The benefits of a Management Report
Despite the many years that I have worked on the Masters for IC Management programme, it never ceases to surprise me how much students get out of the original research project they undertake at the end of their study. Irrespective of how strong they are academically or how experienced professionally, whether they approach the project with excitement or trepidation, whether they had a good or challenging experience completing it, there are three things they can all demonstrate (to various degrees) at the end:
- a deeper understanding of their practice and the organisation
- a completely new appreciation of the research process and how to design and conduct better communication research going forward, and
- a new sense of confidence in their ability to drive evidence based strategic communication in their organisation.
In many cases students also have developed a robust business case and a clear set of recommendations to address a business issue they identified at the start of the process. These recently included:
- Exploring how IC can help increase levels of trust in leadership communication
- Understanding how to support line managers to communicate more effectively to drive transformational change
- Identifying how the organisation can improve communication with remote field sales staff in different territories in order to drive a more consistent understanding of strategic purpose and support performance
- Exploring how IC can help develop a culture of collaboration and innovation in a multinational organisation
- Researching how IC can help Line Managers in a tech organisation with a distributed/remote workforce to communicate in a more inclusive way.
What it is and how it works
The Management Report is the final assignment students in the Masters programme undertake. Unlike the assignments students complete at the end of each of the first three modules of the programme, which are based on applying what they are learning to their current knowledge of the organisation, the Management Report is a much larger piece of work that challenges students to conduct their own original research in order to acquire and apply new knowledge.
At the start of the module students are encouraged to identify an organisational issue with significant implications for communication or one where communication action can have a real impact. It is important to choose not only something that interests them personally, but also something that leaders care about and are bound to pay attention to. Those students who are not part of an organisation while studying, can chose a topic that is of importance to the profession as a whole.
Over two and a half days of intensive teaching, students are immersed into exploring and understanding the research process, both from an academic and a business perspective. The workshop takes them through how to think about asking the right research questions, identifying the right research methodology, choosing the right sample and research design and how to conduct research robustly so that the results are both meaningful and reliable. Students have the opportunity to practice with case studies, role play and by working on and developing their own and their colleagues’ initial research ideas.
At the end of the workshop each student is allocated a supervisor who guides them through the rest of the process.
Over the next two and a half months and with the help of a broad range of relevant reading, the students first develop and focus their research ideas, produce a proposal which is agreed by their supervisor and, having navigated a rigorous university ethics process and organisational agreement, conduct their own research. This consists of collecting their own data, frequently by conducting in-depth interviews with leaders, line managers and others, analysing their data in a systematic way, and producing in depth findings on the basis of which they begin to build recommendations for communication practice.
It is always interesting to see how this process challenges practitioners’ assumptions about what they know and what they are able to do well. For example, while most internal communicators feel they know how to conduct an interview, they soon realise that an interview they undertake as researchers is very different from a journalistic interview where you are simply looking for the story. A research interview requires much more preparation, continuous focus on the research purpose and outcomes, more control of personal biases and an increased ability for deep listening and checking understanding. Piloting, constant mindfulness, and reflecting and learning as you go is key.
Students also find the analysis of their data takes much longer that they initially expect. This is because unlike during our day to day work, where we have learned to identify key themes rather quickly (often even at the same time as conducting interviews and focus groups), the Management Report process requires them to engage with all their data in all its messiness and richness with a completely open mind. It is by going over the same interview transcripts or quant numbers again and again, identifying key themes, making connections between common themes, finding patterns across the data and questioning the reason and meaning of such patterns, where finally ‘aha’ moments emerge. Quite often this is where the researcher sees important points that they were initially unaware of or missed completely, while they were conducting the research. For example, while initially puzzled by line managers arguing both that they don’t get enough information about the change and at the same time that they are overwhelmed with information they can’t prioritise, a researcher actually realised that both of these apparent issues became much less prominent where line managers had the time and opportunity to make sense of the change themselves through face to face interaction with senior managers. That in turn led to recommending actions that focused on supporting line managers with their own change sensemaking rather than focusing more on the amount of information shared.
How to get the best out of it
There is no doubt that the Management Report is a challenging piece of work. Students need to design, conduct and write up their research in a short space of time under rigorous academic conditions. At the same time the rewards can be significant, including using the learning and practical recommendations to establish the practioner’s credibility as a strategic expert and drive real change in communication practice in the organisation. To be really successful in this a student should:
- Choose a topic that they are passionate about but also matters to the organisation as a whole
- Engage with the organisation and with wider reading as early as possible
- Be focused and realistic about what can be achieved and how
- Plan their research carefully and spend time testing and adjusting the research methods before they begin to conduct the research proper
- Allow time to engage with their data properly before they rush to conclusions
- Keep an open mind about what they are finding and what it means, applying flexibility and critical questioning throughout the process
- Visualise their recommendations to a high level of detail, both strategic and tactical; how they would explain them to leaders and how they would put them into practice.
To get more information about the Management Report and the MA as a whole join us at the next open day 4 June 2026 to talk to both course tutors and course alumni about their experience.