aer lingus company

Assignment Specification

Module Title: Business Functions 2

Lecturer’s name: Declan Scully email: [email protected]

Latest date for Submission: 26/8/2014

Word Count: 800-1200 words

What is referencing and why is it necessary?

Referencing is a standard method of acknowledging the sources of information you have consulted. Anything – words, figures, graphs, theories, ideas, facts – originating from another source and used in your assignment must be referenced (i.e. acknowledged)

· To avoid plagiarism

· So that the reader can verify quotations

Assignment example:

You are writing an assignment about “Communications in Organisations” and you have consulted a book by Henry McClave, called “Communications for Business”. In this book you have found a quotation that you want to include in your assignment. You do that as follows:

“The ability to communicate effectively is often cited as the key characteristic of the successful manager or administrator” (McClave, 1997: 1)

The following is an example of the bibliographic entry when using the Harvard Business Style:

Year of publication Edition of publication Publishers

Author Title of publication Place of publication

What information do I need for proper referencing?

· An acknowledgement within the body of your essay should include the name of the author, the date of publication and the page numbers, e.g. (Forde, 2001: 73-74)

· At this point – known as “in-text referencing” you are only giving the reader the author, date of publication and page reference of the source. The full details should be included in the bibliography.

Paraphrasing and quoting – what’s the difference?

Paraphrasing involves writing someone’s ideas in your own words – not verbatim e.g.

· Anderson (1987: 73-74) advances three arguments against the death penalty. He contends that the death penalty is inhuman and no society that purports to be civilised can condone it. It has never been proved that the death penalty acts as a deterrent, and, furthermore, many innocent people have died in vain for crimes committed by others.

Quoting involves writing the exact words of the author directly from the book or journal e.g.

· “My arguments against the death penalty are three-fold. To do away with any human being is uncivilised and inhuman. There is no proof that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to heinous criminal acts, and it is a documented fact that many innocent men and women have been wrongly sentenced for the crimes of others” (Anderson, 1987: 73-74)

Writing a bibliography

A bibliography is a list of books, journal articles, newspaper articles or any other printed or electronic resource referred to by an author. It normally requires the following information, all of which can be found inside the book or on the library OPAC:

· Name of the author

· Date of the publication or resource

· Title of the publication or resource

· Edition of the publication or resource

· Place of publication or resource

· Publisher

The following provides examples on how material should be entered in a bibliography:

Journal article

In this example the volume of the journal (=14), issue number (=2), page numbers (=131-143) and date (=June 2003)

· Caldwell, Raymond. 2003. Models of agency change: a fourfold classification. British Journal of Management, 14. (2): 131-143, June 2003

Note that the title of the journal is italicised and not the title of the article.

Internet

The important point to remember in this bibliographic note is to enter the date the website was accessed e.g. 4 September 1996

· McKiernan, G. 1996. Project Aristotle(sm): automated categorisation of Web resources. [Online]. Available: http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/Aristotle.htm [4 September 1996]

Electronic Database

In this example the title of the journal in which the article has been published (Journal of Management Studies) is in italics. The name of the database and the article reference number (if any) should be given in square brackets.

· Roche, William K. 1999. In search of commitment-oriented human resource management practices and the conditions that sustain them. Journal of management studies, 36 (5) 653 [Abstract in the InfoTrac database]

ASSIGNMENT DESCRIPTION

Write a report (800-1200 words) on an Irish company of your choice. The report should focus on the competitive environment in which it operates and likely future developments for the organisation in the next few years.

Assignment Information

· The assignment should be presented in 1.5 line spacing, Times New Roman Font, Size 12

· The Word Count must be printed on the front page of the assignment

· To attain a high level grade, students must incorporate properly referenced external material

· Students must retain a copy of their submitted assignment

Bibliography

McClave, Henry. 1997. Communication for business. 2nd ed. Dublin. Gill and Macmillan.