Professional skills and expertise
The aim of the master thesis is to apply the professional and methodological competencies that have been developed during the "International Business Management" master´s degree program in a final written thesis.
On successful completion of this module, students will be able to prove that they are capable of:

• defining a research question that is relevant for managerial practice and related to contents in the "International Business Management" master´s degree program
• selecting the appropriate research methodology for answering the research question
• writing a state-of-the art literature review about the topic of the master thesis
• independently working on and answering the research question in a master thesis by means of applying the proper academic methodology within a defined timeframe
• develop well-founded suggestions for dealing with the problem situation of the research question based on systematic theoretical and/or empirical work

• defining a problem and research aim in a clear, unambiguous way
• developing a coherent, correct and persuasive chain of argumentation to answer a research question
• critically assess the quality of literature sources
• demonstrating the ability to work in a focused and disciplined way on the completion of an independent research work within a set timeframe

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With their master thesis, students prove that they are able to use the knowledge that they acquired during their studies and academic research methodology to solve theoretical and/or practical problems linked to contents of the "International Business Management" master´s degree program.
A master thesis consists of:

• the formulation of a clear research aim and a research question based on a well-founded description of a practical managerial problem
  
• a thorough state-of-the-art literature review
  
• a theoretical framework that is developed based on the literature review
  
• a clear description of the research method (rationale behind the choice of method; for empirical work: sample selection, data collection and data analysis methods)
  
• the presentation of the results of the research work
  
• a discussion in which the results are linked with extant literature (limitations of the research work are also described in this section)
  
• a conclusion section in which the initial research question is answered and suggestions for theory and practice are derived
  It is possible that two or more students jointly work on one master thesis topic. In this case, however, the performance of each student needs to be presented in a form that can be assessed independently.
  

Evans, D., Gruba, P., & Zobel, J. (2014). How to Write a Better Thesis. 3rd ed. Cham: Springer.
FH Kärnten (2020). Guidelines on Academic Writing School of Management(WI-R03). Spittal an der Drau: Fachhochschule Kärnten.
Kornuta, H. M. (2019). A Concise Guide to Writing a Thesis or Dissertation. 2nd ed. Abingdon: Routledge.

Self-directed writing process of the master thesis

Integrated module exam (end-of module examination):

• Master thesis (100%)