be to critique an (anonymous) classmate’s research design. This will be 3-5 pages. The biggest challenge will be to be helpful and constructive. There will be no final exam. All the assignments are to be done individually.
Teaching Method
The class format will be lectures and discussions.