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ESST survival manual
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Contents: 1. Introduction – in praise of the ESST student
2. Up-front advice
2.1. Be active!
2.2. Share!
2.3. Inspire yourself (because you’ll never be inspired)!
2.4. Go abroad!
2.5. Don’t panic!
3. Research orientations and a few words of caution
4. The supervisor
4.1. Getting the right supervisor
4.2. How to squeeze the juice out of the supervisor
5. The thesis
4.2. Passages you can start writing right now
4.2. Thesis evaluation criteria
6. A thesis quality checklist
6.1. The introduction
6.2. The literature chapter
6.3. The methodology chapter
6.4. The empirical analysis
6.5. The discussion
6.6. The conclusion
6.7. Bibliographies, references (and other acts of Satan)
6.7. The abstract
7. Conclusion
1. Introduction – in praise of the ESST student
The intention of this document is to give straight tips about how to write and systematically
improve the thesis and thereby nailing a good grade. We call it a survival manual because
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many students will find the ESST course really challenging and some might even doubt that
they will live to tell the tale. ESST students will have very little time to digest a large
smorgasbord of quite complex (and more or less well-connected) theories and they have to
write a full master’s thesis within a very short period of time. So a few practical tips could
come in handy. Although we call it a manual, we keep it in an informal letter’s form
addressing the student directly.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. What we really want to do is to congratulate you with
your entry into the ESST program. In some medical schools, the Dean welcomes new students
on the first day by telling them that they are now (by virtue of some magical overnight
transformation) the cream of the crop and the very elite of the country’s youth. Since such
uninhibited praise might lead to narcissism, bloated egos and all sorts of nasty stuff, we will
not take it this far. Besides, we are not a Dean. Nevertheless, we think there is good reason to
praise and salute you who have become an ESST student and throw in a few good words
about the program. Here is the top-five list of reasons why you are a very privileged student:
1. The ESST program centers on a significant theme which is subject to much
attention in current public debates: How scientific knowledge and technologies is
created and used in society. Knowing a thing or two about this is for instance
important to those who are interested in ways of sustaining and increasing the level
of prosperity in their societies. It is also important for those who are interested in
ways of changing the direction of global economic development and reducing the
gap between the most and least developed parts of the world. Moreover, the
science, technology and society nexus is crucial for dealing with the most serious
challenge facing humanity today, namely the protection of the environment. There
are many other tremendously interesting areas of relevance, and you will learn
about them during the course of the program.
2. The ESST course is very intensive and efficient. You will most likely be working a
lot and wasting very little time. While this might cause you some exhaustion and
perhaps the very first white hair on your head, you will be finished within about 12
months and ready to enter the job market. This is not an insignificant advantage,
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considering the fact that master degree students in other social scientific programs
typically use between two and four years to finish their theses.
3. ESST students have easy access to academic staff members who are usually happy
to help them with any education-relevant question. The fact that ESST is a small
course with few students is an important advantage to you. You can interact with
people who are knowledgeable about your thesis subject on a daily basis, and get
frequent tips and feedback. In other more crowded studies, this kind of interaction
is out of the question.
4. A great benefit of the ESST program is the opportunity to carry out the latter part
of the course in a foreign country. This is international academic experience,
which will look good on your CV. There are (at least in theory) 4 different
Universities to choose from. In many of those Universities, there are good systems
for helping students settling in and getting along with their thesis project.
5. The final and most important advantage of the ESST program is that the prospects
for getting a relevant and reasonably well-paid job are good.
So as you see, you have a lot to look forward to. But you also have some work to do and the
primary task is of course to write the thesis. In the following, we give you a few pieces of
advice about approaching this daunting project. We also write a few words about your most
important task: finding a decent supervisor and using her for what she is worth. Then we tell a
little about the contents of a thesis and the criteria that evaluators use to judge it. In the last
part of the document, you will find a checklist in which we summarize some of the elements
that separate terrible theses from good ones. You can use to this checklist to diagnose the
different sections of your thesis and determine which parts needs what kind of improvement.
We as supervisors use this checklist actively when we read thesis drafts and write our
comments. We hope you will have good discussions about your thesis during the next few
months. Just in case you are already tired by reading this long introduction, we want to give
you five pieces of up-front advice before you fall asleep.
2. Up-front advice to the ESST student
2.1. Be active
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Imagine you are at a family dinner party and your uncle, the dentist, approaches you with a
big smile on his face and asks you what you are studying. A strange feeling of unease kicks
in. With a slightly insecure tone in your voice you reply: ‘I’m taking a Masters of Arts degree
at the University of Strasbourg called European Science, Society and Technology Studies.’
Your uncle’s smile turns into a puzzled grin. ‘That was a lot all at the same time! Could you
please repeat but slowly? I am an old man you know!’ You try to rephrase and explain, but
for some reason more or less the same phrase comes out again. ‘That sounds really
interesting!’ you uncle replies with poorly disguised look of complete incredulity, and slinks
away to have another toddy.
In my opinion you have a choice to make: You can be passive or you can be active. If you
choose to be passive, you might openly (or inwardly) blame the ESST program for not being
well known and shrink back from situations in which you have to explain what it is about. If
you are active, you take the puzzled look and the awkward silence of your uncle (or any other
listener) as a wonderful opportunity to sell yourself and your education. If you choose this
latter route, you should pay attention during the lectures and the program and make up your
own mind about what ESST is and what it means to you. We think the programme has a lot
going for it, but you have to create your own homegrown 30-second elevator sales pitch.
Don’t resort to a passive position saying that ESST it is interdisciplinary. If you believe in
your education and what you have achieved at the University, then sell it! Make your point as
hard as you can. The listener will be thankful because deep inside we all want to buy.
2.2. Share
Bill Joy, the founder of the large IT corporation Sun Microsystems, once said; ‘no matter who
you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else!’ What Joy meant by this is that
managers of big and powerful companies can never afford to be arrogant and assume that they
and their employees always know best. Instead, they should be open and receptive to ideas
from the outside. The reason is that the staff of even the world’s largest company is very
small in comparison to the totality of individuals who might know something useful about
that company’s business. This has later been referred to as Joy’s law on management. To
paraphrase Joy, we hereby formulate ESST law on supervision: No matter who you are, other
people always have better ideas than you and your supervisor!’
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In other words; we as your supervisor, shouldn’t be the only one who read drafts of your
thesis because there is no way we can spot all opportunities and weaknesses in your ideas.
You shouldn’t trust us too much! So use whatever opportunity you have to share your ideas
with other people, and make sure you are open to good comments and suggestions. Smart
students establish small communities in which they read and comment on each others’ drafts.
If there is an academic, a journalist a manager or whoever who is an expert on your topic,
make sure you get in touch and ask that person how you can make your thesis interesting and
useful. Finally, if you have a friend or relative who is not knowledgeable about ESST themes
but is capable of understanding an academic text, you should not hesitate to ask him or her to
read it. Ask your readers: ‘How can I make this interesting and useful?’ Sometimes the best
comments and inputs come from unusual suspects. So spread your drafts far and wide and be
receptive to other people’s ideas.
2.3. Inspire yourself (because you’ll never be inspired)
It happens every time! Every time a student is about to submit we as supervisors blame
ourselves for not pushing him or her to start writing earlier. ‘If I had only scared her a little
more a little earlier…’ ‘If she had started just two weeks earlier, she would not have been in
this situation.’ The lamentable truth is that people tend to be inspired by other things than
sitting down in front of the computer and writing difficult things in a foreign language. So the
point is that you should not wait for the inspiration to come knocking, because it will never
come on its own. You’ll be waiting for Godot and a sick one-legged grandmother. You have
to inspire yourself! According to Kristen Ringdal, a brilliant Norwegian sociologist, the
inspiration usually comes after one has started working in front of the computer (not before).
It is therefore important to exercise some self-discipline and sit down in front of the computer,
even if you don’t really feel like it / you feel tired / your stomach is making strange sounds /
you have a hangover etc. etc. Just sit down in front of the screen and start typing, because it
will never feel perfectly right.
2.4. Go abroad (if you can)
As I wrote above, one of the greatest benefits of the ESST program (perhaps the greatest
benefit) is the opportunity to carry out the latter part of the course in a foreign country. Few
master programs have an equally strong support infrastructure for international exchange. In
fact, international student mobility is a major reason why the program was created in the first
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place. If you choose to travel you will get international academic experience, which is seen as
an asset by most employers. Besides, you are likely to get new -more specialized-
perspectives that you would not get at your home university (where you have probably spent a
lot of time already). You will get the opportunity to improve your language skills and expand
your network of friends and prospective employers.
2.5. Don’t panic
Our final piece of advice – or perhaps hope - is that you try not to take the ups and downs of
the thesis work too personally. We don’t know what kind of person you are, but we have seen
a few students (myself included) who sabotage their own progress by getting too frustrated
when things are not going their way. Writing a thesis is hard for most people, and it should be.
If you have trouble finding relevant data, we will find another empirical object together. And
if something comes up that slows you down or the writing process takes more time than you
expected, we will apply for an extension of the deadline. Whatever happens (well, almost) we
will find a solution.
So that was our up-front advice. If you want to move straight to our practical writing-advice,
just skip directly to section four. If you are in the philosophical mood and fancy a few
reflections about ESST and social scientific research, please read on.
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3. Research orientations and a few words of caution
If you have attended the methodology course you have probably realized that we recommend
that ESST students clearly specify their ideas and theoretical perspectives before moving on
to empirical work. We call this a deductively oriented approach. We recommend this
approach because we think that, in most cases, this gives the students – who generally have
very little time to write up the thesis - more control over their projects. It makes it easier to
keep a ‘red thread’ throughout the thesis and to organize empirical material. But you should
know right now that this approach is not without weaknesses and many people don’t like it
too much. A weakness associated with such a deductively oriented approach is that it can
make it difficult to spot interesting inquiries and possibilities that do not match well with the
chosen approach. Another possible negative side effect is that the student gives the impression
that she has decided what the answer to the research question should be before starting the
empirical investigation.
In general, the balance between a deductive orientation (let us call it commitment to a favored
theory) and an inductive orientation (we can call this accommodation to empirical
observations) creates a tension in every science. This difference in approaching nature can for
instance be seen in the opposing views of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein. Bohr assumed that
the mathematics of quantum mechanics was correct and tried to imagine the reality that
corresponded to the equations. Einstein started with empirical facts and tried to find a
mathematics that would explain the experimental evidence. An older but similar contrast can
be found between Plato and Aristotle. Plato was certain that the true nature of an object was
not in what was observed, which was imperfect, but in the beautiful, permanent geometric
forms that were its invisible essences. Aristotle, by contrast, put his trust in observation, rather
than quiet reflection, to reveal nature’s secrets. While Plato was theoretically oriented,
Aristotle was more empirically oriented. This is not exactly the same thing as the difference
between deduction and induction, but it is close enough to serve as an illustration. In the
words of Kagan (2006: 64) ‘Because Plato’s stance is more parsimonious and promises a
tidier understanding of evidence, it has more beauty but unfortunately it is often wrong.
Aristotle’s strategy is burdened with tedious detail and ambiguity and therefore is less
beautiful, but is more often correct.’
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We think this is a tradeoff that one has to consider when choosing one’s thesis strategy. No
strategy is perfect, but a given strategy might be more appropriate than others in a given
situation. So our words of caution are simply that other people and perhaps your supervisor
might give other advice than we do, and that might be really good for you. Many students
don’t follow any advice at all, and they write really good theses anyway. In the end, it is up to
you to find an approach that you like.
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4. The supervisor
Finding the right supervisor is very similar to finding the right dentist. Few people choose
dentists at random. Instead, they talk to their friends and family and get references so that they
are absolutely sure they will go to someone who knows how to do his or her job. At this point
you might be thinking: ‘Find the supervisor? What do they mean? Am I not entitled to a
supervisor? Will the University not assign a supervisor to me?’ The truth is that, in the last
resort the University will assign a supervisor to you. It is part of the service, but it might not
be in your best interest to wait for that to happen. First there is the time issue. Developing an
idea for a thesis is a matter of discussing your thoughts and letting your ideas mature. If you
get a supervisor at a relatively early stage (say, in March), your supervisor will have sufficient
time to help you with that maturation process. If you don’t get a supervisor until May or June,
this will be much more difficult. Second there is the issue of personal chemistry. You need
someone you trust and can talk to. It is difficult for the University staff to find such a person
for you. You will be better off if you take an active role yourself. So our advice is that you go
out and try to find one as soon as you have developed some more or less fuzzy idea about
what you want to write in your thesis (if don’t have (but want) a clue, skip to section 5).
4.1. How to find the right supervisor (and convince her to supervise you)?
We think the lectures and discussions in the introduction course are the key starting point. Pay
attention during the lectures and try to spot topics that you find interesting. Then you can ask
the lecturer about whether there are local academics who are specialized in that topic. When
you have identified someone, you should go to the ESST student consultant and ask for a
supervisor contract. At this point, you should also ask about whether this person is a qualified
candidate for the supervision assignment (does he or she know anything about the STS
perspectives and the ways in which master theses are written here?) Write an e-mail or call
the academic, explain briefly what you are interested in writing about (it doesn’t have to be
extremely detailed at this point, but it should be relatively clear) and ask for an appointment.
If you get the appointment, you should prepare a little before you show up. Find out what a
supervisor is supposed to do (how many hours of supervision, evaluation of the thesis etc) and
prepare a brief statement of your thesis plans. While at the meeting, pay attention to what she
is saying and ask yourself whether this is a) interested and knowledge able in your field, b) a
person you could talk openly to and collaborate with. If the answer is yes, ask if she wants to
supervise you and make sure to explain the obligations involved. Don’t leave the office
without a signed contract.
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4.2. How to squeeze the juice out of the supervisor
A horribly wasteful thing to do is to get a fairly decent supervisor, and not really use her until
the last week because you have not produced anything coherent or readable until then. The
ESST supervisor is paid to supervise you. Make sure that the University get’s its money’s
worth. Our suggestion is that you prepare a detailed time schedule with meetings, deliverables
and deadlines. Then you should ask the supervisor to make room for the regular meetings and
the reading of drafts in his calendar. If you do agree on such a schedule early on, you
probably will not have to spend so much time locating your supervisor. Make sure you ask for
strict deadlines with grisly punishments for even the slightest postponement. When preparing
the time schedule, remember that you will probably need the most time with your supervisor
in the first weeks (preparing a good research question and thesis strategy) and the last weeks
(reading and commenting of final draft) of the supervision period.
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5. The thesis
People think of master’s theses in different ways. On one end of the scale, there are the
students who look at it as the final and eternal proof that they are not the average student. It is
the noble end product, they feel, of 20 years in the education system and it has to be brilliant.
These students take their education and the thesis so seriously that they start identifying with
it and sometimes feel no better than the current quality of their thesis. On the other end of the
scale, you have the students who take the thesis work really, really lightly. They think that it
is essentially a process of getting one’s thoughts straight and finding the right idea. The rest,
they think, is just a printing process. Perhaps you have come across this lazy type before.
When asked about whether they have started writing, they typically exclaim: ‘I have the
whole thesis in my head. I will write it out in the Summer.’ This is the typical flunk candidate.
We hope your view of the thesis fits somewhere in between these two extremes.
So what is a thesis? A thesis is a collection of sentences. It might seem banal, but those are the
main building blocks to us. The good thing about focusing on sentences is that there is always
a sentence that you can write. Sentences have a tendency of improving every time they are
rewritten. So we think that the sooner one starts writing sentences and the more one revises
each sentence, the better the thesis will be. It will probably also be more fun. A nice thing
about writing is when one reads a sentence or a paragraph and suddenly a pleasant thought
appears in your head ‘this actually reads quite well. Did I really write that? Say, I am actually
enjoying myself here!’ And then one becomes naturally motivated to improve it even more,
and start rewriting neighboring sentences to achieve same effect and suddenly a virtuous cycle
has started.
If you are an ESST student, you really need to get those virtuous cycles started because you
don’t have a lot of time. Ten years ago, Masters students at the University of Oslo typically
spent between three and four years writing their theses. There was no set deadline and they
could spend months and years reflecting on their theses without writing much. You don’t have
this opportunity and in one sense we think you should be happy about that. But don’t forget
that if you don’t start early, and keep writing continuously, you will probably deliver
something well below your ability. ESST master theses may look very different depending on
the style of the author, the chosen topic, the methods and so on.
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However, most theses have the following general building blocks:
1. An abstract
2. An introduction
3. A literature review
4. A methodology section
5. An empirical section
6. An analytical section that discusses the empirical finding on the background of the
reviewed literature. Some students merge the empirical section and the analytical
section.
7. A conclusion
5.1. Passages you can start writing right now
You can start writing these sections sooner than you might think. There are a number of
sections in the methodology part, the literature review, the introduction, the conclusion and
the abstract that you can start writing without having a specified plan of the whole thesis. If
you start writing these parts at an early stage you will have more time to revise them, which
will make your thesis better. In addition, this might lead you to fall in love with your own text
at an early point, which will be a real advantage during those hot summer months spent over
the computer. We will give these away right now, just in case you happen to be in a mood for
writing and not reading on.
Table 1 Passages you can start writing right now
Section Location Contents
Table of contents - You should create a preliminary list of contents right
away. It can take a little time to find a good format, and
it is not a good thing to struggle with on the night
before the submission deadline. It doesn’t matter if you
don’t know about all the contents yet. You can fill it in
as you move along. So find a completed (good) EM-
ESST thesis and use the list of contents as a model to
create your own.
Abstract first draft
- It makes a lot of sense to start with the abstract and the
conclusion early. The point is of course not to write
something final at this stage, but rather to force yourself
to think about the aim and contribution of the thesis.
Use your full thesis outline as raw material and see if
you can churn out something that resembles an abstract
and a conclusion
Conclusion first draft -
ESST relevance Introduction Here you can write a few words about how you think
the thesis fits in with the theoretical perspectives and
topic you learnt about during the ESST courses. It
should not be too difficult, because there are few things
that have nothing to do with science, technology,
innovation and culture.
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Conceptual section Literature
chapter
Even if you don’t have a complete plan of the thesis,
you probably have a general idea about the main
theoretical concepts that you will be using. So in this
part, you can give definitions (with citations) and offer
critical reflections if you have any at this point.
Description of broad research topic Literature
chapter
If you are aiming to contribute to some broad
theoretical debate, you can write a little about the
origins, the main contributors and arguments in this
debate. Why is it an important debate, where does it
come from and who are the most influential
participants?
General description of empirical
source
Methods Here you can give a general description of the source
from which you have collected or intend to collect
empirical material. For instance, if you have done a
case study in an organization, you can describe the
organization and its context (products, market,
employees).
Consideration of reliability and
validity
Methods Here you can briefly explain what is meant by
reliability and validity in social research, and what you
intend to do to meet these quality criteria
Ethical concerns Methods You can score a few extra points by discussing ethical
concerns. It is also a nice thing to reflect on before you
start collecting empirical material. And it is not
difficult.
List of references - It is very important that you create a list of references
from the very beginning, and insert full references
whenever you add a reference or citation in the main
text. Many students waste a lot of time because they
don’t fully document their sources during the writing
process. As a consequence, they spend last few days
before the deadline doing detective work instead of
improving the text.
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5.2. Thesis evaluation criteria
You should also know a little about the criteria that thesis evaluators use to determine whether
your thesis is very good or very bad or something in between. The evaluator will emphasize
these more or less overlapping criteria:
1. The degree to which there is a match (or red thread) between research questions,
hypotheses, theory, methods and the conclusions.
2. The student’s ability to orient himself in relevant literature and earlier works
associated with his chosen topic
3. The student’s ability to reflect critically on theoretical arguments and empirical
findings
4. The student’s ability to present his methods, to explain why these specific methods are
appropriate in his thesis project. The students ability to expose and reflect on
methodological shortcomings in the thesis
5. The degree to which she shows caution in drawing conclusions from her empirical
findings.
6. The student’s ability to write in clear and grammatically / orthographically correct
English and her ability to create a logical structure in the text.
7. The students ability to introduce the thesis by concisely demonstrating the main
objectives and questions and their relevance.
8. The student’s ability to conclude the thesis by clearly demonstrating the main findings,
clearly explaining how the findings extend what we already know about the topic, and
clearly pinpointing whatever practical/ policy relevant implications that emerges from
the fact that our knowledge has now been extended.
9. The degree to which the student has cited published works and other sources in a
correct and consistent way
10. The degree to which the research problem is relevant to the ESST course and current
academic and public debates
We are aware that this might seem overwhelming at first, but we think that if you take these
points into account as you write the thesis you will increase your chances of getting a good
grade. This list, however, probably does not help you a lot in writing and upgrading the
different parts. So in the remainder of this document, we go through the contents of a thesis –
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chapter by chapter – and try to explain how you can take these quality criteria into account as
you write.
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6. A thesis quality checklist
The most likely scenario is that you have never written a thesis before. You don’t know how
to do it and you will have to find out really soon! It is really difficult, and there are a lot of
things that have to be in place like good empirical material, relevant and up-to-date theory,
good writing skills, appropriate use of methods etc. It is also important to know how not to
write a thesis. Therefore, we have read many good theses and a few bad ones, and there are
certain elements that separate the former from the latter.
In this section, we have inserted tables in which we describe what we think are the typical
contents of terrible, average and excellent chapters. Our advice is that you use these tables as
a checklist to pinpoint areas of improvement, and then systematically try to revise and
improve the text. A final reminder before you move along: There is no generally
acknowledged template for an ‘excellent thesis’, and you should try to sift out the quality
criteria that are relevant for your thesis from the ones that are less relevant. Your opening goal
should be to avoid that any of your chapters are below average or terrible.
6.1. The introduction
Oh no! Not another one! After having read the three first pages of the introduction the
examiner knows he holds a bad thesis in his/her fingers. It is obvious, s/he thinks, because
these pages don’t offer the faintest clue about what the rest of the thesis is about. If the author
cannot express the purpose of this thesis in the ten first pages, she probably doesn’t have a
very good idea of what it is about herself. A mix of fear and irritation builds up. The wretched
examiner knows he is only paid six hours work to finish the evaluation. But it will probably
take two full days of intense suffering to read through this miserable lump of paper. He also
suspects that the student has not taken the task or the examiners seriously. The irritated
examiner reads on scavenging every page for the weaknesses that he is absolutely convinced
he will find.
This scenario you should absolutely strive to avoid. You do not want to irritate the crap out of
your examiner from the very start. If you don’t have the time to ensure that all parts of your
thesis hold sufficient quality, make sure that the weaknesses and the poorly written stuff isn’t
in the beginning. From a strategic perspective, it makes a lot of sense to prioritize the
introduction. It is, of course, very difficult to write a good introduction unless the other parts
of the thesis are more or less in place. So most people write a rough sketch at the start of the
writing process and return to it on a regular basis as the rest of the thesis gains shape.
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One important piece of advice associated with formulating your research objective is that you
don’t mix up the research question with the answer to that question. This mistake is very easy
to commit, because if you offer both a question and an answer in the same sentence it can
look quite sharp and clear cut. But the reality is that you give the impression that you had the
answer even before your investigation began, which makes the latter rather pointless. One
example is the following sentence: My research objective is to analyze collaborations
between developers and users of digital music instruments as complex innovation processes in
which different participants offer complementary contributions. Is there anything wrong with
this formulation? We would advise the student to reformulate into more open questions, and
save the answer for later. For instance: My objective is to answer the following two questions:
1) What characterizes collaborations between developers and users of digital music
instruments. 2) Do such collaborations affect innovation in digital music instruments and if so
how? Underneath, we have inserted a table showing what we think are characteristics of a
terrible, an average and an excellent introduction.
Table 2 The introduction
Terrible introduction Average introduction Excellent introduction • Unclear / equivocal
presentation of research
objective and
question(s).
• Research questions and
answers to the
questions mixed up
• Description of contents
that does not match
with the (unclear)
objective.
• Relatively clear
description of theme,
objective and research
question(s).
• Straightforward
description of contents
that match with the
objective
• Short and clear description of theme,
objective and RQ
• Concise and engaging explanation of why
this approach is important and relevant to:
- a clearly identified academic debate
- debates among practitioners
- current public debates
• Logical description of contents that
indicate how the different sections
contribute to overall objective
Like we just said, a terrible introduction leaves the reader pretty much at loss about what the
thesis is about. Alternatively, the terrible introduction gives a pretty good description of an
objective, but not one that is pursued in the rest of the thesis. A good way to test if you have a
terrible introduction is to ask someone you know (who is fluent in English) to read it and ask
them if they understand what the thesis is about after having read (say) two pages). If they
have no clue, or tell you something that does not at all match your own perception of the
thesis there is a pretty good chance that you have a terrible introduction.
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An average introduction gives a pretty good idea what the rest of the thesis is about. It
straightforwardly presents the objective and how the student has worked to achieve it through
her master thesis project. But it usually does not explain to the reader why this topic is
particularly important and relevant to pursue and why he would be wise to read on. It does not
explain what people might learn by reading it. An excellent introduction gives a very clear
description of what the thesis is about. It also clearly explains and why the topic is important
and makes it evident why the reader should read on. Finally, it makes it clear to the reader
what he should expect to learn from the different parts of the thesis and how these parts link
together. Good introductions are sometimes, but not always, short. For examples of good
short introductions you should read the first pages and abstracts of articles in the prestigious
management journal Administrative Science Quarterly. In this journal, there is an unwritten
rule that the first sentence of the abstract should summarize the whole paper and the first page
should pretty much expose what there is to be learnt from it. Most of the contributors are quite
successful in this. Many good theses have quite long introductions, but these make it clear
what the thesis is about at an early stage. Some excellent introductions start with excerpts
from famous literature, journalistic accounts, historical facts or something else that serve as an
analogy of the topic to be covered in the text.1
6.2. The theoretical chapter
The quality criteria that people use to judge thesis abstracts, introductions and conclusions are
quite uniform across disciplines and orientations, that is; you have to state clearly what you
intend to do, why you think it is important, what you have done and what we might learn from
it. When it comes to theoretical chapters, there is much more variation. Opinions about what a
theoretical chapter should contain and how the contents should be structured can differ quite a
1 One of the best introductions to an academic text that you can read is in a chapter called ‘The Anna Karenina
Principle’ in the book ‘Guns, Germs and Steele’ by Jared Diamond (1999). The purpose of the chapter was to
explain why some societies thrive and prosper, while other seemingly similar ones do not. The first sentence of
the text was the opening sentence in Tolstoy’s classic novel Anna Karenina. The sentence goes like this ‘all
happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Tolstoy’s message was that for a
family to be happy, a long line of conditions must be more or less optimal, like agreement about childrearing,
agreement about money, physical attraction between the spouses, absence of serious disease et cetera. However,
for a family to be unhappy there is an endless combination of possibility and a low value on just one condition
can create a lot of misery. This is the perfect analogy of Diamond’s topic; happy societies have everything going
for them (environmental endowments / climate, lack of aggressive neighbors, the right cultural / societal
software etc.), while unhappy societies can be unhappy for all kinds of reasons. You don’t have to go this far of
course, because there is a lot of difference between a Diamond and an excellent master thesis. Don’t spend lots
of time scavenging the classics for a perfect introductory quotation. But if you come across a nice analogy from
literature or somewhere else, you might consider including it in the introduction and set the stage for the rest of
the thesis.
20
lot depending on the readers’ methodological and philosophical orientations. It also differs, of
course, depending on the topic of the thesis. If the topic is unexplored and there is little or no
existing literature, the theoretical chapter will necessarily be quite short. There are,
nevertheless, some more or less universal quality criteria:
1. You should explain the main (theoretical) concepts that you are using in the text,
regardless of whether you are writing about innovation, networks, actants,
controversies, knowledge transfers or something else. Never expect the reader to know
the meaning of these concepts. While it is important that you explain the concepts, try
not to spend too much time on it. There is no guarantee that you will be rewarded by
writing long conceptual and etymological discussions (unless – of course - this is the
main purpose of the thesis). Explain what you have to explain and not much more.
2. There should be a ‘red thread’ stretching from the introduction and the research
question, through the theoretical chapter and to the empirical analysis and conclusions.
The red thread should not be severed in the theoretical chapter. The reader should not
feel lost at any point. The theoretical chapter is (in most theses) the transportation
passage that expands on the themes and objectives you formulated in the introduction,
and carries them over to the empirical section. When writing the theoretical chapter,
you should continuously stop and ask yourself: does this that I am writing right now
contribute in any way to answering my research question(s)? If the answer is no, you
should mercilessly cut it!
3. You should make sure that the theoretical chapter covers the main writings associated
with your main topic. This does not mean that you have to cover everything, but you
are advised to refer to both basic seminal contributions and the latest research. For
instance, if you only include references to literature that is ten years or older, you
probably don’t have a comprehensive review. It is not very complicated: do a keyword
search on Google Scholar and cross-check with Thomson ISI web of science. Choose
for instance the 10 most cited articles and books, and the 5 most recent ones published
in high-ranking journals. Another strategy is to skim through the last five years’
volumes of the most important journals about your chosen topic (if you don’t know
which these are, ask your supervisor!) and try to find overview articles and meta-
studies. Recent overview articles can be enormously helpful because they pinpoint the
21
seminal contributions, the main arguments the most influential recent research – and
most importantly – gaps in the literature and unexplored themes. If you explain (in the
beginning of the literature review) how you identified the literature, the review will
appear more trustworthy to the reader. Remember that if you simply state that little
research exists on your topic, without backing it up with proof, the thesis evaluator is
likely to do a web search and find out for himself.
4. When you read the literature, it is important that you try to distinguish the primary
arguments from the more peripheral ones. To accurately present the main arguments,
you should try to find good citations and paste these into your text (with full
references and page number of course). Sometimes, students are successful in
identifying key literature but unsuccessful in representing the main arguments. There
are many ways to write a review of theoretical literature, and some researchers are true
masters. If you want to see a good literature review, check out Walter Powell and
Stine Grodal’s chapter in Fagerberg et al (2005) Handbook of Innovation. These
authors are very good at extracting the essence of the literature they review. Note that
this ability to screen a large amount of information and boil it down to a concentrated
set of arguments is an important skill that distinguishes master degree candidates from
other lower level candidates in the labor market.
5. You should show that you are capable of reflecting critically on theoretical arguments.
This is actually an easy way to score a few extra points. Many students take whatever
they read at face value. But much of the stuff that you find in the research literature is
highly controversial, some stuff is counterintuitive and require extra explaining and
other stuff is plain wrong. For instance, if you cite an author who proposes something
radical like ‘nothing exists but actants, and actants do not exist until they have been
decribed’, make sure you don’t present the proposition as something that everybody
agrees upon. Ask yourself if you agree and if other researchers agree! The same goes
for other broad generalizations taken from the management literature, innovation
literature or elsewhere. Try to read everything with a critical eye. If you find
something that seems illogical and does not fit comfortably with you, use it as an
opportunity to show that you have a critical mind. Whenever you criticize someone or
something, do it properly. Use sound, logical arguments. If you are unsure about
whether your criticism is fair, just ask the supervisor or someone who is
22
knowledgeable in the field. When you discuss theoretical arguments, you may
consider using examples from outside the literature, such as your own experiences,
things you read in the news or elsewhere. Such external examples can make the text
more lively and interesting.
6. Whenever you make a statement about facts or past research, make sure you give full
references. Do not make a claim about some relationship unless you can back it up
with full references of past research. This might seem a trivial point, but many
students make a mess out of things here. If a thesis is on the borderline between an A
and a B, and the referencing in the literature chapter is sloppy, the evaluator is likely
to give the latter grade. Never write ‘research has shown’, unless you are able to
follow it up with ample evidence and references. If you cite someone directly, give
full references with page number and bracket the citation in hyphen marks. We will
return to the referencing business later.
Although these general points about quality can help you improve parts of the theoretical
chapter, they do not tell you how to structure it. While some tend to recommend a deductively
oriented structure that progresses from a broad literature review through an exposition of gaps
in the literature to a presentation of hypotheses, others prefer a more open approach that gives
an overview of the research field and outlines broad avenues along which future research
might be conducted. Yet others hold that theoretical discussions and frameworks are
unnecessary and that students should focus on telling good empirical stories (that are
unconstrained by previous theoretical framing).
We think that an excellent thesis should contribute in some way to a body of existing
theoretical literature. To achieve this aim, we think it is useful to use the literature chapter to
state clearly the main arguments, propositions and shortcomings of existing research as it
looks today. This will enable you to select relevant empirical case(s), isolate relevant
information from these cases, and organize your empirical chapter in an orderly and easy to
read way. This is not a very radical position, and I will show you how to defend it later on. In
any case, if your topic is not completely unexplored (somebody has written about it before)
and you would like your thesis to end up enriching an existing theoretical debate in some way,
we would recommend that you choose more or less the following structure in your literature
review:
23
1. A brief introduction where you restate the objective of the thesis – re-emphasize its
relevance for academia, practitioners and the public – and explain how the theoretical
chapter will contribute to achieving the objective
2. A conceptual section where you explain the main concepts you will be using
throughout the thesis. Here you might consider using a textbox in which you list the
main definitions.
3. A literature review. The review should progress logically from the main arguments
that have been made in the past, and towards current debates and gaps in the literature.
If possible, you can start by briefly describe the history of the topic; what inspired the
early contributors, their basic arguments and how the field has evolved since then.
Next, you should try to create a separate section (with a headline) for each subtopic
covered by your main topic. Most research fields, even very narrow and nascent ones,
involve sub-discussions that progress along different dimensions. For instance, if you
(by some incredible coincidence) happen to write about innovation in non-profit
organizations, you will probably have noticed that the literature discusses a)
relationships between the ownership structure and innovation, b) relationships
between organizational size and innovative activities and so on. In each of these
subchapters you should present the main arguments from previous research, gaps in
the literature and – if possible – formulate some propositions. The exact structure of
the sub-chapters is a matter of personal style. Some authors end each sub-chapter by
formulating a hypothesis to be evaluated in the subsequent empirical section (see for
instance Jeppesen and Fredriksen 2006). Other authors integrate all propositions in a
theoretical model at the end of the theoretical chapter. Other authors are content to
point out that there is a need for more research on one or more of the sub-topics.
4. A summary of the main dimensions, debates, arguments, gaps and propositions found
in the literature, and a bridge to the empirical chapter. In the bridge section, you
should state clearly how you intend to contribute to the reviewed literature in the
subsequent empirical chapter.
24
In the table underneath, we have tried to summarize some of the above advice, so that you can
diagnose and improve your own theoretical chapter draft.
Table 3 The theoretical chapter
Average theoretical chapter Excellent theoretical chapter • Definition of most key concepts
• Broad presentation of relevant
literature
• Some irrelevant digressions and
presentation of literature that is
not referred to or used elsewhere
in the thesis
• No critical discussion of
theoretical arguments (most / all
main arguments are taken at face
value)
• Clear and critical explanation of all key concepts
• Logical progression of arguments and a ‘red thread’ running
from statement of objectives to empirical chapter¨
• Presentation of procedure utilized to identify and access relevant
literature
• Comprehensive and critical review of the literature; both
seminal contribution and influential recent research.
• Clear exposition of main arguments, controversies, propositions
and gaps in the literature. Frequent use of relevant citations to
underscore main arguments
• Clear statements of how the student intends to contribute to
existing knowledge about the topic
6.3. Methodology chapter
Writing a methodology chapter is a pretty straightforward kind of thing. A methodology
chapter usually contains the following components:
1. A brief presentation of the chosen method(s) and the empirical source
2. A justification of the choice of methods (why this particular method is chosen over all
other available alternatives)
3. A description of the data collection procedures
4. A description of the data analysis procedures
5. A discussion of quality and limitations of the data and the analysis, and possibly
ethical concerns
If you read a few good books on research methods (Yin 1994, Miles and Huberman 1994,
Ragin 1994, Punch 2005) you should have little difficulty writing something sensible in each
of these sections. But if you want your methodology chapter to stand out and be excellent,
you have to invest a little bit of extra effort. Most thesis evaluators will ask the following
questions;
1. Has the student described her methods adequately? Do we feel that we have a
complete picture, including ‘backstage information’? Can we follow the causal
sequence of how the data was collected, processed, condensed, transformed, and
presented?
25
One of the most important quality criteria in social research, particularly qualitative research,
is reliability. The main test of reliability of a study is the degree to which it offers sufficient
information about the research process to allow future researchers to replicate the study (and
come up with more or less the same results). This is where the importance of a good research
diary becomes evident. You should make it as easy as possible for a future researcher to follow
your steps. Be sure to document every choice you make regarding methods and research
objectives, and why you made those choices.2
You should also carefully document how you
got access to empirical material, how and when you collected the empirical material, and how
you analyzed the material. If you adjusted your research objectives and questions during the
empirical work you should explain how and why this happened. Most qualitative research
proceeds through an iterative procedure of theorizing and analyzing empirical material. Few
research objectives and questions remain completely the same throughout a qualitative case-
based research process. Researchers usually update and sharpen their
questions as they discover new angles and acquire new insight from the data. This is an
extremely important part of the research process which is unfortunately often kept hidden
from readers of research reports.3
Although it is important that you trace your steps, this in
itself is of course not enough. If you present an excellent diary of your methodological
choices and your fieldwork, this in itself does not help you much if the research is sloppy. So
you have to do a good job, and document it well.
i) Has the researchers made a convincing case that her chosen methods are
appropriate for answering her research questions?
If you had available time and space you could write a pretty long answer to this question,
because it touches on both philosophical and practical aspects of social research. In most
situations, there are several methods to choose from and each category of methods has its own
weaknesses. But the extent to which these weaknesses produce negative effects depend on the
specific research context in which the methods are utilised. So when you write this part, you
should try to focus on your specific research objective, and ask yourself whether you have
selected the methods that are the most appropriate for achieving that objective. Don’t hesitate
2 If you want to find a good format for your research diary, check Miles and Huberman (1994)
or Yin (1994). 3 A good example of a well-described iterative research process is Lindkvist et al. (1998).
26
to ask for advice here. In this part of the methodology section, you should line up all the good
arguments for and against choosing your particular research strategy:
For instance, if you do case studies, you can draw some inspiration from the following
passages:
We have chosen an explorative case study method as an approach to the processes of learning
and innovation outside the firm. Thus, this paper does not take the road from theory to
reality; it uses reality to explore the possibilities of new product development methods. We do
not aim at establishing generality in the classical sense by arguing that the approaches
outlined in the study are easily employable in any firm or industry; instead, we try to discuss
the prerequisites for and prospects of this new development. Concerns about external validity
have been traded off against the opportunities to gain insight into an, up till now, largely
undocumented phenomenon.
(Jeppesen and Molin 2003, p. 366)
(...) case studies without links to explanations can produce results that are time-, sector-,
nation-, and technology-specific. When linked to explanations, case studies can be a useful
means of understanding behaviour provided that the explanation rather than the specifics of
the case study carries the argument. The case study illustrates a theoretical explanation of a
simple point; the more complex a product (and the organizational and institutional context in
which it is generated) is, the larger the chances of failure and variation in project
performance.
(Nightingale 2000, p. 916)
ii) Has the student critically discussed the quality and limitations of the data
and the analysis?
As you probably know, the two most important quality criteria in social scientific research are
validity and reliability. Most students have small sections in their methodology chapters in
which they deal with these concepts, but often they devote more space to defining the terms,
than they devote to explaining how they have sought to increase the validity and reliability in
their own empirical work. We would recommend that you write a short and concise definition
of the concepts, and write a longer passage on how you have tried to increase the quality of
your thesis.
27
We have already written about reliability above so we will not go on about it here except
point out one threat to reliability that you might encounter if you do case studies in firms,
hospitals, etc, namely the occasional demand for anonymity. If your respondents ask you to
keep the name of the company anonymous, it will be very difficult for anyone to replicate
your study and evaluate the reliability of your findings. You should strive to keep everything
open and transparent. But if your respondents ask for anonymity you have to adhere to that,
and explain carefully in the methodological chapter why this was necessary.
Validity is a contested term in the social sciences and there are many different meanings
attached. Traditionally, validity has been associated with empiricist – some would say
positivist - approach to knowledge and the position that scientific knowledge should (ideally)
offer a perfect mirror of reality. Within this paradigm, measures of validity centre on the
questions of whether the research actually measures the target phenomena isolated for the
research (and not something else), and on whether the results of the research adequately
reflect those phenomena. During the last few decades, this definition has been increasingly
criticised (especially by qualitatively oriented researchers) and complemented by a different
notion of validity that focuses more on the role of the researcher in the research process
(Ragin 1987, 1994, 1997; Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000). For instance, according to Miles
and Huberman (1994), a constant threat to validity is researchers’ bias – such as imposing
ones own beliefs on the phenomenon being studied, and disregarding discrepant data and
alternative understandings or interpretations. The purpose here is not to completely eradicate
researchers’ bias (which is seen as impossible), but rather to try to minimise it and organise
the research in such a way that whatever bias remains can be identified, reflected upon and
exposed to critical examination (Alvesson and Sköldberg 2000).4
For you who are in the
process of write a master thesis, this simply means that you should expose some healthy self-
criticism in association with your data collection and data analysis procedures. There are two
main types of validity measures - internal and external - that you can use in this endeavour:
4 As Alvesson and Sköldberg (2000, p. vii) put is, reflection means interpreting one’s own interpretations,
looking at ones own perspectives from other perspectives and turning a critical eye onto one’s own authority as
interpreter and author.
28
Internal validity (or concept / construct validity as some prefer to call it) measures the extent
to which the concepts the researcher uses adequately describes the phenomena under study.
Many people doubt that there exist such things as universal definitions and accurate
measurement in the social sciences, so what ‘internal validity’ refers to most of the time is
whether the student uses concepts and definitions that are clear, logically formulated and
widely approved in the research community (if the concepts are widely approved in the
research community, it is considered a good thing because then they can be used as vehicles
for communicating across studies.) So when you write this part, you should show clearly
where you found your concepts and definitions, and if possible give a critical reflection about
possible shortcomings.
External validity measures the degree to which it is possible to generalize findings and
conclusions to others settings. Generalization can mean different things depending on whether
you do a large-N statistical study or a small-N qualitative study, so what you write will be
shaped by your research approach. We will return to the topic of generalization later on.
iii) Has the researcher discussed ethical aspects of her research?
The Norwegian National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the
Humanities (NESH 2001 / www.etikkom.no) has developed a set of ethical guidelines, out of
which three are often highlighted as particularly important: The first is the obligation to obtain
consent from the people and organizations under study. For instance, if you have carried out
interviews, make sure to ask everybody whether it is OK that you use the information in the
thesis. The second guideline concerns the obligation to inform respondents. You can meet this
requirement by providing all respondents with a brief description of the project in advance of
the interviews and participative observations. Moreover, during the interviews you can make
clear to the respondents how their jobs and organizations are relevant to the project and vice
versa. The third and final guideline has to do with offering confidentiality to respondents who
prefer to stay anonymous. Like we pointed out above, the best thing is if nobody chooses to
stay anonymous but you should give everybody the opportunity. You should also ask for
permission if you cite someone directly (with name and title), and you should keep your data
and interview transcripts unavailable to others. Here are my views about what constitutes an
average and an excellent methodology chapter.
29
Table 4 The methodology chapter
Average methodology chapter Excellent methodology chapter
• Straightforward description of the
methods used
• Justification of choice of methods
• Presentation of data collection procedures
• Presentation of data analysis procedures
• Brief presentation of empirical object / phenomenon
and research strategy
• Justification of choice of research strategy
• Thorough description of data collection methods,
collected data and data analysis procedures
• Critical discussions of limitations associated with
reliability, internal and external validity
• Discussion of ethical concerns
• Appendix with audit trail / diary of major decisions
made during the research process
The average students typically write what is written in methodology books, and not so much
else. They use a lot of space on defining validity and reliability, but do not really tell the
reader how they have sought to fulfill these criteria when conducting their own research.
What sets the excellent methodological chapter apart is that it gives a very thorough
description of the research process, and critical reflections on the various steps taken. These
chapters are written in such a way that the reader can easily replicate the study. They also
enable the reader to evaluate for himself the trustworthiness of your findings. Excellent
chapters critically discuss what one might reasonably conclude from the findings and how
they might be used.
6.4. Empirical chapter
It is difficult to give you very detailed advice about writing this chapter because there is a lot
of variation in how students design their empirical investigations. If you carry out a large-N
statistical study, your empirical chapter is going to look a lot different from the empirical
chapter of someone who does a single in-depth case study. Still there is one clear quality
criterion; the extent to which you manage to integrate the theoretical review and the empirical
analysis. Your empirical chapter should discuss the topics, contribute answers to the questions
and evaluate the propositions you raise in the theoretical chapter. If you raise a number of
themes and questions in the theoretical chapter, and refrain from revisiting them in the
theoretical chapter, your empirical chapter will end up as an isolated island in a sea of theory
and that is a major flaw.
30
Many students encounter difficulties here, and particularly those who do interview-based
cases studies.5
Think about it; if you carry out 10 interviews, you might end up with
something in between 40 and 100 pages of transcripts. If you don’t have a good strategy for
sifting through the information, you will probably find it quite difficult to build up a well-
structured and easy-to-read empirical chapter. There are essentially two strategies you can
pursue to tackle this challenge.
The first – which we may call coding first and analysis after – is closely associated with what
is called ‘grounded theory’ (Glaser and Strauss 1967) and essentially focuses on generating
new concepts and propositions directly from empirical material. People who are skilled in this
method use data analysis software – such as Nvivo
(http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo.aspx) – to identify topics and concepts that
are common across the interviews, and then develop new theoretical propositions and
arguments on the basis of this. When writing the empirical chapter, they sometimes present
the new concepts and arguments in tables and structure the text around these. They also use
interview citations to illustrate and enrich these concepts and arguments. For an overview of
the grounded theory approach, check Strauss and Corbin (1994). Note that this strategy
requires that you specify quite clearly in advance what you aim to investigate and explain, and
how you intend to code your findings.
The second strategy which is more deductively oriented we might call theorize first and
analyze/reformulate after. An important advocate here is Robert Yin, the author of the
world’s most cited textbook on case study research (Yin 1994). The procedure is that you
develop an integrated set of clear research questions and propositions in the theoretical
chapter, and thereafter use these questions and propositions to structure and analyze the
empirical material. If you choose this approach and you have carried out a single case study,
the structure of the empirical chapter might be something like the following: (i) a brief and
coherent story about the case study (what is the case about, what happened, what were the
outcomes?) (ii) an analytical section in which each sub-section evaluates and discusses a
theoretical proposition (on the basis of empirical material), (iii) a summary of the main
findings. If you carry out two or more case studies, you might repeat the above procedure, so
that you have an analytical section for each case followed up by summary in which you
5
For those who do statistical studies, this will probably be less difficult because the theoretical chapter will
formulate the questions and hypotheses to be tested in the quantitative analysis. Moreover, the structure of the
empirical chapter is likely to be clear from the start; a sequence of statistical tables with comments and
explanations underneath.
31
compare the findings from each case. Some students who do multiple case studies prefer to
present each individual case first, and then compare them (with each other and with existing
theory) in a separate analytical chapter.
Regardless of the structure you choose, this chapter will probably be the most demanding one
to write and you should not hesitate to ask the supervisor or someone else for help. Moreover,
you should make sure that you have time to rewrite it a few times. The first draft is likely to
be a bit messy and difficult to read, but the text will improve a lot after a few revisions. Here
is a description of what we think are terrible, average and excellent empirical chapters.
Table 5 The empirical chapter
Terrible empirical chapter Average empirical chapter Excellent empirical chapter
• Isolated island in a sea
of theory
• Few references back to
the theoretical chapter.
Those that exist are
either irrelevant or
peripheral to the
objective of the thesis.
• Misplaced interview
citations with no clear
link to the surrounding
text
• Poorly written and hard
to read
• Coherent presentation of
empirical cases.
• Discussion of main
themes and questions
presented in the
theoretical chapter, but do
clear attempt to extend or
refine these on the basis
of the analysis
• Parts are poorly written
and difficult to read
• A few relevant interview
citations
• Coherent presentation of empirical cases
• Critical discussion of all major themes,
questions and propositions from the
theoretical chapter
• Plenty of critical (independent) reflections
and references back to theoretical
contributions
• Clearly presents how the analysis
contributes to existing theory
• Ample and relevant use of interview
citations and other data to illustrate and
underscore arguments
• Clear and well-written throughout. The
text seems well revised.
Like we said before, if you have no clear strategy for how to sift through the empirical
material, the empirical chapter is likely to turn out terrible. It will be more or less detached
from the rest of the thesis; a large lump of boring and non-penetrable text. There might be
some occasional references back to the theoretical chapter here and there, but the main themes
of the thesis are not really discussed. Moreover, interview citations and other data are
misplaced and irrelevant to the surrounding text.
In an average empirical chapter, the main themes and questions from the theoretical part are
reflected on and discussed, but the chapter does not really add anything new. It simply states
that the empirical material is in some respects relevant for the theory. Besides, parts of the
chapter are poorly written and in desperate need for a revision or two. In the excellent
empirical chapter, all major themes, questions and propositions are thoroughly discussed in
the empirical chapter.
32
Moreover, the chapter clearly shows how the analysis has contributed to extending and
refining the theory. The text is clear and well-written throughout and interview citations and
other material are amply used to illustrate the arguments. Finally, there is a nice bridge linking
the chapter to the ensuing conclusion. If you want to move from terrible to excellent there are
three things to do: 1) make sure to prepare a good theoretical chapter, 3) make sure to do a
good empirical investigation and get good & relevant data, 3) make sure you have plenty of
time to write and revise the empirical chapter (one week will not cut the mustard).
6.5. The conclusion
If the thesis has not made much sense to the evaluator until he reaches the conclusion, he is
likely to be full of anticipation at this point. Will the conclusion tell me what this thesis tries
to communicate, or will I never know? Will the student save the thesis here? Alternatively; if
the preceding parts of the thesis are great, the evaluator might be curious about whether the
student is able to collect all the threads and adequately discuss the implications. As you
understand, this chapter is really important.
It makes a lot of sense to start writing it early because you can use the draft as an organising
tool. If you reflect on your findings and possible conclusions throughout the writing process,
the whole thesis might turn out more concise, better argued and more readable.
Many students do not exploit the potential of their findings when writing the conclusions.
Instead, they simply list up what they have found without discussing their relevance or
implications for existing theoretical literature, practical and public debates. This is a shame,
because the conclusion should be a fun part to write and it offers an easy way to score some
extra points. This is where you can express your own thoughts, be a little provocative and say
a little about why the thesis should be of interest to people. It is a fun way to score a few extra
points and you should take advantage of it. While it might seem easy spot the theoretical,
practical and public implications of such findings, it can be very hard if you are about to
complete your thesis. You will probably be concerned with the coherence of the whole thesis,
that there is a red thread, that the findings make sense and so on. It can be quite difficult to
‘think outside the box’ when you are in that situation because your head will be full of other
stuff. So this is definitely a situation in which it is appropriate to ask your supervisor and
other people around you to read the parts of the thesis and ask them what they think are the
most important implications. You will probably find that their ideas differ from yours. We
33
have tried to summarize the contents of a terrible, an average and an excellent conclusion
underneath.
Table 6 The conclusion
Terrible conclusion Average conclusion Excellent conclusion
• Simple summary of the
contents of the thesis
• No attempt to answer
the research question
formulated in the
introduction, but
possibly attempts to
answer other
(irrelevant) questions.
• Summary of the contents
of the thesis
• Brief answer to the main
research question
• Suggestions for future
research
• Terse restatement of main research
questions, and the main arguments,
controversies and proposition from
existing research
• Terse presentation of research strategy
and empirical material
• Brief discussion of the limitations of the
empirical findings
• Clear answer to the research questions,
and clear explanation of how the thesis
contributes to extending and refining
existing theory
• Critical discussion of the implications of
the findings for practitioners and for
public debates
• Suggestions for future research
6.6. Bibliographies, references (see also ‘Academic writing’ section in ESST Handbook)
Welcome to the tipping scale of the thesis evaluation. If you write a distinction quality-thesis,
but are a little sloppy with the referencing you will get a pass good. Yes, a few inadequate
references can be the feather on the scale that downgrades your thesis from one level to
another. Although the referencing business should be pretty easy and straightforward, many
students make a mess out of things here. Locating and assembling together 100+ references in
a tidy list can be hell, especially if you do it on overtime and lack adequate information about
authors and publication outlets. Many students save this for last, spend a few hours in hell and
end up delivering incomplete bibliographies and references. This is a shame, because if you
follow some simple rules you will have no problems at all. Here they are:
-When you refer to an idea from a piece of literature, but do not cite the text directly, you
either give the reference at the end of the sentence or paragraph, like this (Fuller 1998), or at
the beginning of the sentence, like this: as Fuller (1998) has argued... If you refer to the work
of an author (or even to a stream of literature) make sure you ALWAYS cite one or more
relevant publications with the year of publication.
-When you cite someone directly, you can do the same, but make sure to include the correct
page number and insert hyphens at the start and end of the relevant citation: like this: As
Hildrum (2010, p. 34.) points out: ‘When you cite someone directly….’
34
-If you refer to a website (and no specific contents, reports or whatever on that website), you
may give the URL in the text. Example: Nokia regularly announces innovation contests on its
website (www.nokia.com). When you give the URL in the text, you don’t have include it in
the bibliography at the end of the thesis. If you refer to a specific document that you
downloaded from a website, you should give a full document reference in the bibliography.
We give an example further down.
-In the bibliography, you should give full references to everything you refer to in the text.
Thesis evaluators check this, so you should make sure all references are there. The format
differs a little depending on whether you cite a journal article, a book or a chapter in an edited
book.
• For the journal articles, make sure to include the publication year, volume, issue and
page number of the text in question. Example:
Bunnell, T. and N. Coe (2001) Spaces and scales of innovation. Progress in Human
Geography 25(4): 569-589.
If the article has been accepted for publication somewhere, but has not been published
yet, you can write ‘forthcoming’, or ‘in press’ instead of volume / issue / page number
• For the books, you should include the publication year, the publisher and the location
in which the edition was printed. Example:
Brown, J. S. and P. Duguid (1999) The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business
School Press, Boston, MA.
• For the chapters in edited books, you should do the same as above, but make sure to
include the names of the editors and the page number of the chapter. Example:
Eskeröd, P. (1998) The human resource allocation process when organizing by
projects. In R. A. Lundin and C. Midler (eds): Projects as arenas for learning and
renewal processes. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, pp. 125-131.
• For newspaper and magazine articles, where there is no identified author, you can do
like this:
Economist Technology Quarterly (2004), “An open source shot in the arm?” June
12th
-19th.
• For the more or less obscure reports downloaded from the internet with no identified
author, you can do like the following:
35
Initiative for Distributed Innovation (2005) Proposal abstract: Fostering Innovation in
Organizations Through Geographically Dispersed Teams and Networks.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Accessed at
http://www.distributedinnovation.org/index.php?p=abstract
A final piece of advice: try to avoid too many ‘grey references’ of unpublished material and
more or less anonymous documents found on the internet. One reason is that unpublished
texts are often preliminary versions of published texts. Citing unpublished preliminary
version, when a published version exists, is considered a cardinal sin in academia. Try to use
references that are published in high ranking journals and good academic books. If your topic
is so new and unexplored that no articles and books have yet been published, you have no
choice but to use whatever is out there. But in all other cases, you should strive to locate and
use the best material.
6.7. The abstract
Many students save this part for last. Some write it the night before the submission deadline.
After all, it is just a page long summary of the thesis. Since one does not really know what the
thesis will look like before one has written it, why bother with the abstract until the very end?
We would recommend that you start with the abstract and that you rewrite and improve on it
continually throughout the writing process. One reason that the abstract is the very first thing
that the reader will see. Moreover, it can be fun to write an abstract when you are not sure
what the thesis will be about. It is kind of liberating to start with the abstract, because neither
you nor anybody else expects you to come up with anything perfect or final. You can write
down whatever about the thesis that enters your mind. You will have plenty of time to revise
and improve so you should not worry at this point.
But the most important reason why you should start with the abstract is that this can help you
structure the rest of the thesis. It forces you to formulate a clear aim, which is very important.
If you write the abstract first, you will have a powerful tool to guide the rest of the writing.
For instance, many students get a bit lost when writing the theoretical chapter; they write long
digressions that either do not fit in with or do not contribute to the main objective of the
thesis. If you start by formulating a sharp abstract, you can return to it every once and awhile
and ask yourself whether the stuff you are presently writing is in line with what you initially
decided to write about. Conversely, you can return to the abstract and update it whenever as
your ideas evolve and your arguments become clearer. We are not saying that you should
36
stick to your original ideas no matter what. We expect you to change your mind many times
as you move along because if you don’t you are probably not learning much. Just make sure
to update the abstract every time you do (cause then you will always have a fresh update on
what you think the thesis is about). In addition to writing the abstract, you might also consider
writing an early version of the conclusion. If you do this, you have a something like a
thumbscrew that you can use to squeeze out the irrelevant stuff from the thesis. The
thumbscrew can be helpful because it allows you to ask two crucial questions: 1) is this stuff
that I am presently writing on contributing in any way to answering the main research
question? 2) Is this stuff that I am presently writing on likely to be reflected in some way in
the conclusion, that is; will it help me underline some of the main findings, or their theoretical
and practical implications? So if you start by writing the abstract (and the conclusion) and
return to it every once and a while, you will probably save some time and avoid giving birth
to too many killable babies. In the table underneath, we have described what we think are the
typical contents of an average and an excellent abstract.
Table 7 The abstract
Average abstract Excellent abstract
• Lengthy (one or more paragraphs) presentation
of the main theme of the thesis
• Statement of research objectives
• Presentation of empirical material and methods
that the student has made use of to achieve the
objective
• Short presentation (two-three sentences) of main
theme and objective. For instance; this thesis
explores (…) and the purpose is to (…)
• Short presentation of methods and empirical material
• Thorough presentation of the main findings and their
theoretical, practical and wider societal implications.
If you take a random look at a few master theses, you will find that the abstracts typically
describe the theme and objective of the thesis but not what new knowledge it contributes to
the world. Sometimes, the abstract is just a slightly rewritten version of the first paragraph of
the introduction stating more or less what the thesis is about. But you can do better than that.
You probably have an idea about what the thesis will contribute even though you have not
written it yet. So it makes sense to direct attention to the original contribution of the thesis,
rather than on outlining some theoretical topic that many people have described before.
37
7. A few final remarks
So now that you have read the thesis supervision guide, you can go over your thesis chapter
by chapter and ask yourself whether it is terrible, average or excellent. Like we pointed out in
the beginning, there are lots of opportunities for you to move it towards the excellent
category. But the most urgent task is to make sure no part is terrible. While this document
might help you do that, it will probably not be enough. So let me restate ESST law on
supervision: No matter who you are other people always have better ideas than you and your
supervisor. In other words, share your writings and be open to comments and suggestions. If
you do your utmost to achieve this, you can be happy and satisfied and leave the rest to fate
and the thesis evaluators.
38
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