MRes Business and Management

Our Master of Research (MRes) in Business and Management is accredited by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science for the training of PhD students. 

You'll learn how to:

• undertake doctoral research in business and management,
• equip yourself for an academic or research-intensive commercial career in business and management research, and
• undertake, evaluate, commission or manage research in the commercial, public, or voluntary sectors.

The Master of Research course has a strong practical focus and trains you in the advanced skills necessary for business, management, economic and policy research.  Our aim is to help you to become a researcher who is:

• reflective and aware of the assumptions, strengths and limitations of your research,
• highly skilled in a multitude of management and organisational research techniques, and
• readily able to apply this knowledge in new and diverse domains.

When you graduate, you will be able to apply specialist knowledge to a wide variety of situations and will be able to: 

• understand the assumptions made by different approaches to research, their limitations and their implications for answering research questions using an appropriate research design,
• use qualitative, quantitative and experimental techniques to collect and analyse data to an advanced level,
• apply this knowledge to the design, conduct and reporting of research projects, and
• critically analyse the methodologies used to conduct empirical research projects.

We are AACSB accredited

The University of Stirling is accredited by AACSB International in recognition of our excellence in business education. This puts the University of Stirling Management School among the top 6% of business schools globally.

Learn from the experts

You’ll work closely with lecturers and supervisors, who are internationally recognised research experts, with strong track records in publishing findings of global significance. Our teaching team have a proven track record of securing research funding, including from the UK research councils and the European Union. They also regularly advise governmental and policy bodies.

The University of Stirling Management School

At the University of Stirling Management School, the principle of responsible business, policy and practice is central to everything we do. This vision helps us to equip our students effectively with the skills to act as global citizens, capable of addressing the needs of society.

As a member of the Chartered Association for Business Schools, we have strong links with industry and were recently awarded the Small Business Charter for engagement with local and regional enterprise.

The Master of Research in Business and Management is a one-year course that will prepare you to enter a research career that contributes to society. Your taught component will help you to develop skills necessary for conducting robust and impactful research. You will then have the opportunity to conduct your own research project, in the form of a dissertation, across the summer semester. This will be done under the guidance and support of a Stirling Management School academic supervisor.

In the Autumn semester you will be enrolled in two core modules that will equip you with the advanced knowledge and skills you need to understand what business and management research is, and how it is done. For the third module, you can choose to focus your knowledge in a specific subject area. In the Spring semester you will be enrolled in one core module that helps you develop a review of the literature in your chosen subject area and you will choose two modules from a set of options that develop advanced knowledge in methods and in a subject-specific area. Around these core modules, you will have the opportunity to select a suite of other learning that best supports your previous background and forward interests.

In the summer months you will work closely with your supervisor to complete a research project, drawing on this research to complete a 15,000 word dissertation.