Struggling to Find a Fresh HR Research Topic for My MBA Project – Any Ideas?

Hi, I am Siva in my final semester of MBA, about to start a research project in HR. I am very confused about the topic to be selected because I proposed my areas of interest to an HR manager and he rejected them, telling me that topics in those areas cannot be completed within the 3-month internship duration. The areas of interest I proposed to that manager were:

- Organizational Behaviour
- Employee motivation
- Recruitment
- Measuring Effectiveness
- Change management
- Socialization

I searched throughout this site but found many old topics only. Please help me in finding an innovative and very recent HR research topic. I hope someone would listen to my plea.

N. Sivasundaram

Dear Siva,

Where are you studying and in which mode? Have you not got a tutor guide from whom you can seek guidance? The HR Manager is correct in his view, as the topics you are suggesting are too broad. Instead, I suggest that you ask the Manager what problems they face that need solving, which you could use for your project. Please access my Post on Research Methodology, where I have posted PowerPoint slides. You need to use a "funnel approach" and narrow down the topics listed by you. For example, what do you mean by a project on Motivation? Motivation of whom and for what? What research objectives are you going to set, and what hypotheses do you want to prove or disprove? Have you done any literature survey on any of the topics to see what others have done, how, and why in that way? I am sorry for asking a lot of questions. Answering such questions will shed some light that will help you to choose a suitable topic for your internship.

Have a lovely day.

Simhan

Simhan,

I am a full-time HR and MKT student at Jerusalem College of Engineering. The problem here is we must first specify our topic, which is the gateway for us to get approval from a company to do a research project. If the topic does not attract the manager, we hardly get a project in their company. The areas of interest, as mentioned above, were just made on a broader scale; there are many sub-topics inside them that could be chosen, but the manager was not interested in those areas. So please suggest some latest and innovative HR topics. Many thanks for your post. Hoping to hear from you soon.

N. Sivasundaram