Course Description:
The Seminar in Management is a required course in the Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management (BSOM) program and constitutes the culminating activity for the BSOM majors. In this course, the senior student will develop and complete an empirical social science research project in order to demonstrate an ability to apply the knowledge and understanding of the field of organizational management to a specific research topic. It is designed to allow the student to demonstrate his/her broad comprehension of the concepts learned through previous course work relating to organizational management. This is accomplished through the research project conducted by the student under the direction of the assigned instructor. More specifically, students are expected to propose a research topic theory offering a related hypothesis, develop a research design to conduct the necessary and appropriate research to validate this hypothesis, deploy this design, collect and analyze the data drawing conclusions and recommendations from their analysis and submit a written report/project of this effort. Students are encouraged to interact with the instructor throughout their research efforts for instruction, counsel, direction, or any other assistance as it relates to their project.
A secondary goal of this research effort is to improve the student’s decision making ability through the application of a empirical research model to a non-programmed organizational management concern. The student and instructor decide a research topic theory, distilling a hypothesis requiring the examination of the literature, environment and many sub-issues surrounding this management concern. The student must design and deploy appropriate research methodologies that will collect the data to test this empirical research hypothesis. The entire research effort is documented into a final project report that must meet articulated strict construction standards and, upon submittal, is the basis of the student’s class grade.
By demonstrating their ability to conduct empirical research in this manner towards this sort of organizational concern, the student will learn how to apply this template to similar workplace management concerns, improving their effectiveness and decision making abilities.
• The Senior Seminar Paper (20-30 pages) will be written on the topic of your choice or you may select one of the topics/titles in Appendix A of the textbook. The paper can be a quantitative one (using a survey) or a qualitative one (using in-depth interviews). The final paper must include each of the following sections (chapters) and their various related components: Title Page, Abstract, Introduction (Chapter One), Review of the Literature (chapter Two), Theoretical Framework (Chapter Three), Methodology/Research Design (chapter Four), Data Analysis (Chapter Five), Conclusions (Chapter Six). The final paper must be submitted to ULV Black Board and one hard copy to the instructor by the last class night.