OVERVIEW

When you read current scholarly research on leadership topics, you not only gain valuable information but also are provided with extensive references, some of which may spark ideas for future research. This project will help you explore this process.

For your project, you will examine readings on global leadership ethics, looking for possible gaps in research. You will focus on one of these gaps, writing a detailed rationale for an article that might close the gap on that topic. In the process you will gain practice in designing research questions and composing a review of the literature.

PROJECT STEPS

In order to find areas for future research, you must thoroughly examine what has already been published and identify existing gaps in the literature. Published articles are an excellent source of information on research topics because they almost always discuss future research ideas. There may also be value in doing a replication study using a different population, even if it does not address entirely new areas of inquiry. Thus, you will begin your final project by looking at published resources in the area of global leadership ethics.

Step One: Identifying Potential Gaps (Future Research Topics) Your first task is to identify five research topics that deal with ethical issues in global leadership. Each should be a topic about which you feel a publishable academic paper could be written. This part of the project involves discovering potential gaps in the current literature. The emphasis on the word potential here acknowledges that you are not doing a complete review of the literature on ethics in global leadership in order to verify that a true gap exists. However, please do your best to identify gaps.

Step Two: Choose a Topic and Write a Rationale Next you will choose one of the five research topics to pursue further. Now your task is to demonstrate that a true gap in knowledge exists. Having chosen your topic, write a 500- to 1000-word rationale (2 to 4 pages) explaining the gap in the literature leading to this question or topic, why the topic is important, and why you chose this topic. You will need to demonstrate a familiarity with what has been written about this topic in the past to explain how you identified the gap in knowledge.

Step Three: Design Two Research Questions This step requires you to design at least two specific research questions for your proposed article or at least two specific hypotheses. Note that research questions are descriptive in nature and generally lead to qualitative research, while hypotheses seek to prove relationships among variables and are usually found in quantitative research. Here is an example of each.

Research Question: What types of formal leadership training do global leaders have in the banking industry?

Hypothesis: Global leaders in the banking industry are more likely to have formal university training at the master’s level and above than global leaders in the automobile industry.

Research questions are discussed; hypotheses are proven or disproven. Sometimes, research questions include hypotheses, but for this assignment please compose one or the other. Here is some additional reading on how to construct research questions versus hypotheses.

Difference Between Hypothesis and Research Question

Difference Between Research Question and Hypothesis

Step Four: Propose a Methodology Your task in this step is to compose a brief paragraph on your proposed methodology. Your methodology is your plan for addressing the research questions or hypotheses. Will you use a qualitative or quantitative methodology? Because this is not a methods course, your answer here can be preliminary and quite general. For example, you might say that you are going to do a survey related to your research question; you don’t, however, have to stipulate whether it is a random sample, a convenience sample, a stratified sample, and so forth. But you would tell us what population you would be sampling and why.

Step Five: Complete a Sample Review of the Literature Your sample review of the literature should be between 1000 and 2000 words in length (4 to 7 pages). It is beyond the scope of your work in this course to do a comprehensive review of the literature, but in this section you should demonstrate your knowledge of the related literature by citing at least five academic sources. Your sample review of the literature sets the stage for your proposed research. Successfully writing a sample review of the literature requires you to choose representative, significant articles on the topic. Always start with the general and work your way into more specific topics, and choose articles that provide context for your own research and lead to the conclusion that your research is the next logical step. There are many guides to writing a literature review; here is a comprehensive one for your reference:

Guidelines for Writing a Literature Review

While yours is a sample review of the literature and not a complete review, you will still want to group articles you are reviewing into categories and make use of subheadings in your manuscript. For example, referring back to the research question above about the formal training of global leaders in the banking industry, the categories of information might be global leadership training, leadership training in the banking industry, and leadership training for global bankers, all of which would then point to research on what types of leadership training leaders in the global banking industry are getting.

GUIDELINES

See the Project Steps for descriptions of each part of your project.

Please use the following headings for your project:

Introduction (Be sure to include a thesis statement or statement of purpose.)

Possible Future Research Topics

Expanding One Topic

Rationale

Research Questions or Hypotheses

Proposed Methodology

Sample Review of the Literature

References