How to choose a dissertation topic

Choosing your topic
Justifying the choice of your topic

Some essential tips for choosing the right dissertation topic:

• First of all, choose a topic for which you have a passion, an interest, a curiosity, or which will be useful in your future professional framework. It is always easier to work on a topic that interests us or that challenges us. For example, we can choose to focus on the theme of business organization because it seems interesting to us to understand this issue of professional life. Once the theme is defined, you can identify a topic, a theme or a question that you think is relevant. It is important to think about what the dissertation can contribute to and the lines of reflection that we want to explore. Still, on the topic of business organization, a student could, for example, wonder about the role of the accounting function in a business, and its involvement in the success of the business.
  
  
• To finalize the choice of topic, one can, for example, use past or present professional experiences or internships. Internship students are often confronted with new organizations in companies and may ask themselves questions about the impacts of these organizations. For example, due to the COVID crisis in 2020, many employees or interns have discovered teleworking.For example, a teleworking intern may wonder about the impact of teleworking on the efficiency of a company. A few weeks later, when choosing his dissertation topic, he can choose to develop this topic because he himself has dealt with it.
  
  
• Choose a topic that is related to the studies concerned. This will allow the student to make connections with the theoretical knowledge acquired during the year, to deepen them and to question them. Do not choose a topic that is trivial or of no interest to the student. It will then be difficult to find the motivation to work on this topic, and also difficult to ask the right questions, to find an interesting problem and to answer it in a relevant way.
  
  
• Check that this topic has not been previously presented. If so, choose another angle or another approach.
  
  
• Make sure that the documentary resources available are sufficient and satisfactory.
  
  
• Have this topic validated with his dissertation director, who can give his opinion or make recommendations.
  
  

During the presentation the student will be asked to explain the reasons for the choice of his dissertation topic. Here are some tips to justify your choice:

• Be sincere. Do not hide or minimize reflections, changes of mind, changes in the topic. Describing and explaining them shows the evolution of reflection and the outcome of reasoning.
  
  
• Describe the reasons for the choice of the topic precisely, even if they are personal. A student whose family member is the human resources manager of a large company may be drawn to a topic relating to the organization of human resources.