TU MBS Thesis Format: Chapter Structure and Submission Guidelines

13 August 2026 · 10 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.

How long the thesis actually needs to be

FOM's 2019 dissertation guideline does not set a word count, and you will see figures quoted online (14,000–16,000 words, or 22,000–24,000) that we could not trace to any current FOM document. The older figure comes from a 2015 FOM format that the 2019 guideline replaced. What the guideline does fix is the proportions: a background of two to three pages, a problem statement of two to four, and a literature review of 10 to 20 pages. Let those set the scale, and let the analysis set the rest. What examiners actually penalise is padding — a Chapter 2 that summarises everything published on the topic instead of building toward the stated gap, or a Chapter 5 that repeats Chapter 4 in different words. If your campus research committee has issued its own length rule, that one applies.

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

FOM's 2019 guideline specifies A4 paper, Times New Roman 12 point, 1.5 line spacing, margins of 1 inch at the top, bottom and right and 1.25 inches on the left for binding, and printing on one side only. Preliminary pages carry lowercase roman numerals at the bottom centre; the main body is numbered in arabic numerals at the top right. 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

FOM's 2019 guideline specifies APA 6th edition for MBS. Some supervisors now accept APA 7; ask yours, and then use one edition throughout. 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.

Viva-voce and how the thesis is actually marked

The MBS thesis is not marked on the written document alone. The standard split is 75 marks for the thesis itself and 25 for the viva-voce, so a well-written thesis that cannot be defended out loud still loses a meaningful share of the total. Two examiners assess the work — an internal examiner from your own college, appointed through the college's Research Committee, and an external examiner appointed separately by the Examination Section at the Dean's office of the Faculty of Management. Because the two are appointed through different offices, they read the thesis independently before the viva, which is why inconsistencies between chapters — an objective in Chapter 1 that Chapter 4 never answers, a Chapter 5 conclusion that overreaches the data — tend to surface as separate questions from each examiner rather than a single shared correction.

The viva itself is built around your own audit trail: expect to be asked why you chose your sample size, why a particular test suited your data, and to defend at least one finding that surprised you. Prepare by re-reading Chapter 4 as if you were the examiner — the questions it invites are the ones you will get.

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.

The procedural side runs alongside the checklist above: your supervisor's recommendation has to be on file before the department will accept the bound copies, the college routes one copy to the internal examiner and one to the external examiner ahead of the viva date, and — separately from the examination copies — the department, supervisor and library each keep a hard-bound copy after the viva is cleared. Confirm the exact copy count and routing with your department before you go to print; it varies by college even though the five-chapter format does not.

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.

MBS assignment and thesis help — Coursework support alongside the thesis itself.
TU MBS thesis topics — 24 researchable ideas with a data source and feasibility rating each.
TU thesis proposal format — The document this thesis grows out of.
MBS thesis proposal format, with a sample outline — FOM's proposal sections in order, and a worked example.
TU thesis guidelines compared across faculties — Where FOM's rules differ from Education, FOHSS and IOST.

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