BA Paper

Team Research and Opinion Paper

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to conduct an OB audit of a company regarding one chosen topic, identify strengths and weaknesses, and provide recommendations for the company based on your analysis. You should be able to see the application of OB theories in actual companies through this project.

Steps

1. Find an organization to study. I recommend using your personal network when approaching a company. You will need to conduct three interviews with current or former employees of this organization. Non-profit as well as for-profit organizations are suitable for this project.

2. Choose a topic. (This stage could come first) The topic should be of interest to you, and be among the topics covered in the class. Try to set boundaries for your topic. For example: “Motivation” is a very large topic and will be difficult to research. Instead, consider focusing on “reward systems as a motivation tool at NIKE” or “the role of job design for employee motivation at Comcast.”

Some recommended topics are:

· Analyzing a company’s reward system based on motivation theories.

· Analyzing motivation in a company using one of the following:

· Expectancy theory

· Equity theory

· Analyzing jobs from a design perspective

· Goal setting

· Performance management

· Managing stress

· Organizational communication (as long as you are specific, such as “written communication” or “use of e-mails,” “suggestion systems” etc.

· Organizational culture.

· Organizational change.

Topics not recommended are:

· Leadership

· Groups/teams

· Organizational structure

· Work/life balance through flexible work schedules

If you have other ideas, just let me know.

3. Conduct a literature review (Master your topic). In the final report, your job is to describe what the company is doing right and wrong regarding your chosen topic and provide recommendations. In other words, your entire report will consist of a description of the company’s activities (obtained from your three interviews and any other publicly available information about the company) and your recommendations. Before you go to the interviews, you need to master your topic so that you can create smart and meaningful questions. Start by reading the relevant sections from the book. Moreover, you need to find as at least 10 peer reviewed journal articles directly related to your chosen topic. You can find the journals at the PSU library as hard copy or online. These articles must be published in 2004 or later. You can use online databases such as EBSCO host located in the PSU library website. Articles found on the worldwide web (such as articles contained in the websites of consulting companies, or papers you find through search engines such as Yahoo or Google) are not acceptable for this part of the project. Please verify your sources are peer-reviewed using Ulrich’s. You will use these articles both in developing your interview questions, and for devising recommendations for the company. Your finished paper should contain citations to 10 refereed journal articles throughout the paper.

4. Develop a list of questions. Your questions should attempt to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of your chosen company in your topic of study. Your questions should be developed based on your literature review. The purpose of these questions should be to see whether the company is doing the things identified in your literature review, as well as what this company is doing right, and what can be improved. Avoid asking for sensitive or confidential information. These questions must be turned as an appendix in your paper.

5. Research the company through interviews and other sources: You need to interview at least three employees (more is better if possible) of your chosen company. In addition, gather information regarding how your chosen company is dealing with your chosen topic, through the company website, news articles, and any other sources.

Make sure that the responses of your interviewees are held strictly confidential. Let me know if you need to verify the validity of this project for your interviewees. Do not attempt to gather information through surveys or via e-mail. The interviewees you have selected should be suitable for your topic. For example, if you have selected to study diversity, your interviewees should be diverse. Interviewing three Caucasian males would probably not give you sufficient information in this topic.

6. Write up the paper. The paper must be between 6 and 8 pages single-spaced. This length excludes the Title Page, Work Cited page(s) and appendices. Use font size 12, and Font type Times New Roman, with 1 inch margins on all sides

Paper Format

Your paper should include the following parts in the following order.

1. Title page: Include the title of your paper, the names (first and last) of your team members and the date. Center and spread out this information on the page – look at the overall layout of the page. Remember, this is the reader’s first impression of the paper – make it strong.

2. Introduction: Provide an overview of your paper. This section should summarize the main points of the paper (10% of your paper in length – no more than ¾ of one page).

3. Company Information: Provide an overview of the company, and describe how you collected the information. Here, you should introduce the people you interviewed (their job titles, demographic characteristics: age, gender, position, tenure) while at the same time protecting their identity if they request it (less than one page in length).

4. Findings: (35-40% of paper length) Describe what you learned as a result of the interviews and through other methods. Here, structure your findings in a meaningful way, using subtitles. For example, if your topic is “reward systems at Nike”, then you might follow an outline such as this:

Reward Systems at Nike

a. Types of reward systems used at Nike

i. Individual rewards

ii. Group rewards

iii. Company-wide rewards

b. Perceived fairness of rewards at Nike

c. Motivational value of rewards at Nike

d. Rewards as a retention tool at Nike

I am just making up these section headings. Use your creativity to organize the information you present, so that it flows logically.

5. Recommendations: (35-40% of paper length) Provide your recommendations based on your findings. Based on your literature review, what were they doing right and should keep doing? What were the problems you have observed or areas for improvement? Your recommendations should:

· Be logical and reflect an understanding of the scientific OB literature.

· Cite the necessary literature.

· Be feasible given the company.

· Be based on problems in the company you have actually observed, and identified in the findings section. For example, if your topic is stress, your recommendations should target specific stressors you have identified, as opposed to generic advice such as people should exercise or read books.

· Be related to your chosen topic. In other words, if your topic is reward systems, your recommendations should target the reward system. Do not suggest changes in the job design in a paper dealing with reward systems.

6. Summary/Conclusion: Finish your paper. Because the recommendations provide your ideas/options for the company, this part of the paper will bring all the thoughts and ideas in the paper together. How you end the paper is up to you, just make sure it “finishes” the actual concepts; you can summarize or draw conclusions on your statements. This part will be 1-3 paragraphs.

7. Appendix: Appendix A will include the name and contact information for all your interviewees. A copy of their business cards is preferable. Appendix B will include the list of questions asked of the interviewees. You may also include other information in the appendix, as necessary for your paper. Appendices are always lettered (Appendix A, B, C, D, etc.) and are titled. When you include an appendix at the end of your paper, it must be referred to in your actual paper.

8. Work Cited (References): Provide a list of all the sources you used – APA style. Information regarding APA style can be found on http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx . Please have a look at only “Citing References in Text,” and “The Reference List” part (Slide 13 – 18). Please make sure this information is correct. Incorrect use or format of the reference page will lower your grade.

Grading Criteria for the Project

Timeliness of the project: No late papers will be accepted.

Appearance: (10 points) Are headings used appropriately? Are there typographical errors and/or grammar mistakes? Is it well written? Is the appendix section complete and identified correctly?

Plagiarism: If I discover that you used sentences from other sources without citing them, all members of the team get a zero. If you used sentences that belong to others and cited them, you lose 5 points for each of these sentences. In other words, you can borrow ideas from other sources as long as you give credit to the source, but you cannot use actual sentences that belong to others even if you cite them. In other words, the paper should completely be in your own words. I will use plagiarism detection software so please be careful not to plagiarize. Please try and use as few quotes as possible. A stronger paper is one that is written in your own words – rather than quotes stuck together. I will use plagiarism detection software so please be careful not to plagiarize.

Sources: (10 points) Did you use information throughout the paper from at least 10 peer-reviewed journals (2000 or later)? Is the Work Cited page format correct and the sources listed complete?

Findings: (35 points) Logical organization. Do you present the information in a clear, easy to follow manner? Can the reader follow your thought process with the headings?

How rich is your coverage of the topic? Does it look like you have asked the right questions? For example, if your topic is reward systems at NIKE, at the end of reading this section, I should feel that I understand how Nike is using reward systems to motivate individuals. Is your coverage of the issue complete, or does it raise more questions?

 Are your findings balanced? Does your paper look like you are selling the company to a potential applicant, or are you taking a more objective viewpoint where you present information from different sources in a balanced way (Remember, you want to present a balanced, well thought out paper).

 The introduction is included in the findings grade.

Recommendations: (45 points)

 Are your recommendations based on problems you have identified, or do they come out of the blue? Your recommendations should deal with a specific problem, and not be generic. For example, you cannot just recommend “the company should use profit sharing.” You need to provide the reasons and/or problems that create a need for a reward system such as profit sharing. Always explain WHY!

 Are your recommendations supported by sound OB research? For example, if your topic is reward systems at NIKE, at the end of reading this section, I should feel that you used OB literature to diagnose and propose solutions to potential problems in their reward systems.

 Your summary/conclusion is included in the recommendations grade.

Sources

Which Journal Articles are Acceptable?

The starting point for your audit should be to understand the topic you are researching. A high quality literature review is essential to your paper. This starts with high quality sources. You need to use at least 10 peer reviewed journal articles to write this paper. In addition to this, you should use the textbook.

The journal articles you use must be peer reviewed (at least 10 of them). In order to check if an article you found is peer-reviewed or not, you can use the database named Ulrich’s. Just search the name of the journal in this database. A peer-reviewed journal will have “Journal; Academic/Scholarly” as the document type.

If you have doubts, check with me. The online databases such as Ebsco Host includes both peer reviewed articles and magazines. Therefore, you need to use discretion in choosing sources. Clicking on the “peer reviewed” box in online databases is no guarantee that you will end up with peer-reviewed articles.

The sources you use should also be recent. The 10 peer-reviewed articles you turn in for credit and use in your paper must be published in 2004 or later. You may use older articles in addition to the 10 newer articles.

You can use non-peer reviewed journal articles as well, but you still need to have 10 peer-reviewed articles (from 2000 and later) that you use somehow in your finished paper. I recommend gathering non peer-reviewed articles as well as peer-reviewed articles from Ebsco Host, so that you can start the project with a solid background.

Examples of good sources include, but are not limited to:

Journal of Organizational Behavior, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Executive, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management, Journal of Psychology, Journal of Business Research, etc.

Citing Your Sources

Whenever you are expressing an idea that does not belong to you, you need to provide citations using APA style.

 when describing information from an article or from your book, provide citations as follows: Merit pay has been shown to have positive effects on employee motivation (Smith, Kendall, & Mack, 2008).

 if you are using the exact words of someone, quote the sentence as follows: "Merit pay is the source of all evil in society" (Smith, Kendall, & Mack, 2008: 43).

 Try to avoid using quotes. Quotes are usually used to express a colorful or interesting expression that you would like to keep as it is. In any paper, there should not be more than 1-2 direct quotes, preferably none.

 if you are quoting or citing, you must also include the complete reference for that source at the end of your paper, in the Work Cited page.

 Write the paper in your own words. Do not take actual sentences from any of your sources (except when you are quoting someone).

 do not use a URL address in the in-text citations.

IF YOU USE WORDS THAT DO NOT BELONG TO YOU IN YOUR PAPER, AND DO NOT CITE THEM, THAT IS CONSIDERED PLAGIARISM. THIS LEADS TO A GRADE OF 0 (ZERO) IN THE PROJECT, WITH NO POSSIBILITY OF MAKE-UP***

Peer Evaluations

Your evaluations by other team members will determine your actual individual grade from the team project. Therefore, you should make every effort to contribute fully to this project, and also be perceived as a highly contributing member. You will evaluate each other during the final exam.

Team members will evaluate each other’s performance and your project grade will depend on your team’s grade, as well as your evaluation by other members. For example, if your four team members mention that your participation in the team project was: 100%, 100%, 90%, 80% respectively, this means you will get less than 100% of your team project grade, because at least two members mentioned that you participated less than 100%. Averaging these scores, your individual score will be 92.5% of your team project score. Throughout the term, you should remember to satisfy the other members of your team. If at least two of your team members think that you did not contribute to the project as much as the others, your score will suffer regardless of whether you agree with this evaluation or not. Team member evaluations will be completely confidential. In other words, I will not share with you how you were evaluated in the team project, and whether you received less than 100%.

Assignment of Responsibility

As a team, you are all mutually responsible for the content and quality of everything you put into the project. In other words, you cannot divide responsibility for different sections of the paper. Even though you may divide up your work, don’t forget that each of you is responsible for every section of the paper. For example, if you lose points because of problems in a single section, you cannot claim that you were not aware of the content of that section.

Plagiarism

The worst thing that can happen in your group is plagiarism. Even the worst paper will get a score higher than zero, whereas a plagiarized paper immediately gets a zero. This will bring down your course grade, possibly leading to failing the class. Therefore, you need to take precautions:

 Don’t do it… Resist the temptation to copy any part of the paper from somewhere.

 Make sure that all the parts your group members wrote have appropriate citations. If the paper does not have citations for all the information you include, this is a very good indicator of plagiarism.

 Ask to see the original copies of the sources your group members have used in their parts, and check to see how they used the sources. Do the information and the source they cite match? Have your group members used their own words in the paper when expressing these ideas, or have they paraphrased everything?

 Enter sentences or words from the paper to Yahoo, Google, or EbscoHost. Did you find cites that contain sentences too similar to the one in your paper?

 Does everything look “too good to be true?” If a group member hands you a first draft that looks wonderfully written, you may have reason to suspect, unless you know that person is an extremely good writer. Chances are, first drafts contain typos or grammar errors. If the paper contains lots of jargon, big and elaborate words, and complicated sentence structure, there is a chance that it may be coming from published work.

 Don’t hold back. If you suspect something looks problematic, speak up. Many groups fall victim to groupthink. I know it is difficult to challenge your group, or discuss plagiarism in your group. However, every single member in the group has the responsibility to be very careful and cautious about plagiarism. Speak up if you notice anything that looks like plagiarism.

 On the other hand, don’t bring up your concerns by accusing your group members. If you have concerns, make sure you bring them up nicely, such as “You know we need to cite everything we have in the paper. This section does not contain any citations. Can we figure out where this information came from?” or, “I am looking at this article, but I can’t find the information you cited in here. Are you sure this information came from this article, or is this a mistake?”