M34414 Dissertation - Strategy, Enterprise and Innovation AE1 Assessment Brief (LKCA Jan 2026) | University of Portsmouth

M34414 Assessment Brief

Learning Outcomes:

 Assessment Task:

This is your opportunity to demonstrate an in-depth understanding of an element of the course. The focus of the project will be on contemporary international, ethical or sustainability issues in business and management and students need to plan for an independent research project. Students will be supported in the identification of potential areas for investigation.

Your research proposal, which is an individual piece of work, should be structured according to the outline as below.

Format/layout instructions

Your proposal submission must:

• be in “Times New Roman” or “Calibri”, size 12 font
• have 1.5 line spacing, and have margins of 2.5 cm top and bottom, and both sides
• have clear line spaces between paragraphs
• be fully ‘blocked’ (i.e., paragraphs should not be indented)
• be justified to the left-hand margin only
• have all pages numbered except the cover page
• accurately state the number of words on the cover page.

Proposed structure for Research Proposal

1.Title

Provide a title that describes what you are going to research. The title should be related to international, ethical or sustainability issues in business and management.

2.Rationale and Research Aim & Objectives

Introduce the context and background of the research topic / issue, as well as the rationale for undertaking the proposed research. Reference to key literature should be included to strengthen the rationale for conducting the research. This will enable the reader to understand what the
research will be about and why it is worth investigating.

Research is about questions, so you need to pose a question (or a series of questions) that investigate an academic problem worthy of research. To establish this, you need to provide an
academic and applied rationale for the research, a rationale is a justification of why this is a useful
/ interesting problem, then the overall aim and your objectives required to meet the aim.

3.Literature Review

In doing research you include yourself within a community of scholars, each of whom has gone into looking at similar problems, this is then written up by researchers and academics, you need to base your research on their work, almost as ‘proof’ that your research has value. To do this you need to provide a literature review of this past work to show how other researchers have
developed their ideas. The literature review will ‘form the foundation on which your research is built’ (Saunders et al., 2023). It will ‘evaluate’ past research, it will be ‘critical’. (Saunders et al., 2023) and will be structured in such a way as to start wide and narrow down to your research
problem, thereby linking the literature to the methodology.

This section should:

• Provide a literature review that shows relevance to your research idea
• Highlights the main theoretical concepts
• Cover a range of up-to-date sources that present an argument for the research

4.Methodology / Methods / Sample.

Your methodology should outline the theoretical and practical approach to gathering the data. You need to outline your overall approach and then say why you have taken this approach in relation to your actual idea. You should also describe the method by which you are going to gather the data and the channel of gathering the data, which should be explained in relation to research methods texts. You should then say why you are going to use this method in relation to your actual idea. 

You then need to outline the sampling strategy; the methodology should be broken down into:

• An overall introduction outlining the philosophical approach 
• A section on the methods
• A section on sampling (inclusion/exclusion criteria)
• A section on limitations and credibility of sources and potential bias

Please note you need to justify each choice in relation to the actual idea and then back this up
with reference to research method texts, common sense explanations are not acceptable and will mean you fail.

5.References

Students must reference all sources using the APA 7th Edition (for the Business School). For more information, please visit https://library.port.ac.uk/referencing.
You need to fully reference throughout the work; both in-text and the reference list need to be in the APA style (7th Edition). Work lacking academic sources will be penalised. This could mean (in extreme cases) that poor referencing results in a failure. Detailed advice on referencing is
available from the library.

6.Appendices – Provide a detailed Gantt Chart and the signed Ethics Approval form (and other relevant documents if needed).

Guidance

Academic Skills & Support

If you need additional assistance, you can ask your lecturer, your personal tutor, or Student Services.

If you are concerned about your mental well-being, please contact our Well-being service.

The Extenuating Circumstances procedure supports you if you have had any circumstances (problems) that have been serious or significant enough to prevent you from attending,
completing or submitting an assessment on time. If you complete an Extenuating Circumstances Form (ECF) for this assessment, it is important that you use the correct module code, item number and deadline (not the late deadline) given above. Click here for more info.

ASDAC

ASDAC are available to any students who disclose a disability or require additional support for their academic studies with a good set of resources on the ASDAC moodle site

Academic Integrity

The University takes any form of academic misconduct (such as plagiarism or cheating) seriously, so please make sure your work is your own. Please ensure you adhere to our Code of Student Behaviour and watch the video on Plagiarism.

Assessment Criteria

The grade marking criteria will assess how well reports explain and analyse the organization’s strategic position and choice, in the context of relevant strategic management theory and the sector within which the organization operates. To achieve this, it will be expected that appropriate secondary published sources (such as Mintel, KeyNote, journal articles and other relevant sources) will be identified and applied.

Learners will be exposed to a range of strategic management theories throughout the Module. The individual that selects and applies the most appropriate models to highlight and demonstrate the effectiveness of a recommendation, is likely to achieve the highest grades. The individual that simply ‘repeats’ theoretical models without attempting to relate it to the organization in question, and / or their related issues / problems will not achieve maximum grades.

Please ensure formal business report format is adhered to and in keeping with university preferences, font should be Arial, size 12 with 1.5 spacing.

ASSESSMENT MARK SCHEME -Research Proposal