AMITY UNIVERSITY Amity International Business School (AIBS) Students Guide for Minor Project (International Business) MBA

IB - (Semester III)
Credit Units: 05 Part I: GENERAL GUIDELINES
This section contains general guidelines which will guide students in framing and undertaking Minor Project. Objectives:

The aim of the project is to enable the student to undertake a learning journey which is largely self-directed and self-motivated. It provides student the opportunity to integrate the various dimensions and domains of knowledge acquired thus far. Offers students the chance to concentrate on and specialize in International Business which may subsequently become a focus of career aspiration. The students will work closely with his/her subject advisor (faculty guide) to refine and shape the research topic.

Conduct of Minor Project

The minor project will be executed & submitted by individual student The students will be provided by an individual research topic from the Institute A Faculty Mentor will be assigned to each student for this project. Special Time slot to conduct the research will be included in the timetable. The Mentor will conduct weekly sessions to guide & follow up the students as well as to clarify any queries or problem faced by the students.( every Thursday post mentor mentee session) Weekly review of the Work in Progress will be maintained by Faculty Mentor & will carry 10% weightage during the final evaluation.

General Guidelines

Each student must submit an independently written report of their project. All contents need to be sourced from reliable primary & secondary sources; references for

which MUST be maintained in proper format. The paper should utilise class room learning and industry exposure to evaluate issues on hand and suggest remedial/progressive measures that may be taken by a concerns.

Research Topic Once you receive your research topic which will be given to you by Institute (Coordinator, Minor Project), It is your role to define your topic in broad terms, the research problem and to identify possible lines of investigation. Once you submit the proposal for the same, the Institute will attach you with a faculty depending upon specialization in topic/area. It is part of the faculty guides role to review constructively the detailed plans, and to ensure that the student is adequately prepared to address the problem. It is also the faculty guides job to assess constructively drafts of the report/ paper but not to undertake proof reading or to ensure that referencing is correct. These matters of editing, proper citation and quotation, spelling, grammar and so on, are students responsibility. Documentation and Presentation Full documentation of the sources of quotations and ideas is essential. It enables the reader to follow up the source of ideas, interpretations and information and it makes clear when you are drawing conclusions from the evidence presented. Failure to document or cite adequately and fully is to ignore scholarly conventions and may mean that you may not receive full recognition for originality. Documentation should be used not only to provide the source of a direct quotation but also to give the source for any information, ideas or interpretation that you have used and placed in your own words. Inconsistencies of spelling and capitalization, in the use of quotation marks, margins, headings and page numbering, detract from the quality of the work done. The responsibility for attention to such detail rests entirely with you. Citation. Some of you would like to use the Harvard system of citation, while others may prefer traditional system. In relation to punctuation of citations and references, many alternatives exist even within each system. You may choose one and then be consistent. Materials. The report should be typewritten or printed on plain, white, A4 size paper. Normally printing should be on one side of the page only but where good quality paper is used, printing on both sides is acceptable. Use black print. In all circumstances the text must be legible. Margins. A left-hand margin of approximately 3-3.5 cm allows adequate space for binding. The top margin of the first page and of the first page of each succeeding chapter/Section should be 4 cms. Other top margins, the right side and bottom margins should be a minimum of 2.5 cm in size. If printing on both sides is intended, a right hand margin of approx 3-3.5 cm on even page numbers would be needed to allow space for binding.

Typing. The text material should be typed with double or one and a half spacing between the lines. The items of the bibliography, the footnotes and intended quotations may be singly spaced, but larger spacing should be used between separate footnotes and between individual references in the bibliography. Twelve point font size of Times New Roman should be used The security of your work is another consideration at the drafting and presentation stage. It is advisable to keep an additional copy (paper or disk) of your work at a place other than your normal work place and update these as the work progresses. Pagination. Beginning with the first page of Chapter 1/Section 1, pages are to be numbered consecutively in Arabic numerals. Small Roman numerals should be used for all preceding pages, with the exception of the title page which is unnumbered. Proof Reading. Allow yourself adequate time to go through the manuscript word by word, line by line and page by page, ensuring that all typographical and other errors are removed. Examiners are going to check references and quotations to see whether they are accurate. Some examiners can be extremely searching, so be warned. Check these things before your original copy is duplicated. Attachments. Attachments such as data sheet, graphs or photographs should either be securely attached to the body of the project or submitted separately in a strong enclosure. Binding. accepted. Documents which are bound securely by being spiraled on their spine are

Submission Procedure. When you are satisfied that all the necessary revision has been completed and the project report is ready for submission, you should sign a declaration that the work is original and it is ready for examination. The declaration needs to be a part of your project submission. The draft of declaration is provided as Annexure. Detail information on submission can be found in the next Part.

PART 2: REPORT PREPARATION AND SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Introduction It is advisable that you gradually develop and start refining your ideas concerning your project topic. It is important for you to create a time line for the development of your project research so that it is realistic and it gets over in the stipulated time. Project Proposal

You are required to submit a project proposal. This project proposal serves the dual purpose of allowing you to think through what it is you want to do in detail and also allows the institute to identify a faculty guide for you. The project proposal has specific length and should normally be of 3 typed pages. The proposal should have the following details, page wise. First Page *Broad Area (International Business.): *Proposed topic: *Name of Student with signature: *Section *Registration number: Second Page *Brief account of data/information sources: Third Page *Brief account of how you are proposing to undertake the study: *Brief account of what you are expecting to find out from your study: Final Report There will generally be a strong relationship between the structure of the proposal and the final structure of your report. Each project report has its own structural peculiarity. Nevertheless, it would not be totally out of place to outline a typical structure which will also serve as a building block for you and it will also help in setting targets. SUBMISSION DATES: PROJECT PROPOSAL(In Academic Office) : 01st Oct, 2013 (Tuesday) ROUGH DRAFT SUBMISSION (Faculty Mentor): 23rd Oct, 2013 (Wednesday) FINAL DOCUMENT SUBMISSION (In the Academic office): 25th Oct2013 (Friday) PRESENTATION DATE: 29th Oct2013 (Tuesday)

Preliminaries. The preliminaries of your report should be in the following order: Certification Title page Acknowledgments Preface (if any) Table of contents List of Tables List of Figures List of acronym (if any)

Abstract

Pagination for this section will be roman numerals. Chapter/Section Scheme. There is no typical report structure; it is quite often guided by the need of the study. Nevertheless, you are typically required to take care of the followings: Introduction: The introduction is concerned with identifying the problem or purpose of study. The introductory chapter should state the nature of the problem that you are investigating, how this fits into the current research on this topic, how you intend to go about answering it. It should also bring about the research questions raised and the objectives set for your study. Review of the Related Literature: In the report the literature review must be tightly organized. The purpose of the review is to fit the particular study into a broad scheme or framework, enabling the reader to see its importance and relationship to other studies and perhaps to provide an empirical basis for the hypotheses or questions of the study. In some works a literature review may not be confined to only one chapter/section. Depending on the subject and structure of the work, it may be appropriate to refer to relevant literature in several chapters/sections. Methodology: In this chapter/section you describe your research materials and data sources, experimentation etc. You need to explain and justify the method within the purview of overall theoretical framework adopted and also why these methods were seen as appropriate. Analysis of Data/Experimentation: This may be confined to one chapter/section or spread over two/three chapters/sections. This will include presentation as well as analysis of data or experimentation collected/undertaken for the study. (Data in Appendix wherever possible) Summary and Conclusion: This chapter/section is about what you know as a result of your research and what still needs to be done. It may include recommendations. This chapter/section may includeI. Restatement of the problem, II. Summary description of procedures (briefly stated), III. Major findings, IV. Conclusions and V. Recommendations for further investigation.

References. References are arranged in alphabetical order, the last name of the author listed first, then initials and the date of publication. Plagiarism. Students should ensure that all submitted work is their own. Any student found responsible for dishonest practice (e.g. copying the work of others, use of unauthorized material in tests) in relation to any piece of work submitted for assessment shall be subjected to the Institutes Dishonest Practice Regulations. This may result in various penalties, including forfeiture of marks for the piece of work submitted, a zero grade for the paper, or in extreme cases, exclusion from the Institute. Plagiarism is a form of dishonest practice. Plagiarism is defined as the copying or paraphrasing anothers work, whether intentionally or through failure to take proper care, and presenting it as ones own. In practice, plagiarism includes any attempt

in any piece of submitted work to present as ones own work, the work of another (whether another student or published authority) Appendices. An appendix contains supplementary material that you consider necessary to the interpretation of the text itself. The decision on what material should be included in the text and what material should be placed in an appendix is at the discretion of the writer. However, caution should be exercised to guard against the abuse of appendices, particularly against using them as a refuse for everything that could not be squeezed into the report. Tables and data which are important but not essential to the understanding of the report, copies of covering letters, printed forms and questionnaires, tests, etc. may be placed in an appendix. Each separate entry heading is listed as APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, etc. Report Length It is impossible to be specific on this. The field of investigation is the important determining factor. However, the majority of students tend to produce reports which are too long. Length itself is not a positive quality and may make for greater difficulty in interpretation. Verbosity and inordinate length should be avoided. However, it is suggested that a 5 full credit point report should be about 5,000-8,000 words. Report Submission Care must be taken of the sequence of presentation of various components of your report. Order of presentation. This includes the followings:

Certificate of originality Title page Acknowledgement (if any) Preface (if any) Table of contents List of tables (if any) List of figures (if any) Abstract Introduction (if separate from chapter 1/section 1) Chapters/Sections in sequence Bibliography Plagiarism Report Appendix(ces) if any Abstract. The report must contain an abstract, or summary, of approximately 300 words. This summary is normally the first text read by the examiner. It is therefore very important in conveying an impression of the work and what has been achieved, and should be given much greater share of time and thought than its size would indicate. It should state simply and directly the objectives, what was done and the knowledge contributed.

Number of copies. Your report in the final form after spiral binding should be prepared in two copies. One copy must be submitted to the Institute for evaluation and one copy should be retained by you.

Assessment & Evaluation:

The minor project will be in the form of research report . A board consisting of faculty members who will conduct the final evaluation. The faculty mentor assigned to the group will do the continuous evaluation.

All reports will be examined most strictly for plagiarism. The student with best papers will be given the opportunity to present his/her work in a workshop.

Compo nents

Proposal Submissio n

Continuous Assessment

Analysis

Conclusio n& Recomme ndations 10%

Content & Layout of Report

Presentation

Viva/ Defending Questions

Weight age

10%

10%

20

20%

10%

20%

Happy Researching