Viva Questions for Business and Management

Business and Management vivas expect you to bridge academic rigour with practical relevance. Examiners will probe your theoretical grounding, methodological choices, and your understanding of how your research applies to real organisations, industries, or management practice. The field draws on multiple disciplines – economics, sociology, psychology, strategy – so be prepared to defend your interdisciplinary positioning and explain why your approach is appropriate for your research question.

Business and management research sits in an unusual position academically. Your examiners will expect scholarly rigour – robust methodology, clear theoretical grounding, original findings – but they'll also want to know whether your work would mean anything to a practising manager. This dual expectation can create tension in the viva, and the strongest candidates are those who can address both dimensions without collapsing one into the other.

Questions about your research

Business and management examiners will focus on the practicalities of researching in organisational settings. Access to companies, senior leaders, and proprietary data is often hard-won and comes with conditions – confidentiality agreements, restrictions on what can be published, pressure to produce favourable findings. Examiners will want to know how you navigated these constraints and how they shaped your research. They'll also scrutinise your methodology, particularly if you've used case study research, where the logic of case selection and the depth of your analysis are critical.

• What management problem or organisational question does your thesis address, and why is it significant?
• How did you gain access to the organisations or senior leaders in your study, and what conditions or limitations did that involve?
• Why did you choose this particular research design – case study, survey, ethnography, experiment, or action research?
• How did you select your cases, sample, or organisations, and what are the boundaries of your study?
• What data collection methods did you use, and what challenges did you encounter in organisational settings?
• How did you analyse your data – can you walk us through the process from raw data to your key findings?
• How did you manage confidentiality and ethical issues, particularly with commercially sensitive information?
• What role did pilot studies, scoping interviews, or preliminary fieldwork play in shaping your final design?
• How did you handle the tension between maintaining academic objectivity and the practical interests or expectations of your organisational participants?
• Were there any organisational changes – restructuring, leadership changes, market shifts – during your research that affected your study?
• How did you manage the relationship between depth and breadth in your data collection?

Questions about theory and literature

Business and management draws eclectically on other disciplines, and examiners will want to see that you've chosen your theoretical lens for a clear reason. They'll ask how your work contributes to management theory – not just to practice – and whether your theoretical framework genuinely illuminates your data or simply provides a label for common-sense observations. If your work is interdisciplinary, be prepared to explain how you've integrated different theoretical perspectives without losing coherence.

• What theoretical framework underpins your research, and why is it the right lens for your question?
• How does your work contribute to the management or organisational theory literature – not just to practice?
• Which key theories or models from related disciplines – economics, sociology, psychology, strategy – inform your approach?
• How does your work engage with current debates in your area – around leadership, innovation, sustainability, digital transformation, or organisational change?
• Are there competing theories that could explain your findings equally well – and how do you distinguish between them?
• How does your literature review establish a genuine gap rather than simply a topic that hasn't been studied in your specific context?
• How do you ensure that your theoretical framework does analytical work rather than just providing a vocabulary?

Questions about contribution and impact

In business and management, contribution is expected on both theoretical and practical fronts. Examiners will want to know what your work adds to scholarly understanding of organisations and management, and also what a practising manager could learn from it. The best answers connect the two – showing how a theoretical insight translates into a practical implication, or how a practical observation enriches theory.

• What does your thesis contribute to management knowledge that is genuinely original?
• What are the managerial or practical implications of your findings – what should organisations do differently?
• How could a CEO, HR director, or strategy team use your research to inform their decision-making?
• What would you say to a senior manager who asked you to brief them on your findings in five minutes?
• How does your work contribute to both theory development and practical understanding – and where is the balance?
• Does your work have implications for management education – how we teach future leaders or MBA students?

Tough follow-ups your examiners might ask

Business and management examiners will challenge the transferability of your findings, the depth of your organisational analysis, and whether your contributions are truly original or simply confirm what practitioners already know. They'll also probe the boundaries of your study – what you can and can't claim based on your specific research design. Be prepared to engage with the critique that management research sometimes lacks the theoretical depth of its parent disciplines.

• Your research is based on a single industry, sector, or organisation – how transferable are your findings to other contexts?
• How do you distinguish between what managers told you in interviews and what actually happens in their organisations?
• A practitioner might say your findings are common sense dressed up in academic language – what does your research genuinely add?
• How would your findings apply in a different cultural, institutional, or regulatory context?
• What would a longitudinal study reveal that your cross-sectional or snapshot design cannot?
• How do you respond to the critique that your theoretical contribution is thin – that your work is primarily descriptive?
• If one of your key informants read your thesis, would they recognise their organisation – and would they agree with your analysis?

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