General provisions

The course is offered within the Bachelor's Programme in Business and Economics and as a freestanding course. The course syllabus is approved by the board of the Department of Business Studies on delegation from the Faculty of Social Sciences.

Entry requirements

Completed 30 credits from basic courses (A-level) in business studies, and attended 30 credits intermediate courses (B-level) in business studies and at least 15 credits from intermediate courses (C-level). Exemption: For students admitted to the entire C-level of 30 credits the requirements are: Completed 30 credits from Basic Courses (A-level) in business studies, and attended 30 credits Intermediate Courses (B-level) in business studies of which at least 15 credits must be completed.

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to develop the ability to conduct and report scientific investigations by integrated and advanced independent work. The ability to make scientific investigations includes the ability to discover possibilities, identify problems, collect relevant information, formulate problems, and solve them with the aid of scientific methods. To do this, many skills are required, such as methodological knowledge, the ability to think in terms of models - making conscious and explicit simplifications - and the ability to recognise and treat problems from different perspectives. The ability to report scientific work means being able to write lucid and interesting reports, as well as making oral presentations. Both the work itself and how it is presented should be adapted to the problem and the user.

After completion of the course the student should be able to:

* understand different science-theoretical and methodological starting-points

* independently and critically examine different theoretical and empirical phenomena

* discover and handle problems and alternatives considering different perspectives and methodological frames of reference

* execute, in practice, scientifically based surveys and investigations

* present arguments orally and in writing in an objective, interesting, and convincing manner.

Content

Within the framework of an independent project, the participant will choose different ways to identify, delimit, and investigate problems, as well as to present their findings to the reader. This includes problem definition, discussions of methods and models, data collection, oral and written reports, and revisions both of early drafts and of the final version of the report.

Instruction

The course is taught in Swedish. The major part of the course consists of independent work in teams. Teaching includes seminars, methods assignments, lectures and tutorials. The independent project is normally carried out in groups of two students.

Assessment

The student will get one single grade, equivalent to 15 credits.

The course is examined primarily by assessing the final version of the thesis and seminar activities in the form of presentation and defence of the thesis, critically scrutinizing and commenting on the work of other participants, and active participation in discussions. Grading criteria are presented in the study guide that applies to the course section. The following grades will be used: VG (pass with distinction), G (pass) and U (fail). The right to supervision ends at the final seminar.

For students who have not received a passing grade for the course, there is the opportunity to be examined by handing in a revised version of the thesis, and conduct seminar activities, without re-registration during subsequent course sections.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Uppsala University does not accept cheating or plagiarism. Suspected incidents of cheating or plagiarism are reported to the Vice-Chancellor, which may issue a formal warning to the student or suspend the student from studies for a certain period.

NOTE: Only completed courses can count toward a degree.

Other directives

The course substitutes/overlaps among others Bachelor's Thesis 2FE530, Thesis Project STS - Business Studies 2FE029 and partly Bachelor Course, Accounting Issues 2FE428, Bachelor Course, Marketing, Organisation and International Business 2FE429, Bachelor's Level Business Studies: Theory and Methodology 2FE979.