5 pages assignment

The contextual application paper is an individual assignment. Students should NOT discuss with others or advise others about this assignment. Any unauthorized collaboration (collusion) on this assignment will be considered as cheating and will be subject to an academic discipline.

Here is what you need to do. First, pick a company that you are interested in researching. Second, identify news articles from reputable business newspapers and magazines that are relevant to the company (and the company’s industry). Find articles that describes certain trends and phenomena in the external environment. Third and last, analyse the external environment of the company or industry using the frameworks and researching findings in the second step. Your overall goal is to identify opportunities and threats arising in the external environments.

Here are additional guidelines for the assignments:

a) The paper must be based on articles that are:

a. relevant (clearly relate the articles to what we have discussed in class)

b. timely (within the last 24 months)

c. from a reputable business publication such as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, BusinessWeek, and Economist.

b) Avoid excessive use of bullets, indent space, and direct quotes. The paper should be left-aligned with the 1-inch margin on four sides of the paper.

c) You need to use minimum of ten news articles in your writing.

d) You need to include in-text citations. Also, include a separate references page at the end and list all the citations in APA style (there should be at least ten (10) citations.

e) Insert important tables, figures, and charts in the body of text if they can easily fit in a page. If those (tables, figures, and charts) are too large to fit in a page, then include them in a separate appendix section. Tables, figures, and charts have to be your own creation unless recreating them on your own is near impossible or impossible. Use of tables, figures, and charts are highly recommended. At a minimum, your paper should include the following three tables (not counted toward the page limit).

1

Table 1. General Environmental Analysis Summary (Extend the table as you need)

Table 2. Five Force Analysis

Table 3. Competitor Analysis Summary

MGT 431: Conceptual Application Paper Evaluation

A. CONTENT (80 POINTS)

1. Properly incorporating discussion of external environment element using analytical frameworks/tools (30 points)

2. Research showing appropriate breadth and depth (20 points)

3. Proper Identification of Opportunities and Threats from the analysis (10 points)

4. Efforts (quantity) to visualize ideas and research findings in tables, figures, and charts. (10 points)

5. Quality of tables, figures, and charts (10 points)

SUB-TOTAL __________________

B. WRITING (20 POINTS)

1. Organization (Well-organized; headings used throughout; easy to follow from data to conclusions) – 5 points

2. Clarity of Writing (High quality writing throughout; fully edited) – 5 points

3. Grammar & Spelling – 5 points

4. References in APA or MLA – 5 points

SUB-TOTAL ________________

TOTAL _________________