Master Thesis (GRAB010)

The Master’s Thesis is the culminating experience in graduate level education for Master degree candidates. It is an endeavour of analytical nature, which contains elements of originality and is performed in conformity with general requirements of academic papers and scholarly projects. For the student, the Master’s thesis should be a learning activity that is stimulating and engenders a sense of pride and accomplishment. There is an option to write a thesis with a colleague. It sometimes gets lonely and difficult to engage in this important project all by yourself. If you decide to write a thesis with a colleague, please take this into consideration:
• Both students need to participate in thesis proposal and final thesis defences (if one of the students will not participate, they will be denied the right for the defence of thesis proposal and final thesis);
• Both students need to be able to explain and justify any choices of methods and information, defend any part of the thesis, such as the literature review, data measurement scales, questionnaires, choice of sampling, data collection process and data analysis results;
• Both students are responsible for academic integrity (e.g. plagiarism, copying another person’s work);
• Both students have to be competent to answer any questions the thesis defence committee members ask. Saying things like „I don‘t know what this means because my teammate did this part“ or „this part is not done because my teammate was supposed to do it“ will only get you penalty points;
• Both students will be awarded the same grade for the thesis by supervisor, reviewer and the thesisdefense committee members.

The intent of the thesis is to provide an opportunity for Master’s degree candidates to refine, in some cases acquire, a range of skills at an appropriate level to do capable and competent research. A successful thesis is evidence that the candidate has acquired the minimum level of research skills required and can therefore be accredited a Master‘s degree. Skills required of thesis writers are those associated with research design, data collection, information management, analysis of data, synthesis of data with existing knowledge and critical evaluation of the writer’s own ideas and those presented in the literature reviewed. The thesis should be written in English, within a given period of time and comply with commonly accepted principles of academic ethics.
Since you are graduating from the program in Business Sustainability Management, your topic needs to come from the areas that you have studied in the program. The topic needs to entail some sustainability management perspective. The topic can be interdisciplinary as well. All exceptions to the topic area must be discussed with the program director.

Upon the completion of the Master Thesis a student will have achieved these learning outcomes:

• Knowledge and its application. Graduate is able to define the research problem and the main goals of a Thesis in a concise way and integrate the theoretical knowledge obtained in the master studies.
• Research skills. Graduate is able to analyze critically, synthesize and assess research data necessary for the thesis development. He/she is also able to collect quantitative and/ or qualitative data and perform appropriate empirical analysis to solve the research problem.
• Special abilities. Graduate has the ability to develop a clear explanation and justification of the selected methodological approach and refer to published research on methodology to support the statement on its appropriateness, present a testable hypothesis, consistent with assumptions derived from literature review, and conduct (on an individual basis) an empirical research.
• Social ability. Graduate has the ability to develop the elaborated discussion to reveal the study findings in the light of prior research in the field, compare the results with those reported by other investigators considering the questions that remain unanswered and suggest the additional further research perspectives by demonstrating proficiency in academic writing, proper literature citation and compilation of a reference list.
• Personal abilities. Graduate has the ability to plan the process of thesis writing in an autonomous manner, choose the direction of improvement and study in an autonomous manner. Graduate has the ability to use scientific research data, has experience in research work, and skills of systemic and strategic thinking necessary for autonomous professional activity and scientific research work.