Title: The social capital and corporate leaders.

HOW TO START A PROPOSAL

Your proposal should begin with two indroductory paragraphs that serve mainly to get the reader into the paper.

The first paragraph states the purpose of the proposed study and the general methodological approach. The second paragraph outlines the organization of the proposal.

Here is an example:

Each section or chapter should be also opened with an introductory sentence. Study some examples:

WRITING PRACTICE

Read the text below, which is the abstract from a PhD dissertation. Identify the purpose and the general methodological approach to the research conducted, and write an introductory paragraph (in no more than 70 words) for an imaginary proposal. Remember to use the future time expressions.

Title: The social capital and corporate leaders.

The concept of social capital has been linked to a variety of individual outcomes but a review of social capital and leadership literature reveals that there is no body of empirical research that links social capital to leadership. The general thesis of this research is that the social capital of leaders can be a significant source of their ability to influence others and that the nature of the relationship between social capital and leadership influence is moderated by the leader’s level of authority. I argue that social capital is a source for leaders in much the same way that human capital is considered a resource. For example, types of social capital might serve as cues for the cognitive processes that people use to perceive and evaluate leadership. This observation, while applicable at all levels of leadership, is moderated by the organizational level at which leadership is exercised. In order to analyze this relationship, I collected survey data on social networks of approximately two hundred corporate leaders while collecting leadership ratings on these leaders from more than one thousand of their co-workers. The subsequent analysis provided insights of interest into the amount and type of social capital of different sets of corporate leaders. This dissertation sought to identify and examine possible theoretical linkages between the two previously unrelated concepts of social capital and leadership. Although this research did not identify any significant support for the hypothisized relationships, it provided support for many earlier findings in the field of social capital and leadership. This research also developed theoretical insights into the contigent nature of the relationship between these two concepts. The results of this analysis suggest that there is a need for relevant network measures based on the nature of contacts in individual social networks for the study of social capital and leadership. A futher exploration of the role that social capital plays in the exercise of leadership could provide a more multidimentional perspective to a range of issues that are of importance to the field of strategic management.

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Analyse the following titles of research projects and formulate possible introductory paragraphs for research papers:

1. Managing post-merger corporate culture: A case study of two mergers in the transportation industry.
2. A contingency framework for global branding: A multi-level interaction model.
3. Use of product-country image cues in magazine advertising: A content analysis.
4. An exploration of the resource theory in the Internet environment.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 856