1. Literature review and proposition development (25 marks)
In this section, you are required to write a literature review on 6-8 journal papers on executive
compensation and sustainability reporting on addressing the climate related issues. Explain
how the above literature help you to develop your research question that you would like to
investigate using qualitative data. State your research questions, propositions, or predicted
patterns clearly. (Approximately 600 words)
2. Qualitative Research Method and Research Design (25 marks)
This section will include (1) contextualising your research question for investigation, (2) data
you will observe, such as annual reports, sustainability reports, interview (video/audio), social
media data (e.g. Twitter posts), and survey results, and how you collect the data, and (3) other
important considerations in the research design of this investigation. You are required to
explain why you collected the data in that way and justify your methods in detail. You might
include some in-text references to research methods literature to help explain your choice of
method. (Approximately 600 words)
Sample size required: at least 20 effective files of 20 listed companies in the UK and/or EU.
3. Results (20 marks)
In this section, you will report the observed pattern using charts, tables and/or word clouds.
Interpret the pattern you find. State to which extend that your findings answer your research
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questions, or whether the findings support or reject your propositions or predicted patterns.
(Approximately 500 words)
4. Discussion of Results (15 marks)
In the discussion you should comment on your results (Approximately 300 words), including:
• Summarise and find themes from your data analysis above.
• Highlight the interesting findings and discuss the implications to the relevant readers.
• To which extent your findings agree or disagree with the literature? Write your answers
to this question as the analysis of your results.
• Consider the accuracy and reliability of your results and especially address the
limitations of your research (e.g., small sample size, limited access to data, etc.)
5. Appendix (15 marks)
In this section, you are required to:
1. Copy and paste the raw analysis outcomes as you produced in NVivo to evidence the
data analyses and results as you reported above. There is no formatting requirement for
this section, as long as the data analysis process is clear to read. Marking on this section
will be reflected in the above relevant sections. Please note that insufficient data
analysis reported in this section will result in low marks on the above relevant sections,
as the research originality would be questionable.
2. Use AI language generator (e.g. ChatGPT) as research assistant where applicable to
help you to contextualise the question and the possible draft. However, any texts
generated by any AI language generator in your research and analysis process
are required to be submitted in an Appendix attached in this section, which are
not included in the word count nor being marked. You need to show the improvement
in your submission, from the AI generated texts, to:
1) Include the page number of the referenced parts of the annual reports and
other references that you used;
2) Summarise or paraphrase the AI generated texts to evidence your learning;
3) Correct the AI generated texts with reference to the academic references or the
latest information that is missing from the AI used database.
4) Improve the expression, being more relevant to the question context with
specific examples and the appropriate application of principles or theories.
The above improvement from AI references will be considered in the marking of the
above four sections. Using AI generated contents without the efforts on contextualising
and improving them, as required above, will result in low marks or as the evidence of
plagiarism.
