John, CRM !! A potential minefield.
You may wish to start by defining CRM; this could either stop your dissertation immediately or lead to a Ph.D !
I suggest that you choose a specific field from which the principles can be developed; either the social or cognitive aspects. Your job might bias you towards the social aspects, but beware of biased arguments from local knowledge.
I would start with the cognitive issues. Even if ‘your’ CRM is going to involve team (social) activities the group consists of individuals, so understand them first. Better still, understand yourself – attitudes and behaviors.
In this respect, the principles of basic thought could be developed via situation awareness (understand the situation) and then decision making. These are processes which people on both sides of the line will use, but perhaps each with differing styles and objectives.
Then the classic teamwork aspects can be added to aid discussion of example situations, but again beware of specialist situational knowledge.
The applied discipline should no overshadow the principles; for CRM, these are consistent, cf aviation and medicine.
Not a well known reference and perhaps a little dated:-
Crew Resource Management: An Introductory Handbook.
Also,
crewresourcemanagement.net
A specific ‘British’ quote:- “CRM is like the inversion of the British understanding of a bidet; ‘everyone knows what its for, but no one knows what it is’.”