2 management - School of International Business and ...

83 Preparing Scientific Works
1.4 WORK STAGES
Assumptions and hypotheses are developed about facts or procedures in the first step. One or
several research questions are or will be formulated from a subjective point of view which re-
late to knowledge and experience already gained.This subjective viewpoint is developed in the
second step into objective findings. The result of material research helps determine whether the
assumptions and hypotheses survive, and to what degree these need to be made more precise
or even corrected. At the same time, the study addresses the relevant scientific literature as the
(first) sources for the assumptions and hypotheses or answers to the research question(s). This
emphasizes the necessity of a basic study of literature.The third step verifies the results of the ex-
aminations. Sufficient evidence of the assumptions and hypotheses, i.e. their transfer to secured
claims (theses) serve as so-called primary material that has not yet been processed for scientific
purposes. These include:
– one's own material, especially surveys and interviews, observations, experiments and
contextual analyses,
– outside material, such as economic information, patents and DIN standards,
– government publications--above all laws, regulations, judgments and statistics,
– private materials, for example business and annual reports.
A scientific paper with an examination character must complete all three stages in order to derive
and implement scientific findings and to recognize them as such.In particular Graduation work-
-such as master's work--contains recommendations to implement the knowledge gained in a
fourth step to this process. These include:
– Recommendations for management decisions,
– Project plans,
– Economic perceptions,
– Approaches for further investigation,
1.5 WRITING RULES
In a false, but widely-held understanding the scientific language means:
– the rate of foreign words and number of nouns increases,
– the sentences are increasingly compartmentalized and, above all, longer,
– passive voice replace active tense.
The difference between such scientific language and everyday speech is clearly shown in the
following example: