This page is intended for
students of business economics,
primarily those on MSc and MBA
programmes, but it should
be helpful to anyone writing a
master’s dissertation
Dr
Hosein Piranfar, Senior Lecturer
East
London Business School (UEL)
Some Writing Tools
Looking at the previous essays, I have noticed that people with really good ability to think and analyse fail to present their work in a good written style. Although the study skill books can help, it may still be useful to emphasise a few important points here, and provide some additional tools and techniques. Please note that most of the incomplete phrases presented below are adjustable tools and you can cut, add, or change their components or their order. Please don’t use them mechanistically, use them in the right context. Use them with wisdom.
For a good piece of work you will need an introduction, plan of the work describing the sections, the main body of the work and a conclusion. Bibliography in Harvard style is essential. For short essays at first year level you may not need formal introduction or conclusion, but it is still good to start with telling us what you are going to say. If the question is in two parts, explicitly or implicitly, it is sensible to say in what order you are going to discuss your work. For example, if the first part is about PEST Analysis, and the second part about its application to a decision, it makes sense to start like this:
The paper begins with defining PEST Analysis and explaining its main components. It, then, moves on to discuss its application to … (whatever decision you are asked to discuss).
For longer essays, it is good to outline the topic and its importance at the beginning of your introduction, and then add a few words about the plan of your essay. You may only have two sections and a conclusion, but it is still useful to outline what you want to say. This will at least help to convince your tutor that you know what you are going to say, but also can act as a method to distinguish your introduction from your conclusion. A few years ago I asked my first year students to write about ‘corporate social responsibility’. Somebody started it with: ‘I believe CSR is good for business’, and concluded by saying: ‘So therefore we believe that CSR is really, really, good for business’. Most tutors would find identical beginning and ending a bit boring. The use of first person would be unacceptable. It may also puzzle the tutor how ‘I’ becomes ‘we’ within the short period of writing an essay, and whether the use of words ‘really, really’ is inspired by a famous song by the spice girls! Not to mention adding so to therefore!
If the essay is more than 2000 words, you may find it essential to have a few sections for clarity of your discussion. In this case to avoid boring the reader it will be better to describe the sections at the end of introduction in different phrases. For example:
Section one points out……, section two deals with…section three discusses….
Section four brings to light the main characteristics of …….section five clarifies…..
Section six delves into the (often in the case of difficult or ambiguous concepts) ..
Section seven analyses the salient points of .. [please, please pick and choose, and don’t follow this order blindly]
The variety of these phrases will reduce the monotony of repetitive phrases.
I mentioned the difference between introduction and conclusion. Most people confuse the two. Your introduction is like a starter. It appetizes the reader. You tell the reader what to expect firstly by outlining the importance of the topic, the availability of material and the variety of opinion, and secondly by adding the section descriptions. It is always useful to complain at the end that the time does dot allow for in-depth investigation.
Linkage and quotation is another weakness. The following two comments in response to student feedback may be useful to you:
Structure & Linkage. You need an abstract (10 lines), or an introduction (half to one page), a conclusion containing some of your own personal opinion about the topic and perhaps a few words about the future direction of the research into that topic. The main body should be classified into sections and so on with good linkage between paragraphs.
The linkage can be natural, induced or both.
Natural: You point out a number of cases in general in one paragraph and then you explain each in the following paragraphs. For example, if you are talking about factors of production in one paragraph you can easily continue with each factor in the subsequent paragraphs.
The induced linkage depends on your ability to explain at the beginning of a paragraph why you need to start the paragraph. For example you have explained all the factors of production and want to criticise the prevailing view on factors of production. You start a new paragraph by saying that these explanations are good but unfortunately the writer has ignored the possibility of interdependence between these factors: land as a factor of production may contain a considerable amount of investment. After this artificial or induced linkage, you can easily continue with quoting writers who argue for the interdependence and the difficulty of discussing the factors in isolation.. Sometimes you cannot induce linkage because there is not one, that is, the linkage is not possible. You have finished one concept and are moving to another. Simply say: Now we turn to the question of…
Quotation is also another point that has come up in student feedback.:
What can I do with large quotations? How can I use my own thoughts: Can I summarize some parts of a large quote in my own words? How about quoting Ricardo from a third writer who has read Ricardo but I haven’t?
My answer:
Direct quotation is less relevant these days, unless it is a sensitive or legal issue. The reason is that in direct quotation people quote other writers out of context. I think it is better if you can put somebody's thoughts in your own words but you must make appropriate references, and above all, be honest. Some people do cheat by using quotations made by another writer as though they have read it directly from the source. Most people don’t read Ricardo, Deming, Darwin, Marx, or Adam Smith. They quote them second hand. It is good style to say that Ricardo as quoted in XZY (1999) believes that…. Alternatively you can just quote Ricardo and at the end say (quoted in XYZ (1999). Or, to make things easier, you can add at the end of quote this bracket: (See XYZ for the source).
As to your own thoughts and inspirations, don't use first person, and make your thoughts deductive. Your own argument is the best part. But please don't behave like a typical undergraduate! Be deductive; discuss and analyse. Only then you can make your point, not by saying that I BELIEVE. You mentioned radical views. You can go as radical as you like but keep the language academic and discursive. Support your views by reference to others (not to your mates please!) Send me a synopsis if you are worried. The other day somebody sent me a synopsis. It was an eye opener. It was plain talk as if in a pub to a mate! With no reference! In my view it is an advantage to have up-to-date references. It is very good to refer to current and historical data.
I hope this is of some help.
The question of data is often ignored by students (please note that I am establishing an induced linkage here by using the word data which was used artificially at the end of the previous paragraph to create a smooth linkage to this paragraph). Somebody gives me an outdated table from a recent book, and instead of giving the source, which is Bank of England (1993), he gives the book by XYZ (1999) as his source! Clever! It sounds honest to quote the book he has read rather than the bank report that he has not read. A crafty honesty all the same. Don’t you realise that the data inside the table is going to betray the fact that you have used outdated data?
Access to data has become very simple these days thanks to the Internet (I am using natural linkage now. Natural, because by discussing data above, I have now naturalised it). With the help of the Internet you don’t have to contrive. Use the Net, but give reference.
It is very important to recommend that you must find a writer or a company or organisation who has authored the material in the Net. Only then provide the URL. It is no good to give me 10 lines of www… in your bibliography without any names. If there are no names, only the the URL will be checked by the tutor and accepted.
Referencing and
Bibliography.
Bibliography comes at the end of your paper. It shows all or most of the sources you use in the text. If it does not show all the sources, then call it ‘Selected Bibliography’. The use of a source in the text is called referencing. It is different from giving bibliography. In bibliography you give the author name with their initials and full title of the work, date and publisher, but in text referencing you just give the surname(s) and the date in brackets. Example
Sloman and Sutcliffe (2001) claim that ‘profit maximisation’ is not practical even if we present convincing arguments to support it theoretically….. (See chap. 13). Some, however, disagree with this opinion (give source and date) …
This is referencing. You then show the source in your bibliography in the following fashion:
Sloman, J. and Sutcliffe, M., (2001) Economics For Business, 2nd ed., Prentice Hall (Pearson Education), Harlow.
Now Some useful phrases:
If you weave these
into your material your linkages would be easier and the essay would acquire
academic appearance:
¨ It is not the intention of this work (paper, analysis, thesis, essay, dissertation, assignment) to solve this question thoroughly… It rather aims at a limited illustration of ….. [This trick is good to convince the reader of your honesty and humility]
¨ Unfortunately the limited time we have does not allow a full research (a thorough investigation), however….. [this is to justify the weaknesses in your work]
¨ Within our limited scope, we attempt to (we hope to)
¨ Lack of sufficient data may hamper a thorough evaluation [good for introduction]
¨ Most sources are regrettably circumspect (heuristic), given adequate statistical information one could profitably delve into the inner mechanism of this trend (process), and come out with more definitive answers.
¨ On the one hand……., and on the other…..
¨ On balance one could argue that……..
¨ The gist of his argument is that….
¨ Having explained……now we account for.. (now we turn to)… (good for paragraph linkage)
¨ On the whole…[this is good when you want to pull together disjointed stuff]
¨ This view derives from his general outlook that……. [in reference to a main author you use].
¨ It appears as though…..but in closer inspection it reveals more complex characteristics..
¨ To begin with.. [good way to start the main body of writing]
¨ Regarding these… it can be concluded that..
¨ However, the fact is that…
¨ The facts speak for themselves..[when talking about some corruption cases such as ENRON]
¨ This is a rare occurrence… but if circumstances change it may prove a more common experience with managers..
¨ …. Either way there seems to be a tendency towards increased networking
¨ Given that there is no financial constraint…but in reality it is difficult
¨ It is a feasible plan (or argument).. given that…
¨ Considering the above features one may comment that ..
¨ It seems fair to claim that…
¨ Above all, this approach has the benefit of..
¨ These are all the positive side of this approach…the downside.. is..
¨ There is also a downside to this approach.
¨ It is likely that …, It is highly likely that..[The British people use this word likely in ordinary conversation, but most people from developing countries don’t]
¨ It is a moot point
¨ It is a valid point
¨ Doubts still persist.
¨ It is tantamount to saying (claiming) that ..[tantamount is used when you mean as bad as. If a writer avoids answering a question that you are investigating, you can argue that: ‘his refusal to answer is tantamount to admitting that …’]
¨ There is a wide body of opinion that..[there might be only three, but it makes your argument more acceptable]
¨ Although there is little evidence to claim that..[but I still want to claim!!!]
¨ It is a valid argument..
¨ Lack of sufficient evidence forces us (him, her) to leave this issue for a future discussion [good tool to avoid explaining something that you can’t]
¨ There is no evidence to reject the hypothesis.
¨ Despite insurmountable difficulties …we shall make an attempt to clarify..
¨ So far this method (or process) has not been challenged. Changing circumstances however may bring about more doubts..
¨ In light of the above arguments one may safely conclude that…However considering the ambiguities (complexities) inherent in an evolutionary process further research will be required.
¨ Further research will be needed to settle this highly complex and multidisciplinary subject (issue).
¨ A cursory view of… would reveal that…
¨ The merit of this approach lies in (with)..
¨ The approach is patently deterministic…For a more dynamic approach one must introduce an element