TABLE OF CONTENTS In this book we start from the assumption that students carrying out fieldwork assignments wish to achieve more than delivering a glossy final report that is never used. The basic principle of this book is that fieldwork assignments are effective if students succeed in systematically developing a solution that is adopted and implemented by management. Good assignments encourage students to deploy theories, methods and models to contribute to the solution of real problems. In practice, it does not seem to be easy for students to work in a manner such that the business organization can implement their results at the end of the project.
As a point of departure for developing an approach that leads to more effective fieldwork, we consider the fieldwork project as a management consulting project in which the company acts as principal and the student as consultant.
The company formulates an assignment
The student studies the causes and backgrounds, develops proposals and contributes to the implementation of these proposals.
This point of departure implies that we use the thoughts and actions of management consultants as a reference for students. The question we want to answer is what students in their role as consultant need to do to make their project successful.
Part 1 outlines the approach used in this book to carry out a fieldwork assignment in the form of a...
