IBES1110 Research Methodology (5 cr)

When you have read your course books, journal articles, browsed consultant reports, or research summarized in newspapers, have you ever wondered what those are based on? What is the actual evidence and reasoning backing up the frameworks and management truths that are part of your studies? This course is mainly about the evaluation of arguments and the credibility of empirical evidence. During the course, we teach you the basics of evaluating empirical evidence, which aspects you should pay attention to when analyzing the research report’s credibility, and, most importantly, why you should do so.

On successful completion of the course, students will be able to:

• understand the basics of scientific writing, including referencing practices
• know the JSBE AI policy and how to use AI ethically as a tool for understanding research articles
• understand how theories are structured and the role they play in business research
• understand the differences between quantitative and qualitative research methodology
• understand how causal claims are made in qualitative and quantitative studies
• generate research plans for both quantitative and qualitative research designs
• understand the basics experiments, case study research, and survey study designs
• know why regression analysis and factor analysis are used in quantitative research and how the results of these analyses are interpreted
• understand the difference between realist, interpretive, and discourse analysis approaches to qualitative research
• understand different ways to produce and report qualitative evidence
• evaluate the quality of both qualitative and quantitative research

Articles and book chapters given by the instructor.