formal business report on the company's communication practices.

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BUSN 333 Individual Report (20% of final grade) F15

Professor: Jeff Parsons [email protected]

Due: Week 10 (November 18, 2015 before 3:30 pm)

Choose a company from the list provided at the end of this document. Prepare a formal business report on the company's communication practices. You should research the company’s internal and external communication practices and the selection of your company may well be determined by your ability to gather information from published sources.

For example, you may choose either of the following areas of focus, or you may choose a different, communications-related area of focus. If you choose something different, please discuss this with your instructor.

· Internal Communications – what choices has this company made with regard to their communication with their employees? Does this contribute to their success?

· External Communications - what choices has this company made with regard to their communication with external stakeholders? Does this contribute to their success?

Discuss how the company’s communication strategy helps/hinders their success. Do not discuss products or business strategy.

Research sources (minimum 3) must not include Blogs, Wikipedia or corporate websites as they have NOT been independently reviewed and published. Blogs and Wikipedia can be used as a fourth or fifth source. The library staff is an excellent source of aid when researching topics. Proper APA citations are required. Use the business report template as it will help you organize and format the report.

Primary research, such as interviewing someone from a company, is appropriate and acceptable. Include a written transcript of your questions and the interviewees’ responses in an appendix.

Plagiarism (from The Concise Oxford Dictionary)

“Take and use another person’s (thoughts, writings, inventions) as one’s own”. Direct quotations from appropriate sources are acceptable with proper citations. If you cut and paste from an internet site without any citation, you will receive a 0 grade. The report should be written in your own words.

The report should include a cover page, a minimum of four pages of body/text (11 pt font, one inch margins), a maximum of six pages of body/text, and a reference page containing your citations. Use the Business Report template that is on eCentennial.

BUSN 333 Individual Report Grading Rubric

Implementation of Business Report Template
Three Paragraph Executive Summary Not present  Not correctly placed in document Not properly structured Table of Contents, with correct page numbers Not Present Page numbers not correct Page numbers absent Major and Sub-Headings Not used Incorrectly used Reference/ Works Cited Page Not present Not properly formatted	_______ Out of 10
Standard of Written Work
Grammar – Sentence Structure – Phrasing Appropriate Some problems Too many problems – see a tutor for assistance Spelling - Typographical errors Very few A few Quite a few  Too many – Learn to proofread Appropriate vocabulary / word usage Good Some problems Many problems – see a tutor for assistance Inappropriate use of first person Readability: Easily read and understood? Yes  Somewhat No – see a tutor for assistance	_______ Out of 15
Quality of Content
Central thesis and related evidence are sound and relevant: Yes No Analysis is thorough and comprehensive: Yes No All material presented is related to the central thesis: Yes No Flow / Logic / Structure Strong, follows outline Somewhat logical/structured Weak structure, fragmented ideas, hard to follow	_______ Out of 20
Quality of Research / Citations
Appropriate Research sources, as noted in assignment objectives: Yes No Effective use of APA citations within the body of the text: Yes No Effective use of APA citations on the Reference page: Yes No	_______ Out of 15
TOTAL _______ Out of 60

2011 Best Managed winners

Airline Hotels

ALPHA Assurances

Avison Young

Blackjack Investments Ltd.

Burnbrae Farms Limited

CarProof

CARSTAR Automotive Canada Inc.

Cruickshank Construction Limited

Da-Lee

David Aplin Group

Delcan Corporation

DIRTT Environmental Solutions

DynaLIFEdx

ECS Electrical Cable Supply Ltd.

ELRUS Inc.

Equipment Sales & Service Limited

FLOFORM Countertops

Fresh Direct Produce Ltd.

Genumark

Giftcraft Ltd.

Groupe Trans-West

Hendrix Restaurant Equipment & Supplies

HTS

Hunter Amenities International Ltd

Joe Johnson Equipment Inc.

KUBRA

LMS Reinforcing Steel Group

Long View Systems

Magna Electric Corporation

Manderley Turf Products Inc.

Mayhew

McDougall Energy Inc.

Milgram & Company Ltd.

New York Fries and South St. Burger Co.

Solmax International Inc.

Studon Electric & Controls Inc.

The Central Group

Vector Construction

BEST CANADIAN COMPANIES TO WORK FOR - 2012

Accenture Inc. Agfa HealthCare Inc. Agnico-Eagle Mines Limited AMEC Americas Limited Amex Canada Inc. Amgen Canada Inc. AMAPCEO Bayer Inc. BD Canada Inc. Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP BMO Financial Group CAA South Central Ontario Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce / CIBC Carswell, div. Thomson Reuters Canada Ltd. Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre Centre for Addiction and Mental Health / CAMH CH2M HILL Canada Limited Chubb Insurance Company of Canada College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario Compass Group Canada Credit Valley Hospital, The Deloitte & Touche LLP Durham College eHealth Ontario EllisDon Corporation EMD Inc. Ernst & Young LLP Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Fleishman-Hillard Canada Inc. Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP Gamma-Dynacare Medical Laboratories Inc. General Motors of Canada Limited George Brown College GlaxoSmithKline Inc. / GSK Halton, Regional Municipality of Hershey Canada Incorporated Hewlett-Packard Canada Co. Hill and Knowlton Canada Inc. Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital Home Depot Canada, The Honeywell International Inc. Hospital for Sick Children, The Humber College Infusion Development Corp. Intelex Technologies Inc. KPMG LLP Kraft Foods Canada Law Society of Upper Canada, The Loblaw Companies Limited LoyaltyOne Inc. Manulife Financial Corporation Mars Canada Inc. Marsh Canada Limited Medtronic of Canada Ltd. Meridian Credit Union Michener Institute for Applied Health Sciences Miller Group, The Molson Coors Canada Mount Sinai Hospital Nelson Education Ltd. Novo Nordisk Canada Inc. Nycomed Canada Inc. Ontario Hospital Association Ontario Power Authority Ontario Public Service Peel Regional Police Pelmorex Media Inc. PepsiCo Beverages Canada Pitney Bowes of Canada Limited PowerStream Inc. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Procter & Gamble Inc. Rogers Communications Inc. Royal Bank of Canada SAP Canada Inc. SAS Institute (Canada) Inc. SCOR Canada Reinsurance Company Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology Southlake Regional Health Centre Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre TD Bank Group TeraGo Networks Inc. Toronto Central Community Care Access Centre Toronto Hydro Corporation Toronto International Film Festival United Way of Greater Toronto University of Toronto Whirlpool Canada LP William Osler Health System World Vision Canada XE.com Inc. Xerox Canada Inc. YMCA of Greater Toronto York, Regional Municipality of

BusinessReportTemplate-BUSN (1).docx

For Business Administration and Related Streams

How To Use The Business Report Template

(version 1.0)

Formal business reports are prepared in a different format than essays or other academic assignments. Preparing professional reports, and proposals, will help you communicate your ideas to your employers while also adding to your value as an employee. This is an important skill to develop and practice while here at Centennial.

Business writing should involve three key steps:

Planning Writing Completing

Planning:

· Analyzing the situation or topic. Defining the purpose, the “business problem” or “opportunity” that a report may address. Formulating a main message for your report - often this involves proposing a solution or response to the purpose. Developing an audience profile.

· Gathering information. In other words, primary and secondary research, as required.

· Organizing the information: Creating an outline or structure for the key points that need to be expressed.

Writing:

· Adapting to the audience. Developing a tone or style that is sensitive to audience needs while projecting and protecting your organization’s image and/or brand.

· Composing the message: Follow the outline prepared earlier, using carefully constructed paragraphs and sentences. Identify or create any visual or graphic representations of data that you want to use.

Completing:

· Revising: Proofread and edit for spelling, grammar and typographical errors. Re-write for conciseness and clarity.

To assist you with the formatting of such documents, we have prepared a template that you can use to guide you through the report preparation process.

· Download the template.

· Save one “master “ copy to use again in the future.

· Save a new copy with a new file name that reflects your report or assignment.

· Instructions are given and highlighted in yellow. Read all instructions and delete them when you no longer need them.

· Replace all other elements (titles, headings, sample text, etc.) with YOUR content, as instructed.

· When you finish using the template, the final document should contain your own original work, formatted as a standard business report. All instructions or examples given in this template should be either deleted or replaced with your own content.

Instructions for the cover page:

The next page is a cover page and contains the report title (mandatory), a subtitle (optional) and information on the author, the intended audience (in this case, a professor), and the date it was prepared.

Every business report should have a title that reflects its content or “main message”. The title should be in the same font as the body of your work, but at least twice as large as your regular text. It should be centred, bold, underlined and should appear about one third to halfway down the page from the top. Depending on the nature and content of the report, you may decide that a subtitle is appropriate. For example, a report about recycling in Toronto might look like this:

Recycling In Toronto

Saving The City One Plastic Bottle At A Time

Titles do not require punctuation, although you can use a colon at the end of the title if you decide to use a subtitle. This is optional.

Guidelines regarding fonts and font sizes:

Use either a simple sans serif font (Ariel, Calabri, Tahoma) or Times New Roman (a simple serif font). Regardless of which font you select, use the same font for the entire document. Do not use italics at any point in your report. Use the following font sizes and configurations:

Cover Page Title: 22 point, bold, underlined, centred

Cover Page SubTitle: 16 point, centred

Headings: 16 point ,bold, underlined, centred

Subheadings: 13 point, bold, underlined left-justified

Body text: 11 point

DELETE THIS PAGE BEFORE YOU HAND IN YOUR WORK!

Liz Clarke – For Distribution throughout the School of Business, Centennial College

The Title Of Your Report

The Subtitle of Your Report

Your Name

Your Student Number

Professor’s Name

Course Name

Course Code

Date Submitted

Executive Summary

Instructions:

The heading “Executive Summary” is standard and should remain unchanged on this page.

An Executive Summary is the last item that an author prepares when writing a business report. It should contain NO MORE than three paragraphs, each with three or four sentences. The Executive Summary should never exceed one page.

Paragraph One: Introduce the topic of the report.

Paragraph Two: Discuss the main problem(s) that the report examines.

Paragraph Three: Review, briefly, any conclusions or recommendations that the report offers.

A reader should get a reasonable representation of the overall content from reading these three paragraphs.

Table of Contents

These page numbers are provided as samples. Use the real page numbers for your report. Put actual headings and subheadings as per your actual report.

Introduction		1
First Topic Heading		1
	Subheading	1
	Subheading	1
	Subheading	2
Second Topic Heading		2
	Subheading	2
	Subheading	3
	Subheading	3
Third Topic Heading		3
	Subheading	3
	Subheading	4
	Subheading	4
Recommendations		4
Conclusion		4
References		5
Appendices		6
	Appendix One – Title	7
	Appendix Two – Title	8
	Appendix Three – Title	9
	Appendix Four – Title	10

Instructions:

The Table of Contents shows the reader where to find specific content areas. If you have prepared a strong outline prior to writing your report (highly recommended), the headings, subheadings and other information should be easily available and clearly organized. This example shows three headings and two subheadings for each, however this is just for the purposes of this example. There is no set amount for these elements. Use as many of each as you feel are appropriate to construct a complete report.

Insert the accurate page number for each corresponding element. It is often best to construct this table of contents after all content is prepared and edited. This will allow for fewer revisions to the table of contents.

The appendices show any data tables, charts, graphs, or visuals that you refer to within the body of the report. Such visual material should appear at the end in an appendix rather than taking up page space within the body of the report.

A note about page numbers: The first page of the report is the page that follows this table of contents and should contain a few introductory paragraphs to the topic, followed by the first major topic heading. However, the first page NUMBER should appear on page two. It is standard to leave the page number out on page one.

Introduction: About This Topic

Sample text for introduction … Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum magna quam, auctor at congue nec, venenatis a felis. Nunc ornare, velit ac tincidunt volutpat, sapien velit consequat nulla, id dignissim est eros et risus. Vivamus consequat arcu tristique risus ornare a fringilla nisl consequat. Quisque at tristique eros. Duis sit amet eros sed nunc consequat mattis eu vitae quam. Nullam facilisis iaculis tortor id pulvinar. In pellentesque nisl quis risus eleifend placerat. Nam ac malesuada magna. Praesent tristique sem ac ipsum suscipit a ornare quam ultrices. Suspendisse at arcu nisl. Ut vel odio massa. Aenean eget ipsum eros, quis pellentesque neque. Etiam consequat vulputate purus, et posuere urna lacinia non. Proin tortor nisl, lacinia a faucibus condimentum, dictum eu mauris. Morbi velit ipsum, eleifend suscipit rhoncus in, elementum eget urna.

Vivamus sed felis et est commodo aliquet. Praesent quis urna ante. In sed dui odio, adipiscing mollis augue. In bibendum nibh ut ipsum lacinia ut luctus lacus vulputate. Quisque eget metus neque. Mauris commodo massa eu elit sodales ut scelerisque justo vestibulum. Phasellus semper ipsum sit amet dolor facilisis a fringilla tellus tincidunt. Etiam at magna lorem, ut rutrum elit. Suspendisse egestas consequat eros, et interdum felis placerat ut. Aenean ut lacus lectus, vitae dictum lacus. Praesent ac nisl diam, id vestibulum lacus. Nullam consectetur, leo nec imperdiet pellentesque, nisl risus venenatis nulla, quis tempus metus dolor dignissim sem. Aenean vitae scelerisque tortor. Morbi sem odio, sollicitudin sed porttitor at, ullamcorper sit amet diam. Pellentesque turpis nunc, viverra vel malesuada in, iaculis in magna.

Instructions:

In the introduction, write two or three paragraphs introducing the topic of the report and, in particular, explaining why it is important. Do not use subheadings here. Change the heading above to reflect your actual topic.

A good choice for line spacing is 1.15, as shown here. 1.5 is also acceptable. Double-spacing is not appropriate for business reports.

First Topic Heading

Subheading

Sample text … Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum magna quam, auctor at congue nec, venenatis a felis. Nunc ornare, velit ac tincidunt volutpat, sapien velit consequat nulla, id dignissim est eros et risus. Vivamus consequat arcu tristique risus ornare a fringilla nisl consequat. Quisque at tristique eros. Duis sit amet eros sed nunc consequat mattis eu vitae quam. Nullam facilisis iaculis tortor id pulvinar. In pellentesque nisl quis risus eleifend placerat. Nam ac malesuada magna. Praesent tristique sem ac ipsum suscipit a ornare quam ultrices. Suspendisse at arcu nisl. Ut vel odio massa. Aenean eget ipsum eros, quis pellentesque neque. Etiam consequat vulputate purus, et posuere urna lacinia non. Proin tortor nisl, lacinia a faucibus condimentum, dictum eu mauris. Morbi velit ipsum, eleifend suscipit rhoncus in, elementum eget urna.

Subheading

Instructions:

The major difference between a “business report” and an “essay” is that a business report clearly divides its content into logically flowing topic areas, divided by headings and subheadings. These should ALWAYS correspond to a properly prepared outline – something that makes your task much easier. Use as many headings / subheadings as make sense for your report. There is no standard regarding the number of paragraphs or sentences per paragraph, although most paragraphs contain – at minimum – three sentences. Use as many or as few as make sense for what you have to say about your topic.

Please note: A heading or subheading should NEVER appear in the last 15% (i.e. at the bottom) of any page. In such a case, leave white space and start the next section at the top of the next page.

In-Text Citations: For all ideas, quotations or content, use standard APA in-text citation format of the author’s name followed year of publication. (Argenti 2006) The reader should then be able to refer to your reference page to find where you sourced your specific material.

Second Topic Heading

Subheading

Third Topic Heading

Subheading

Recommendations

First Recommendation

Second Recommendation

Third Recommendation

Vivamus ultrices eros eget sem aliquam quis tincidunt ligula gravida. Nam id risus augue. Vivamus fringilla tincidunt imperdiet. Maecenas sit amet tellus facilisis urna lacinia tempor. Curabitur nec urna risus, at feugiat lectus. Vivamus erat elit, lacinia a aliquet non, tincidunt non libero. Nulla magna lorem, hendrerit sit amet sodales dignissim, laoreet vitae tellus. Fusce vitae erat justo. Aenean nec tellus lacus. Sed eget ornare mi. In lacinia dolor et arcu ultricies sed ultricies nulla viverra. Proin suscipit laoreet lorem, eu luctus urna placerat a. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Vestibulum eu lorem mi, et cursus nunc

In Conclusion

Instructions:

Most business reports are written with the purpose of presenting findings and offering recommendations. When preparing the conclusion, you may wish to review the main points from the introduction (for example, re-stating whatever business problem you were examining) and suggesting what positive results might follow should your recommendations be followed.

References

Argenti, P. A., & Foreman, J. (2006). The Power of Corporate Communication: Crafting the Voice and Image of Your Business. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Hoover’s Online. (2007) Intel-Company Capsule. Retrieved September 6, 2007 from www.hoovers.com/intel-corporation/--ID_13787--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml.

Porter, M.E. & Kramer, M.R. (2002, December). The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy. Harvard Business Review, 80(12), 56-68.

Instructions – APA Citation Style:

The American Psychological Association (APA) style is one of three standard formats used to cite works that have been used as research for reports and essays. ALL non-original ideas and content within a document MUST be cited or you may be plagiarizing – in other words, you may be presenting work that appears to be yours, but in fact is not. Your professor has the option to give a grade of zero for either the work, or the course, should a student be found plagiarizing.

The best way to avoid this is to use APA to cite EVERYTHING. Keep track of every article you read, every book, journal or website you use. Personal interviews with experts are great sources of information and must be cited in the text as well however do not need to be included in the reference page.

APA has the following attributes:

· Citations are formatted as hanging indents and appear alphabetically by author last name.

· Citations contain the following information (when available), IN THIS ORDER:

1. Author last name followed by initials

2. Year of publication (in parentheses)

3. Title information

4. Publication information

5. Date retrieved or accessed (for online journals and web sites)

6. Page range (for periodicals only)

7. URL (for online journals and websites)

The examples above offer three different types of citations for the reference page. There are dozens more that cover all possible situations. Examples can be found online if you search for “APA examples”, or you can refer to any reputable communications textbook for guidance.

Appendix One – Title

Chart Title

· List the source and the date here

Instructions:

Put all visual materials into appendices that appear at the end of your report. Each page should contain only ONE visual. Change the title of the appendix here to reflect your work. MAKE SURE you properly label the data, and that you use an explanatory chart title. The source for the visual should always be listed, as well as a date. This is particularly important if you are using data that might be questioned or may be obsolete.

Appendix Two – Title

Chart Title

· List the source and the date here

Appendix Three – Title

$C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\MEDIA\CAGCAT10\j0285444.wmf$

Picture Title

· List the source and the date here

- 10 -

image1.wmf