TU MBS Thesis Format: Chapter Structure and Submission Guidelines

13 August 2026 · 8 min read

The MBS thesis under Tribhuvan University's Faculty of Management is one of the most standardised documents a Nepali student will write. That is good news: the structure is known in advance, so the work is in the research, not in guessing the format. As always, your campus issues the binding version of the guideline — check it, because details such as page limits and cover colour vary.

The five-chapter structure

Chapter 1 — Introduction: background, statement of the problem, objectives, research questions or hypotheses, significance, limitations, and organisation of the study.
Chapter 2 — Review of Literature: conceptual or theoretical review, review of prior studies including Nepali research, the research gap, and the conceptual framework.
Chapter 3 — Research Methodology: design, population and sample, sampling technique, nature and sources of data, instrument, reliability and validity, and the analysis tools.
Chapter 4 — Results and Discussion: data presentation and analysis, statistical results, major findings, and a discussion connecting them to the literature.
Chapter 5 — Summary, Conclusion and Implications: a summary of the study, conclusions drawn from the findings, and implications or recommendations for practice and further research.

Chapter 4 carries the most marks and is usually the longest. A common weakness is a chapter full of tables with a sentence under each — the analysis has to interpret, compare across tables and connect back to the objectives stated in Chapter 1.

The preliminary pages

Title page in the prescribed wording.
Certification or declaration by the student.
Recommendation from the supervisor, and the approval sheet signed by the examiners and department head.
Acknowledgements.
Table of contents, list of tables, list of figures and list of abbreviations.
Abstract — usually 150–300 words with keywords.

These are numbered in lowercase roman numerals; the Arabic sequence starts at page 1 of Chapter 1. Reversing this is the single most common formatting correction on submitted theses.

Typing, tables and binding

Times New Roman 12 point with 1.5 or double line spacing is the usual specification, with a wider left margin for binding. Number tables and figures by chapter (Table 4.3), place table titles above and sources below, and make sure the numbers and page references match your list of tables exactly. Most campuses require hard binding with a specified cover colour and gold lettering for the final submission, plus a number of copies for the department, supervisor and library — confirm this before you print, because reprinting a bound thesis is expensive.

Referencing and similarity

APA is the standard for MBS. Apply it consistently in both in-text citations and the reference list, and check that no citation appears in one and not the other. Many campuses now run a similarity check before acceptance, so paraphrase properly, quote where you use exact wording, and cite every table or figure you did not generate yourself.

Submission checklist

Every objective in Chapter 1 answered somewhere in Chapter 4.
Findings in Chapter 5 that appear nowhere else — a sign the conclusion drifted from the data.
Table of contents regenerated after final edits so page numbers are correct.
All signature pages signed in every bound copy.
Questionnaire, computation sheets and SPSS output included as appendices.
Soft copy prepared in the format your campus requires for submission.

Writing your MBS thesis and want the structure, analysis chapter or formatting reviewed before binding? Assignment Nepal works with FOM students across Nepal — message us on WhatsApp at +977 9768768340.