Reference no: EM132585390

BE936 Accounting Project - University of Excess

What is the Accounting Project?

• Identify a suitable topic for study and refine it further with your supervisor.
• Prepare a ‘literature review' essay (once you have selected a topic), as an intermediate step, to develop a detailed understanding of what has been published so far on this topic in terms of concepts, theory, prior findings, data and methods of analysis used by researchers in the field.
• Design and undertake, with the support of your supervisor, an appropriate research strategy to investigate the topic, including identifying and accessing useful sources of data or information, and analyse data (which can be of a qualitative or quantitative nature).

How is the Accounting Project different from an essay?

Project structure guidance

Section 1 Introduction (about 500 words)
Including objectives of research (as outlined in the previous section)

All projects should have an effective introduction whatever form the work takes. An introduction could usefully include the following:
• A brief explanation of the nature and significance of the topic, and the problems or issues implicit in the title. Some contextual statistics/general information may be useful here.
• The research question and objectives of your project.
• An outline of the approach/methodology you have adopted.

Section 2 Literature review (1,250 to 1,500 words)1
Clarifying relevant concepts, extent of current understanding, and outstanding problems/issues by discussing prior research (mainly academic). In reviewing the literature that underpins and influences your empirical research, do not simply write a number of summaries of other people's work, but identify the general themes, or differences between writers, in the explanations advanced. Make sure you evaluate the relevance, reliability and validity of your citations. The work of others will not help or support your work and analysis unless their research is relevant, reliable and valid. Most importantly, make sure that you relate that consideration of themes to what you are doing. State in your section the relevance of the work you are commenting on, or to which you are referring, to your own work. If you cannot identify the relevance it probably is not relevant. This section will be heavily based on the initial literature review essay you submitted at the start of the Spring term.

Section 3 Research Methodology (about 750 words)
A description of the research methodology adopted which explains the research rationale. Any theory and/or hypothesis to put forward? Also, from where and how was the data collected? Why were only these companies selected (or excluded) from the sample? How was the data analysed?

Section 4 Results and discussion of results (1,500 words to 1,750 words)
Present your analysis and results in a complete, clear and helpful way. Provide critical commentary on the quality of responses and the reliability/limitations of findings (do not overdo the tables and figures!). Relate your findings back to the literature review, discussing similarities and differences.

Section 5 Conclusion (about 500 words)
All projects need a useful, ‘conclusion' section th at adds value, rather than merely summarises previous parts of the project. A perfunctory, single page summary of the project inserted at the end of your work will serve little purpose, and create a poor impression! Useful points to cover in the conclusions section are:
• A brief summary of key points made in the project.
• A ‘so what?' section which discusses the implicatio ns of the project for: (a) a given organisational context, (b) organisations in general, (c) concept/theory/technique development and (d) existing literature on the subject.
• Limitations of the scope, quality, and validity of the analysis undertaken in the project.
• Suggestions for further work.

The main body of your Report
The structure of your project is likely to vary depending on whether your project is primarily (a) empirical research or (b) literature-based. In most cases, you will be doing an empirical research.

(a) Empirical research (investigations)
Empirical research usually involves some form of systematic data collection, subsequent analysis, followed by discussion of findings and how this relates to the literature. Projects involving the collection and/or processing of data require careful planning in order, in the time available, to: (a) identify data required; (b) check on the availability of data; (c) obtain data; (d) analyse data.

Do not be too ambitious in what you hope to achieve. Such projects are often very interesting and very successful, but problems in respect of (a), (b), (c) or (d) can easily restrict the scope of project work. Your supervisor is well aware of these potential difficulties and will advise you.

Irrespective of the formal tests applied to data collected, it is extremely important that the quality of the data under consideration is assessed, and that this is recognised in the project itself. This is good practice, as it draws attention to any weaknesses in the analysis, and alerts the reader to the possible uncertainties which

underlie the conclusions. In addition, identifying the weaknesses in the analysis provides useful indicators for future research. The final conclusions may be used as a basis for specific actions, consequently it is only fair that decision-makers should be made familiar with any inherent limitations of the work, and hence the possible risks of acting on the research results. The required structure for projects based on empirical research is provided in Section 5.2.4.

(b) Literature based (concept clarification and development)
Such projects are expected to involve significant personal contribution by the student. In empirically based projects this presents no difficulty, but where reviews of the literature are involved the need for significant personal contribution is easily forgotten. When reviewing literature, or indeed whenever referring to literature, do not use material uncritically. Always be critical of what you read. This means that you should compare and contrast the views of authors and, where possible, try to comment on the relevance, value, shortcomings or advantages (as appropriate) of cited references. Unless you attempt some individual assessment of cited literature, your efforts at citing the literature will attract minimal marks. Note, however, this means that you should only comment based upon the facts that you can elicit from past publications, not based upon your subjective personal evaluation.

The nature of sections will be highly dependent on the subject being studied. However, it is usually best to use headings which reflect themes of the selected topic rather than the source of the literature (e.g. text books, papers, empirical work, theoretical studies, websites, etc). In general, introductory material covered in your degree programme modules should be summarised only briefly to allow attention to be focused on more advance/deeper treatment of the topic - start gener al and then progress to specific concepts and findings drawn from the most relevant and recent journal articles.

Attachment:- Accounting Project.rar