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Mastering Management (MGMT 4330)    Prof. See 

Final Paper Instructions

Deadlines:  Email me your topic choice by April 18 (include any chosen group members on email)  Paper DUE May 2 by 6:00 p.m. MST (upload to Canvas by only 1 group member)

The final project for this course entails writing a paper on a negotiations-related topic. You may work alone or in a group of up to three people that you select in your enrolled section. The purpose of the paper is to explore a topic of interest in more depth than covered in class and to increase your understanding of negotiation or conflict management. The paper may be defined in a number of different ways. Here are just a few examples of possible approaches you can take:

 Analyze a real negotiation from current or historical events. For example, you might analyze aspects of peace negotiations in the Middle East, negotiations between teams and players in major league baseball, a historical negotiation, etc. The particular negotiation you select should include enough detail and richness to allow for you to develop several new insights in your paper.

 Conduct a series of interviews with negotiator(s) in a specific applied setting. For

example, you might interview people who work in sales, investment bankers, agents, recruiters, students negotiating for a job, attorneys or mediators, or other “experts” in a specific field/context that interests you. What do you conclude determines negotiation success or failure in their specific context?

 Propose an alternative paper topic. You can research any negotiation topic of particular

interest to you, e.g., cross-cultural negotiation styles, hostage negotiations, non-verbal communication, gender differences, etc.

You will need to notify me (by April 18 over email) of your project topic by sending me a 1-2 sentence description and note group members, if any, you choose to work with. An electronic copy should be uploaded to Canvas (by only 1 group member) by 6:00 p.m. on Monday, May 2. You do not need to turn in a paper copy. Formatting and References: The paper should be 5-7 pages, double-spaced (12 point font and 1 inch margins) with no minimum length (note that references and tables are not included in the 7 page limit). Submit a paper in essay format (outlines and bullet points are not conducive to analyzing in depth and are thus inappropriate for this assignment). In building your analysis and arguments, you can include any number of referenced sources in your paper, but at least two of those references must be academic sources (not including the assigned books and readings for our course). The reason for this requirement is that it is important to learn to analyze situations by drawing on the best available evidence, and that requires knowing how to locate and evaluate the quality of recommendations and publications that are available to you. Academic sources have content that has been empirically tested over time using various scientific methods and evidence (surveys, experiments, case studies), whereas non-academic sources are based more on

Mastering Management (MGMT 4330)    Prof. See 

people’s untested opinions and impressions. The last page of this handout has detailed information on the difference between academic versus non-academic sources, as well as how to find academic sources. When referencing online sources, you may pick any one referencing format you prefer (footnotes, endnotes, or author/title in text with a bibliography) as long as you use it consistently. Evaluation criteria: The project is worth 30% of your final course grade. Grading will be based on the following criteria:

 Analysis: How well do you understand the course concepts you employ? To what extent are you able to bring meaningful insights to understanding the topic you have chosen? How creative and challenging is your choice of topic and your analysis? Do you offer original insights, analysis, or arguments by going beyond describing what happened to why it unfolded that way?

 Relevance: Some course concepts are more relevant for understanding a particular negotiation topic or situation than others. How relevant are the course concepts you reference to gain insight into the negotiation topic you chose? How effectively do you relate your analysis to the concepts discussed in the course?

 Exposition: How clearly written and professionally presented is the paper? What is the quality of referenced sources? Have the formatting guidelines been adhered to?

Want a second opinion on your draft before you turn it in? Try the Writing Center: If you are concerned about the clarity of your writing or use of outside references, I highly recommend that you utilize the Writing Center on the CU-Denver campus. This is a great, free resource for students, and they have several locations and offer both in person and online consultations to help you with specific writing projects. Information on their locations, hours, and services can be found here: http://www.ucdenver.edu/academics/colleges/CLAS/Centers/writing/Pages/TheWritingCenter.aspx

Mastering Management (MGMT 4330)    Prof. See 

RESOURCES FOR LOCATING ACADEMIC SOURCES For the final paper you should draw on concepts discussed in lecture and readings, as well as information from a few external sources. In particular, you need to reference a minimum of two academic sources (e.g., scholarly books published by university presses; peer-reviewed journal articles) that are not covered as part of course readings. However, while research your negotiations topic you might also want to use information you find from other relevant non-academic sources, such as trade publications, news media, or online materials. Particularly when it comes to online resources, be critical about the author’s credibility and accuracy of the information.

Academic Sources The Auraria Library offers a wide variety of searchable online databases that will be very helpful for research. Here is a link to a listing of popular databases: http://library.auraria.edu/tools/databases The above link includes Academic OneFile Plus, which is a searchable online database that should be sufficient for most, if not all, of your negotiations research:

Academic One-File Plus This is a very large electronic database that contains business publications ranging from newspapers to magazines to hundreds of academic research journals. It is searchable by keyword, and many of the more recent publications should be available free for download. When you run a search you can select a box that limits the search results to “Peer-Reviewed Journals.” Select that box to ensure that you are getting academic sources in your search results, in order to fulfill your required two academic sources. Academic One-File Plus includes scores of academic journals that publish research related to negotiations:

 Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes  Negotiation Journal (published by Plenum Press)  Harvard Business Review  Group Decision and Negotiation

Although Academic One-File Plus should be sufficient for your final paper needs, you can feel free to explore other databases, as well (e.g., LexisNexis, Bloomberg, PsychInfo). PsychInfo is large electronic database that contains hundreds of psychology publications. You can search by keyword or title-words that are related to your topic. Like Academic One-File Plus, you usually download papers through Psychinfo. There are also many other specialized negotiations-related journals that are not included in the Academic One-File Plus or Psychinfo databases and are more related to legal negotiations and conflict resolution topics, for example:

 International Journal of Conflict Management  Dispute Resolution Journal  Harvard Negotiation Law Review  Negotiation and Conflict Management Research Journal

Non-academic Sources Many non-academic business press sources are available both in print at the campus library and online (sometimes the print version contains different information than the online version). Some examples are: Business Week; Fortune; Forbes; The Wall Street Journal; other newspapers. You can include any number of references from these types of non-academic sources in your paper, but they do not count toward the two required academic sources.