Course Description

An activity course involving practical experience in planning a research project, designing questionnaires, sampling, interpreting results and preparing a research report. The course provides an introduction to research methods used in business and management. It covers qualitative and quantitative methods, using primary and secondary data. The course is designed to provide students a solid foundation for conducting their own research and for critically evaluating and reading prior academic research. The course presents the fundamentals of the research process. The knowledge and competencies acquired in the study process will enable students to make methodological decisions in designing and planning research. The overall goal of the course is to equip students with the skills necessary to perform research.

Learning Outcomes

During this course, you will:

• Understand the relevance of research in managerial decision- making.
• Have a critical awareness of research issues, methodologies, and methods used in business and management as well as an understanding of potential ethical problems of the research
• Obtain skills to identify a business problem/need, translate it into a research question, and design an appropriate way to answer it.
• Develop skills to identify and understand the main qualitative and quantitative strategies of research, of their advantages and disadvantages and of appropriate application areas.
• Develop skills to design a research project and collect data.
• Obtain skills to analyze data and draw reasonable interpretations as well as communicate research findings in a clear and well-organized way
• Develop skills to critically evaluate the quality of other researchers’ findings and the process used to obtain them.

Course description

To reach excellence as a student and as a (future) leader, it is not only necessary to develop hard skills, but also to master soft skills through which we can develop and improve ourselves, and our relationships with others and that are valued by and sought of by the employers. Taking on an explicit psychological perspective, this course will provide students with the necessary theoretical knowhow and practical tools that should enable them to both understand and apply pathways to (inter)personal, and intellectual success and to emotional flourishing. Topics that will be covered are: “self and personality”, “self-efficacy and motivation”, “creativity”, “critical thinking”, “self-management” and “self-branding”. At the end of this course students are expected to have become acquainted with and have mastered a range of soft skills that are quintessential for personal and career development.