Overview
Researching strategically relevant business problems is an important part of professional practice and being a successful manager and leader. This is a capstone unit that draws upon your area of specialisation and your wider knowledge of business environments both globally and locally. The unit focuses on developing your ability to undertake independent research that focuses on and contributes to strategic decision making and sustainability in organisations. The unit will improve your skills in synthesising information and developing solutions to improve the long-term effectiveness and sustainability of organisations. You will use research skills to analyse a management problem in your chosen business discipline, identifying strategic challenges, and developing recommendations aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These recommendations will be based on systematic and rigorous analysis of relevant academic literature, professional business information, and publicly available secondary data.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
This is a capstone unit for students completing a coursework based masters. Hence students must have completed 10 master level units (60 credit points) of study prior to enrolment.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 3 - 2027
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Academic Progression Policy and Procedure
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Feedback from Student Unit Evaluation, in-class student feedback, and Unit Coordinator reflection.
Students reported positive perceptions of the unit, with T1 2026 evaluation results ranging from 82.61% to 86.96% across all measures. Feedback was particularly positive regarding clear unit requirements, useful feedback, knowledge and skills, and relevance to the degree. While the overall results were positive, there remains an opportunity to further strengthen student engagement with learning materials and assessment-related learning through interactive and applied learning activities.
Continue providing clear assessment guidance, applied learning activities and contemporary organisational examples to support students in completing the research-focused assessment tasks. Interactive learning tools such as Padlet will continue to be used to encourage student participation, collaborative discussion, sharing of ideas and application of unit concepts. Practical workshops, relevant case examples, online learning resources and industry engagement will also continue to be incorporated to strengthen students’ connection between sustainability concepts, research and real organisational practice.