Academic writing: a guide for management students and researchers

Academic Writing

Academic Writing

A Guide for Management Students

and Researchers

Mathukutty M. Monippally

and

Badrinarayan Shankar Pawar

Copyright © Mathukutty M. Monippally and Badrinarayan Shankar Pawar,

2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval

system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published in 2010 by

Response Books

Business books from SAGE

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The Sage Team: Reema Singhal, Vikas Jain,Amrita Saha and Trinankur

Banerjee

Dedication

I dedicate this book to my students, past and present, at Indian

Institute of Management Ahmedabad. I have learned from them a

great deal more than they will ever suspect.

I dedicate Muthukutty M. Monippally this work, with apologies and

with prayers for forgiveness, to all those who suffered because of

me and, with gratitude, to all those who nourished, taught and

helped me. In particular, I dedicate this book to, among others

who cannot be identified, my teachers, the families of my brothers

and sister, my late father and my mother, and my Gurudevji

(spiritual mentor), Sant Shri Asaramji Bapu.

Badrinarayan Shankar Pawar

Contents

List of Tables and Figures xi

Preface xiii

Acknowledgements xvii

Introduction xix

Part I: The Research Process and the Role of

Academic Writing 1

1. Academic Writing and Research Process 3

Chapter Overview 3

Academic Writing as a Part of Research and Science 4

Science 7

Research 10

A Brief Description of Various Terms Used in Academic

Research 14

Features of Science and Research in Academic Writing 24

Types of Academic Writing 26

Importance of Good Academic Writing in Various

Academic Works 29

Chapter Summary 30

2. Structure and Contents of a Research Paper 32

Chapter Overview 32

Conceptual Paper 33

viii Academic Writing

An Exercise to Study the Structure and Contents of a

Conceptual Paper 42

Empirical Paper 42

An Exercise to Study the Structure and Contents of an

Empirical Paper 56

Thesis and Dissertations 56

Academic Papers of Students for Course Requirements 57

Chapter Summary 60

Part II: The Anatomy of Academic Writing 63

3. Good Academic Writing 65

Chapter Overview 65

The Challenge of Writing 65

Different Kinds of Writing 72

Journalistic Writing 74

Creative Writing 76

Academic Writing 77

The Role of Grammar and Usage 98

Chapter Summary 105

4. Mastering the Paragraph 106

Chapter Overview 106

The Structure of a Paragraph 107

The Good Paragraph: Essential Qualities 113

The Good Paragraph: Desirable Qualities 120

How to Develop Paragraphs 133

Chapter Summary 138

5. The Writing Process 139

Chapter Overview 139

The Academic Document as a Story 140

Creating an Outline of the Story 141

Fleshing Out the Outline 146

Polishing the Story 147

Tidying up the Document 164

Chapter Summary 169

Part III: Acknowledging Academic Debts 171

6. Using and Citing Sources of Ideas 173

Chapter Overview 173

The World of Citations 174

Rewards of Intellectual Honesty 176

Plagiarism: Idea Theft 177

Three Kinds of Borrowing 180

The Anatomy of a Citation 188

Common Citation Styles 194

Illustrations of Citation and References 202

Chapter Summary 217

Appendix 1 Brief Descriptions of Some of the Research

Terms Used in Chapter 2 218

Appendix 2 Resources for Honing Academic Writing 222

References 227

Index 230

About the Authors 234

Contents ix

List of Tables

Table 3.1 Mistakes that Annoy but do not Block

Comprehension 99

Table 3.2 Annoying Sentences that are Difficult

to Understand 101

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 An Overview of Research Process 12

Figure 6.1 In-text Citation Examples 191

Figure 6.2 Reference (to a paper in a print journal and

to a book) 193

Figure 6.3 Reference (to a chapter in an edited book) 193

Figure 6.4 In-text Citations in Different Styles 201

Figure 6.5 Listing of Bibliographic Details (a paper in a

print journal): Comparison between Styles 201

Preface

Academic Writing is aimed at MBA students, MPhil and PhD

scholars, and young faculty in management and behavioural

sciences. The nudge for writing this book came from our graduate

and doctoral students in the field of management and participants

in faculty development programmes—their research papers and

other written assignments, to be precise. Some of these students

are among the best in the country, perhaps in the world. But their

writing often lets them down.

Writing is an integral part of the process of research. It also

facilitates success in academics. It is not enough to be smart and

knowledgeable; we have to demonstrate our knowledge and

insights through writing whether we are students or scholars.

Otherwise we would be like wild flowers—perhaps the most

beautiful on earth with exquisite scent, but unseen, unsmelt and

unsung. That is as bad as being nonexistent. There is a lot of truth

in the saying, “Publish or perish.” Yet this vital skill required for

publishing is not taught in schools and colleges. When attempts

are made to teach writing, the focus seems to be more on getting

sentences grammatically correct rather than on presenting

knowledge in ways that make reading and comprehension easy.

Writing is like singing. Some write well without any special

training just as some sing well instinctively. In academics, some

manage the transition from creative writing and journalistic

writing to academic writing with ease. But many do not, and as

a result, they fare less well than they should. Our aim is to help

graduate students and researchers, especially in management and

behavioural sciences, to refine their writing so that they do well in

their studies, publish in national and international journals, and

make themselves more useful to society.

xiv Academic Writing

Neither scientific knowledge nor its written manifestation is

uniform across all disciplines. Even within the same discipline,

the degree of rigour varies significantly between what leading

journals consider acceptable and what professors are willing to

accept in the assignments submitted by their students. Academic

Writing will help graduate students write better assignments,

theses and dissertations; it will help scholars write conceptual

and empirical papers for publication in reputable journals. Our

objective is to alert all these writers to the broad expectations of

readers of academic writing in management and behavioural

sciences. It is up to them to figure out the specific expectations of

their readers and mould their writing accordingly.

Although academic writing is not taught formally in our

schools and colleges, there is plenty of literature on both research

methodology and the documentation of the process and fruits

of research. That makes it virtually impossible for us to say

anything original about either. Academic Writing has benefited

from the works of several scholars and writers, some of whose

contributions we formally acknowledge in the body of the book.

We give a list of resources in Appendix 2. We have also learned

a great deal informally from our teachers and colleagues who

helped us through our own doctoral and postdoctoral research.

We are grateful to them. While Academic Writing clearly reflects

our debt to published and unpublished advice, it is also built

on our experiences, observations and reflections in varying

degrees.

This book describes the place of academic writing in the

broader process of research and scientific knowledge generation,

distinguishes academic writing from other forms of writing,

describes the process of composing academic papers and reports,

and provides guidelines for appropriately acknowledging the

use of others’ work in one’s academic writing. What distinguishes

this book from others on similar themes is the extensive use of

authentic samples of academic writing from graduate students

and the characterization of academic writing as a part of research

(knowledge generation process) and science. The student samples

illustrate good as well as defective writing. We have refrained

from editing the samples except where we feel that leaving some

small mistakes in the quoted text might distract the reader without

any advantage. Wherever we have edited the samples, we have