Research Practicum

Organizations and human behavior are dynamic and fluid structures; qualitative and quantitative methods offer a way of understanding the complexity of the day-to-day forces that impact the multiplicity of opinions, attitudes, intentions, and beliefs that exist within professional roles, the diverse social and cultural contexts, as well as “best practices” that steer relations within and outside of professional domains that are processual and outcome-driven.   This course is intended for students conducting empirically-driven Research projects who plan to develop their own research instrument(s) (e.g. interview guide, survey, focus group script) with the purpose of collecting their own data. Students may choose either to produce a comprehensive project proposal that clearly details a plan of future work or continue to work on a capstone or project already in progress. Students should be thinking about the development of their project, asking themselves—who and what they want to study, their research questions, and the significance of their research to individuals, organizations, and the “human side” of work. Empirically-driven research provides professionals and organization the potential to adopt a critical and reflexive view about the social world of business and its core processes.   This course focuses on the “how to’s” of doing data-driven research projects in professional settings as well as the role of the researcher, rapport, and sampling design. Students also work in collaborative learning groups throughout the semester to foster community, to critique and analyze various parts of past research capstones and scholarly works, and to provide feedback on their research instruments, literature review and project proposals. Present and former DYNM students will serve as guest speakers during the semester to discuss various elements of writing a Research capstone. Prerequisite: Non-DYNM students must complete a course permit request: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/lps/graduate/dynamics/course-permit