Instructions for thesis writing

The purpose of the thesis

In your thesis you should show that you have learned something during your studies at VSE and that
you are able to use the knowledge that you gained while working on the topic related to your field
of study.

You should also prove that you are able to work independently on a certain topic and that you are
able to bring new ideas and approaches to existing problems or that you are able to analyze existing
problems from new perspectives and suggest your own solutions.

The thesis is something that should also inspire future students to conduct further research on the
topic and that could bring really new ideas and perspectives to today´s scientific research.

Your thesis will therefore be publically available in the electronic system in order to enable everyone
to work with it and to continue the research that you started with. It will be also here to represent
you and your contribution, so please, work on it properly so that you can be proud of your work.

Before you start

Think about the potential topic of your thesis carefully before you enroll for writing because you will
spend at least few months working on it (and, of course, it is better to work on a topic that you like
than on a topic you dislike). Try to find related books, journal articles and older thesis that covered
related topic in order to find “empty” space of knowledge that you can cover.

After you select your topic contact your future supervisor. You should find a supervisor who is expert
in your desired research field. Only such supervisor could really help you with your work. Bring your
ideas to the first meeting with the supervisor, but also the results from the first research you did on
the topic. This will help you both to understand each other and to make your ideas more concrete. It
is also helpful if you bring short outline that shows how you want to proceed.

Together with your supervisor you should formulate precisely the topic of your thesis and you
should also agree on the outline of the thesis but also on the way how you will cooperate (if you
should send your work per e-mail or bring printed version, how frequently you will meet etc.).

Make sure that you both understand well the topic, the outline and the way how you are going to
cooperate before you register your topic in the system. Once the topic is registered it is very
complicated to change it!

Once the thesis is registered you can start your work.

Your cooperation with the supervisor

Your supervisor should be rather your mentor or tutor than a real supervisor. It is your responsibility
that you quote the sources properly and that your thesis is a good one. Your supervisor should only
support you on your way, help you with the selection of relevant sources, help you with structuring
the thesis and so on.
Sometimes your supervisor will be very critical. Please, take it as a motivation. Your supervisor
follows the same goal as you do – to make your thesis good and ready for the defense as soon as
possible. Critical comments should help you to perform even better.

Please, respect your supervisor and the time – frame that you agreed. You are not the only student
whose thesis you supervisor supervises. Respect his/her office hours and also the fact that everyone
needs to sleep during nights and that everyone (yes, even your supervisor) has right to have free
weekend. Do not expect immediate reactions on your e-mails. Your supervisor works with more
students at the same time and also teaches.

Goals of your thesis

First thing you have to do is to define certain and concrete goals of your work because without
knowing where you are heading it is really difficult to get there.

Define your goals as precisely as you can. Try to find a certain niche in the existing knowledge that
your thesis will fill in. Think also about the contribution of your thesis – that means what will be the
new knowledge that the reader will get after reading your thesis. If you could not find any
contribution like this you are on a bad way. Start thinking again. Without this problem solved you
won´t get further.

Many researchers use also the so called grand-mother’s definition of the goal and contribution to
find out whether they are on a right way. The grand-mother’s definition means to you define your
goals and contribution in such way that even your grand-mother could understand it. If you are not
sure that your grand-mother would understand it start again from the very beginning.

It is also helpful at this moment to think about your potential readers. Who will read your thesis? For
whom are you working on it? Is it other students? Company executives? Other researchers? Broad
public? Someone else? Answering this question will help you with your work because it gives you
certain idea what language you should use, which topics are relevant and which are not, if your text
is understandable etc.

Structure of your thesis

Every thesis consists of following main parts:
• Introduction
• Theoretical part
• Analytical/Practical/Empirical part
• Conclusions
• References.

You can divide your thesis into chapters (and this is recommended). Each chapter should deal with
some specific problem. We use chapters to make the reading and understanding easier. Make sure
that the chapters and subchapters on the same level are more or less of the same length.

Use numbers and levels for the chapters and their subchapters. This should help the reader to
better understand the logic of your work. We usually use following structure:
1. Title of Chapter 1
1.1. Title of Subchapter 1.1
1.1.1. Title of Subchapter 1.1.1.
etc.
It is recommended that you use just 3 levels of titles. The “big” chapters (i.e. 1, 2 or 3) consist usually
of some 20 pages.

Introduction
The introduction, as the name suggests, should introduce the topic of your thesis to your future
reader. You should include following points:
• General description of the topic including your motivation to write the thesis about it and
explanation why you think that this topic is interesting and relevant for research.
• Definition of the goals and contributions of your thesis. You can even divide your
contributions:
o contribution to existing theoretical knowledge,
o contribution to existing empirical knowledge,
o contribution to existing academic knowledge,
o contribution to existing methodology,
o contribution to existing research,
o etc.
Generally speaking you explain in this part how the reader will benefit from reading your
thesis.
• Describe the structure of your thesis. What are you going to start with? Why? How will you
continue? Use the already agreed outline of the thesis and also common sense. You should
describe your way to the reader who is new to the topic. Use a separate paragraph for
description of each of the chapters you plan. For the structure we have generally two
common ways:
o Either you start with general things and you go more into detail,
o or you follow the chronology – starting from the history and going towards today.
Of course, there are also other possibilities. If you want to use alternative methods, please,
check the relevant literature on methodology of science. For example in this paper we use
both approaches: chronology, but also going from general things more into detail.
• Describe the methodology you are going to use in each of the parts. Try to be as precise as
you can. Include the sources (i.e. literature, journals, internet etc.) you will use for the
theoretical part as well as the sources and methodology for the analytical/empirical/
practical part (i.e. secondary research, your own research – if yes, please, suggest shortly the
method you are going to use, company’s data etc.). Also do not forget to explain why you
decided to use this methodology and the sources you suggested.

The introduction consists usually of 3–6 pages.

Theoretical part
The purpose of the theoretical part is to show the reader that you have studied the relevant theory
before you started working. It should also help you to see the potential “problems” in existing
theory. Generally speaking this part should help you with the development of your empirical/
analytical part. So therefore the structure of this part corresponds more or less with the structure of
the empirical part.

For example if you want to suggest a marketing plan for a market entry of a selected company to
selected market, in this part you can use the theories why companies go international, you can
describe the ways how to make a marketing plan and of which parts it consists etc. This will help you
than later on.
In this part you will have to use existing secondary sources, such as books, articles, web sites etc.
Please make sure that you use only relevant and credible sources and that you quote them properly.
See also part about quoting and sources bellow.

This part of you thesis should cover between 30 and 50 per cent of your thesis. Please, make sure
that the title of this part is not “Theoretical part.” The name(s) of the chapter(s) should already
correspond with the content.

Analytical/practical/empirical part
This part is the core of your thesis. Here you can deliver your contributions, make your research and
already suggest some solutions or even conclusions. It will cover some 70–50 per cent of your thesis,
so work on it properly.

You already have everything you need. So, please, follow your goals and planed contributions which
you set already in the introduction and use the relevant theory which you summarized in the
previous part.

Conclusions
The last part of your thesis but the one that is very crucial. Please, consider that many of your
readers will read just the introduction and the conclusions. So the structure of this part corresponds
more or less with the structure of the introduction. So consider this part as the only chance to “sell”
your work for a “good price.”

In the conclusions you should summarize the content of your thesis (in other words you describe
once again the way how you worked on your thesis – the sources and methods you have used etc.).
You start with your goals (yes, you repeat the goals that you set at the beginning). Then you
summarize the content of each of the chapters (including sources) and after this you introduce your
findings and conclusions. You should also mention the limitations of the research that you are aware
of and suggest some possible topics for further research. You should look back to the goals and
contributions and say if you fulfilled them or not. If not, improve your thesis accordingly, if yes,
you’re done. Congratulations!

References
The list of references is an important part of your thesis because it enables others to continue the
research that you have started with.

Make sure that you included all sources you used during your work, not only those that you directly
quoted. It is usual to divide the sources into following groups:
• Books
• Articles in journals
• Online sources.

Text, fonts, charts etc.

The standard recommended fonts are Arial 11pt. and Times New Roman 12pt. but you can use any
other font which gives approximately 1.800 letters per page. Use 1,5 spacing. The minimum required
length of your thesis is 60 pages (1.800 letters per page including spaces).

Your grade does not depend on the number of pages that you write. You should be able to express
yourself on a limited number of pages. The experience shows that less could be sometimes more.
The maximum number of pages recommended for your thesis is 80. If you are over this limit, please
double check if there are some parts of your thesis that are not so important and could be avoided.

You can use figures, charts, images, tables etc. to make your text better understandable. Please,
make sure that those objects are really relevant for the text flow. Therefore you should somehow
introduce the content of the object and also describe it in the text.

Each object must have a number, title and source. The number and title are above the object, the
source is bellow. If you are the original author of the object, write the source as follows: “Source:
author.”

Example:

Image 1: Distribution of the income in the Czech Republic 1990–2000

Image

Source: Czech Statistical Office

Language and text flow

Your thesis is a scientific work and therefore you must use a proper language that corresponds with
this purpose. Please, do not use any expressive words such as “brilliant, bright” etc.

You should not use questions and you should also not address the reader directly. Use indirect
speech if possible. You write a thesis not a novel!

In scientific text you should not use the abbreviated forms of verbs such as don’t, haven’t or
shouldn’t. Always use the proper form such as do not, have not or should not etc.

Each and every sentence that you write should somehow contribute to the goal and should push you
and the reader forward. If a certain sentence is not necessary for understanding or for the text flow,
please omit it. Do not repeat things that you have already written before. Your readers are smart
enough to remember what they read 20 minutes ago.

Be precise. Do not speculate. You have to be sure about the correctness of each and every sentence
that you write.

Lists of facts (either with numbers or bullets points) could make your thesis easily readable for your
readers and could therefore be very useful. On the other hand you should not overuse them. You
write a thesis not an executive summary. Also do not forget that the lists usually represent
knowledge of someone else that you just summarize. Therefore you should provide the source.

It is also your responsiveness that your English is correct. Please, find someone round you who is
native speaker and who could check your English.
Sources and quotations
Obviously you will use secondary sources for your work. But always when you use the work of other
people you have to quote. You should provide the source in general on the place where you used it.
That means that you usually provide a source for a certain sentence or even paragraph. But you can
never provide the source to the whole (sub)chapter. This would mean that you quoted the whole
(sub)chapter but then it would not be your work just a copy of a work of someone else!

You can quote directly or indirectly. Indirect quotation means that you reformulated the words of
someone else. Such quotation does not have to be in quotation marks but you have to add the link to
the original source.

Direct quotations are those in which you quoted exactly the words of someone else. This type of
quotations is usually used just in cases when you quote a certain definition or you compare different
approaches of different authors. Such quotation must be in quotation marks and source must be
given as well.

There are different ways how you can quote:

1. you give the source directly in the text in brackets like this (Surname of the author, year) –
make sure that everyone is able to find the source based on this description in the list of
references.
2. you give the source as a footnote below the text on the same page or you make a number
that is linked with the list of references at the end of the thesis. In this case every source in
the list of references must have a certain number. The source will be given in following ways:
a. book: Authors: Title of the book, City: Publishing House, Year, ISBN
b. article: Authors: Title of the article, In: Title of the journal, Volume/Year, ISSN
c. online source: either you give the title in the same way as an article in journal, or you
give it as follows: the address of the website (date of the quotation)

You should use the ways described under the point 2 also for the list of references. You can also use
any existing and accepted guidelines that deal with the quotations and sources.

If you are not sure how to quote, please, ask your supervisor or just use the common sense. The
main purpose why you give sources is to enable your readers to find them and to work with them.

Please, use only relevant and credible sources. Wikipedia is not a credible source as every child could
edit it. Always double-check that your source is credible.

Always quote the original source of information. That means if you write for example: “As Porter
says”…” “ you have to use Michael Porter as a source and not the book in which you found the
quotation of Porter’s work.

In general you should provide sources for each and every piece of information or knowledge which
you did not created and which is not commonly known. That means that each and every number,
statistical data or figure needs to have a source. Commonly known facts do not have to be supported
with a source such as a sentence: “Czech Republic is a country in Central Europe.” But if you write
“Czech Republic has approximately 10,5 million inhabitants” you should provide some source. Use
common sense to decide.

GOOD LUCK!