Scooped!

In August 2014, an article was published in Applied Financial Economics, stating that this is the first study to "empirically examine the influences of uncertainty avoidance on corporate valuation."  DAMN!  That's one of the things I'm doing and thought I was the first to do it.  I was just beaten to the punch!

HOWEVER!  It blazes a trail very nicely, and I can certainly build on it.  I sent the article to my thesis adviser who simply said, "Use it, and use it well!"

Amen!

I'm Still Here...and Time is Ticking!

I see that the last post I made was over a month ago!  A lot has been going on, not only with the dissertation, but from a professional and personal standpoint, too. A girl has to celebrate her birthday, after all.

My thesis adviser told me that the methodology is the most important - all else is secondary.  So, I'm completing three of the five chapters - Chapters 3 (methodology), 4 (results), and 5 (conclusions and implications) - before completing Chapter 1 (which is about 90% done already - the proposal helped to make that happen) and the infamous literature review (Chapter 2).

My friend Kathy H. is finishing her last semester in a post-graduate law program.  She has a paper due on November 13th that is worth 70% of her grade this semester and is scheduled to take her final in mid-December and graduating on December 18th.  I've decided to mirror her schedule, so here is the new:

• November 13th - Chapters 3, 4 and 5
• December 18th - Chapters 1 and 2

I actually wrote the Dedication and Acknowledgement sections tonight after work.  During a customer meeting, I had a bit of clarity around those little details.

More this weekend when I get off the road...

First Paragraph

Every "coaching" article I've read says to capture the reader's attention at the very beginning of the dissertation.  So I'm thinking that this should be the very first paragraph of Chapter 1: 

Enterprise Risk Management is like teenage sex, says George Westerman, research scientist studying enterprise risk management (ERM) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  “Everyone wants to be doing it.  Everyone thinks everybody else is doing it.  Not many people are actually doing it, and no one is doing it particularly well.”  [Berinato, S. Risk's Rewards. CIO Magazine (Nov. 1, 2004), 7. ]

 What d'ya think?
 

Self-Imposed Deadline

Today, August 31st, is my self-imposed deadline for getting the revised (and revised again) proposal to Dr. S for his final approval.  I've just done that.  Yay!

This weekend is a long one in North America, so the rest of it is dedicated to a 7-mile run and reading more articles for the literature review - that self-imposed deadline is October 13.  

I'm reminded of a quote I found earlier in the year from Dissertation Research and Success:

You have to throw out all the creative writing strategies you’ve learned since elementary school and become comfortable with the redundancy and specificity necessary in scholarly writing.

It bruises the ego badly.  I can do it, but becoming comfortable with redundancy and specificity is a tough ask!  

Damn the Torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

I turned in my 3rd proposal version yesterday morning, and at 11:30 last night, I heard from Dr. Z that he approved it and to send it along to Dr. S for final approval.  That means that I'm good to go!

I'm traveling this week so I didn't have the wisdom of my proofreader (my hubby) before I sent it, so there were some typos.  Oh well.

I need to do some "deep revisions" of it, but I can send it on to Dr. S when the typos are corrected and when I revise a bit.

Dr. Z is worried that I've come to my conclusions before the research is done.  That's probably true, but I have to tell you:  it's very hard to keep the personal bias out of it.

I was at an academic conference today.  I told a colleague (a doctoral student at the Sorbonne) about my approval and Dr. Z's concern of my bias.  She said:  "Everybody has a conclusion.  It's impossible to be impartial."  She went on to say that most people write their abstracts first before they even get into the study!  Ha!

I just need to figure out how to not have strong language in my literature review and study significance.  But I see the end.  At last!

Milestones

On holiday but still thinking about this dissertation.  I decided to give myself some milestones - which were agreed to by Dr. Z:

My proposed schedule is this:

• Proposal (version 3) submitted to Dr. Z by 20 August
• Proposal approved by Dr. Z and sent to Dr. S for his approval by 31 August
• Chapter 1 (Introduction) completed - 22 September
• Chapter 2 (Lit Review) completed - 13 October
• Chapter 3 (Design and Methods) completed - 3 November
• Chapter 4 (Results) completed - 24 November
• Chapter 5 (Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations) completed - 15 December

As Dr. Z pointed out, "it mostly hinges on [me] being able to complete it."  True enough.  But I'm certainly going to give it a go.  We planned this holiday around what was supposed to be a celebration of this thing being finished.  I'm so ready for it to be done.

Journal Quality

Dr. Z spent a lot of time yesterday on my article selection and short-version proposal.  He said that version 2 was better, but I wasn't working with the best articles.  So far in my literature search, I've found 317 different pieces of literature - and have felt overwhelmed by that number.

So I asked him what "best articles" meant.  He sent me the "Academic Journal Quality Guide, version 4" by the Association of Business Schools (UK).  It grades all the academic journals from Grade 4 (the best) to Grade 1 (the not-as-good).

Last night and continued this morning, I went through my list of 317 and put the ABS's grades next to each journal in my EndNote library.  Then I saved a copy of my EndNote library and deleted all non-graded articles.  

The result?  I had only 112 graded articles in my library - much more manageable than 317 (duh!).  


Next steps:

1. Start version 3 of the proposal.
2. Review the better articles for this next version.
3. Revisit title and purpose statement - which will probably mean adjusting/tweaking research problems and hypotheses, but probably not too much (at least, I hope so!).
4. Then, do another literature search.

It's moving along.