Dissertations

[DanceLikeAMon...]

With thanks again to those that answer my questionnaire, I've completed the first draft of my (undergraduate) dissertation.

There's still 12 weeks until hand in, and to be honest I'm going to need them because it's fairly poor in some places and I reckon that my supervisor is going to get me to do at least 25% of it again.

I recall a dissertation topic a few years back, is it a common thing to feel decidedly underwhelmed by what you have written at this point?

I've definitely put the most effort into this one of all my assignments at Uni, having spent a full week on the literature bit, and taking the last 2 weeks off work and spending the full 14 days writing the rest, but that doesn't seem like a lot when you hear people spend months writing them.

Guess I just want some assurance that dissertations aren't as hard as they are made out to be...

[-Savage-]

When I had done mine, I though that it was rubbish, and no one would think it was any good. All the work that went into it didn't seem to stand out, and to me it seemed pity full.

But apparently it wasn't lol.

I think it's a case of being your own worst critic.

If you put in the work, people will know and see that in the final product. Even if you think it's pants.
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My Bikes - - - Royal Enfield 500 with sidecar, VFR800, CBR600FX,
Peugeot Speedfight 100, Kymco Hipster 125, GSXR750K5, Jawa TS 350

[Ariel Badger]

What are you studying and what is your paper on?
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[DanceLikeAMon...]

Cheers Savage - just what I wanted to hear . I "only" need to get 61% to get a 2:1 overall so it doesn't have to be a work of art.

AB - It's a Business Management degree, and I've written about the impact of companies relying on pay-for-performance as means of motivation. It identifies the success and failures and makes recommendations for improvements to chosen motivation styles.

God, it's boring just typing that...

[Ariel Badger]

Many years ago I was working for a large industrial manufacture in the UK. The shop floor were on a good bonus scheme that could earn them a bonus of up to 40% per month, they were very happy and whistled while they worked.
Then the management brought in a firm of consultants ( this is a confession that the management of a company do not understand their company, the consultants will of course have a product to sell no matter the circumstances they find on the ground) The consultants introduced a system called MTM2 and the bonus was to be calculated against this. MTM2 gave a time for each operation used, a 24 mm nut would tale 7 seconds to torque down so if the job needed 200 24mm nuts that would be 200X7seconds+1 second to add a blob of Loctite and .5 of a second to add a washer etc.
As the factory was a jobbing or at the most batch production set up the only way they could remotely make MTM2 work was to multiply all times by 20. This allowed the workers to earn a maximum of 10% bonus if the flogged away and cut a lot of quality checks. The workers no longer whistled as the firm went bust.
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Bikers make great organ donors, get 115 on your licence today.

[DanceLikeAMon...]

^^ Classical Taylor style of management, viewing an organisation as a machine.

My research focused on an organisation that due to economic hardships froze yearly pay rises and shifted focus to pay-for-performance and how that was impacting motivation and contrasting this with external opinions as to what motivated peeps (which is what the good folk on here contributed to)

[Stelmer]

[Frost]

In the 50's and 60's the obsession was with timing everything. The problem is that when timing things the results you get differ massively from person to person. The reason for this is that some think "Shit! i'm being timed, i'd best work as fast as i can!" While others think "If i do this slowly when they are timing, i will then always be expected to work slowly, then when i need to i can impress by working quickly".

Personally i'd just get a robot to do it

How come your diss isn't due till October? Mine was due many months ago.

[DanceLikeAMon...]

[waffles]

[DanceLikeAMon...]

I think it's failry obvious the answer to that was "yes".

- I didn't even understand the question. Sounds much more impressive than the title of mine.

[waffles]

My supervisor gave me the title, I thought it was pretty jazzy until I realised what it actually meant! Several weeks measuring rock samples then baking them in a special rock oven to different temperatures. Reading back through it I would have to look up what some of the words mean again, its been too long. Wish I had done my masters now

Whats you title?
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Theory test - 19/8/09, CBT - 11/10/09, MOD 1 - 16/8/10, MOD 2 - 27/10/10
Past rides Yamaha XT125X, Triumph TT600, Honda XR250
Current rides Suzuki GSXR 600, Honda MSX125

[DanceLikeAMon...]

Not 100% settled on it, but something along the lines of:

"Within xyz, should alternatives be considered other than solely attempting to motivate a demoralised workforce through pay-for-performance schemes?"

Catchy, eh?

[waffles]

Trips off the tongue! But I like the concept, what sort of schemes are proving popular?
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Theory test - 19/8/09, CBT - 11/10/09, MOD 1 - 16/8/10, MOD 2 - 27/10/10
Past rides Yamaha XT125X, Triumph TT600, Honda XR250
Current rides Suzuki GSXR 600, Honda MSX125

[Frost]

[DanceLikeAMon...]

[DanceLikeAMon...]

[Frost]

Free meal!? All we got was free champagne, and i was driving
Our ceremony went on for nearly 2 hours as it was bi-lingual which sucked monkey balls. My diss was about 1cm thick, i've had a look at some thesis, some are 6 inches thick... looks like i'm going to have a fuck load of work to do

Look up something called LATEX (pronounced Lay-tec). It basically works like HTML & CSS where by you just put your content into tags like <heading1></heading1> then use a style sheet off the net and you get a super posh looking diss. Most books are produced using it as it is designed to give the best layout when printed rather than for on screen viewing. I say this as presentation is normally a consideration in marking!