What is Your Research Problem?: Discovering a Research(able) Problem and Topic (Practical Business Research Book 1)

The book’s research emphasis is that: “a research problem identified is a problem half solved”. This book addresses the uncertainty of how to come up with a research topic and problem for those beginning to do research. It addresses the issue of where to get research topics and research problems and demonstrates how to go about conceptualizing researchable problems and topic. The book demonstrates the process that researchers go through in coming up with research problems and topics. The sources of research ideas are clearly explained, followed by a process of how to discover, conceptualize and evaluate research problems. Practical real-life examples are provided to reinforce the ideas presented to the reader.
The approach adopted in the book recognizes that coming up with research problems is challenging to beginning researchers, who focus more on the symptoms rather than the real research problem. The books shows how you can identify symptoms from research problems; which ensures that you solve the actual problem rather than the symptoms. The benefit of buying the book is that it will show you how to come up with a research topic and problem; and further show how to evaluate if it is an actual problem and not a symptom. The book emphasizes that there is a process of retroductive reasoning that is central to the conceptualization of research problems, which once mastered, enables students to develop researchable problems. This has been the experience of the author of the book, who has helped several students and researchers overcome the uncertainty and difficulty of coming up with researchable problems. Through the author’s research and work, one of the obstacles to coming up with researchable problems is related to not understanding the process and students rushing through the process of problem conceptualization. The book shows how researchers can overcome such obstacles in undertaking research.
The end goal of discovering and conceptualizing strong and theoretically sound research problems is excellent research. Therefore, this text, “What is Your Research Problem”, introduces and shows students, professional researchers, managers and interested readers how to do excellent research by discovering researchable problems and topics. It retains the traditional coverage of business research to provide a solid knowledge foundation, but additionally re-orients the problem discovery process to incorporate sound reasoning through retroduction. This book is written specifically to those who want to move beyond the theoretical principles of research to real-world application of business research. A comprehensive, novel and practical approach to “how to do research” is presented with the unique feature of demonstrating the process of how a researcher can conceptualize a research problem and how to evaluate the resulting research problem. This is a critical omission in business research methods texts. Postgraduate students and final year undergraduate students should look up to this book as they contemplate and engage in their research projects. Professional researchers as well as managers in organizations should also find the book useful, as they seek to improve decision making in their organizations or in project work. Novice and early career researcher seeking to learn different and alternative approaches to research will also find the book valuable.