Labor unions focus on unionizing professional and white collar positions. I will also focus on human resource organizations lacking the skills to respond to this non-traditional union focus.
Instructions for Outline of thesis structure: (ONLY Chapter 1 is relevant now)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1.
1. INTRODUCTION 1
Statement of the Problem
Purpose of the Study
Research Design of the Study
Importance of the Study
Scope and Limitation of the Study
Definition of Terms
Definition one
Definition two
Definition three
Definition four
Definition five
Definition six
Organization of the Remainder of the Thesis
NOTES FOR COMPLETING CHAPTER ONE: (NOTES FOR THE PROFESSOR)
•Scope and Limitations of the Thesis. Here you tell us how broad your thesis is and what are the parameters of the limitations. Don’t just say that your thesis is very broad and that you don’t have any limitations. Let’s say you are writing your thesis in the general area of family and pregnancy leave. Leave it at that? OK, but I’ll expect you to cover how those leaves are handled in Albania, Crete, and Indonesia, to name a few. And, how about the latest pregnancy leave ordinances in the town of Rocputs in Rachingladorg? So, maybe you should have a scope that is the United States? And, maybe a limitation is that you will not cover any family and pregnancy leave situations outside the United States. But there may be more. Are you considering just federal laws or the laws of all 50 states? And cities—many cities have laws in that area. Oh, are you just covering family and pregnancy leave laws and regulations? Or, will you consider the policies and practices of major organizations (e.g., Verizon, Pepsico, etc.) that go beyond the laws. I hope you get the idea.
•Importance of the Study. I like to approach this section by suggesting that you complete a sentence that starts “The research, conclusions, and recommendations that are the result of this thesis will be useful to.” Finish it by saying who (human resource professionals, management, major U.S. corporations) and what they will do with it (e.g., “in designing new pregnancy and family leave policies,” or “in complying with the laws related to pregnancy and family leave.”). Then write a few sentences in front of that one that describe a bit more about what you will be accomplishing.
•Research Design. Here you will need to describe how you will go about achieving your purposes. You will always perform a detailed review of the literature, of course. You may also use focus groups, interviews, surveys, etc. Describe what you will do to achieve your purposes.
•The Organization of the Remainder of the Thesis. I just looked over the Chapter 1 Assignment and I can’t think of anything else to say. However, let me emphasize that this, along with the Purpose section is the most important part of the chapter. Devote extra time to doing a very high quality job on this section. This section provides a roadmap that you will follow in writing each of your chapters. You may change it in the future as you conduct more research, but it is important that the draft be excellent. In addition, your next (and final) assignment will be to take this section and use it to develop a Detailed Outline, which becomes your draft Table of Contents.
Planning and Organizing your Work
The last step in writing Chapter 1 was to write “The Organization of the Remainder of the Thesis.” So, at this point, you have a pretty good idea what you will cover in each chapter. Now it’s time to do some (how about “a lot”) of research so that you will have content to put in each chapter. One risk in doing all this research is that you get buried in “stuff.” And what could be excellent relevant research becomes “stuff” if it is not organized well. So, here are some steps to take to get yourself organized.
•If at all possible, find a place where you can put your thesis materials so that they will stay the way you left them. Once you get a fair amount of material, just getting the material out will take 5 minutes, and probably another 5 minutes to put it away. So, if you have only 15 minutes to devote to thesis work today, you might just say “it isn’t worth the effort to get 5 minutes of work.” If you leave the material out, then you will get a full 15 minutes of productivity. One of my students has a small child, so leaving the material sitting around was not an option. She emptied out the floor of her bedroom closet (and found shoes that she hadn’t seen in years) and put the material on the floor. All she had to do was pull it out of the closet and she was ready to go.
• • If you ask “pull out what,” that’s the next step. When you get material (books, magazine articles, etc.) I suggest that you make copies of the pages that you think you will need. Enter the source information on the Reference List and then on each page you copied enter the citation (e.g., Smith, 1999, p. xxx if necessary). So, what do you do with all of these pieces of paper? Read on.
. Boxes. That’s the secret. I use old wine boxes (That’s because I get plenty of them. Don’t ask.), but you can use whatever is available (and preferably free). Label each box with a chapter number. Then, each time you make a copy of a page or pages that is relevant to your thesis, put it in the appropriate box. What if there is material on a page that applies to more than one chapter? Well, I think that the simplest approach is to make multiple copies, so that each goes to the appropriate box. Also, as you think of things (e.g., “Be sure to cover xxx in Chapter 4”) write the comment or thought on a piece of paper and put it in the appropriate box. As you get to the later chapters you should find the boxes full of valuable information.
• • You may want to have another box that you use for the chapter you are currently writing, but some people just use the box that they used to gather information for that chapter. Whichever approach you use, that box should also include the draft of that chapter, prior chapter drafts, your detailed outline, and the reference list.
• • You should have two more copies of your current chapter draft, prior chapter drafts, your detailed outline, and the reference list. One copy, along with the diskette, CD or flash drive that contains the files, should be filed somewhere away from where you keep your boxes and other material. This copy/diskette is your backup copy and will be available should anything ever happen to your primary materials. Oh, you should remember that, your mentor may also have copies of this material. For example, when my students email chapters to me I save a copy of the chapter, and a copy of the chapter with my revision notes on it. So, those students have a second backup for some of their material. But, wait, what about the second copy I told you to make? You should put that copy in a folder and have it with you. Having it with you at all times (no, you don’t need to take it into the swimming pool), allows you to examine it and put notes in the folder during that “dead time” at the dentist’s office, waiting for the oil to be changed or the car washed, etc.
• • You will also need to organize your thesis computer files, but I want to cover that when we get to the Detailed Outline.
• • One big difference between doing your thesis and a normal class is that there are no thesis class sessions, so you are truly on your own. That may sound great, but for some people it is an absolute disaster. Since they can work on their thesis whenever they want, they work on it—never. I know that you all lead busy lives, but you can’t let that happen. Let me provide a few suggestions. The first one is to actually schedule time to work on your thesis—just like you would schedule a meeting at work. Then you need to tell the appropriate people (spouse, significant others, children) that you just aren’t available during those times. That wasn’t working for one of my students, so she came up with an alternative. In her case, her 5 and 7 year old children were not able to leave her alone and her spouse was not exercising adequate control over them. So, she scheduled her thesis work as a three hour course which started at 6:30 and ended at 9:30. She went to either the Mercy Library or her local library and worked the entire three hours. Last, for those you who are well disciplined, you may want to try an approach that I used during my dissertation work. I scheduled my work out for a few weeks (we will cover scheduling your work in a couple of sessions) and had each “deliverable” (e.g., finish Chapter 3) end on Saturday. Why Saturday? Well, at that time, for me, relaxation was watching the NY Giants play football on Sunday (this was way back when the NY Giants won football games). And, if I didn’t finish my work by Saturday, then I had to work “overtime” on Sunday morning or miss the game. Even if I did miss the Saturday deadline, I found my productivity very high on Sunday morning and I usually managed to complete the deliverable by the kickoff.
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