Assignment: Research & Analysis of Business Problems

Format/Requirements

• Hand this in at the beginning of class, not by email.
• Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1-inch margins.
• Make sure you show your name, course number, and section number on the page.

Questions

1) Now that you have written a Situation Analysis, you should have a good overall perspective onyour chosen company.

Now begin looking for symptoms, signs, and indicators of problems. Try to find as many as you can, but make sure that you have found at least three or four, and write them down as part of this assignment. Be specific and use numbers where possible. All of the symptoms that you list should show a "gap" as discussed in class. A "gap" is the difference between the desired state and the actual state. For example, if you find that the company had a profit of $5 million dollars in the previous year and their goal was $10 million - this is a gap, and this is a symptom of an underlying problem.In other words, ask yourself "what is going wrong for my company?"

For each independent gap / problem / issue / symptom that you discover, use a separate page (NOTE that saying net income dropped, profit dropped, and earnings per share dropped does NOT reflect 3 independent issues since all 3 of these are directly related). I recommend starting with the issue that you have the most information about and working your way through all of the issues you've identified. Keep in mind that the issues you raise should be specific and detailed as much as possible and not just your opinion.

Start each page with one or two paragraphs which describe the gap / issue. Factual information should be cited using MLA standards. Use quantitative terms to describe the gap if possible but, in all cases, make sure that the gap is described clearly. Also, it may be helpful in this part of your answer if you give a little background as to why the issue is important to the company.

After you've provided a discussion of the gap, try to write a formal problem statement for the issue as we discussed in class.

Next, focus on describing the causes. Ask yourself, WHY does this gap exist or what is causing this gap to happen?.Provide as much detail about the causes as you've been able to develop. This can be done using text discussion, fishbone diagrams, bullets, or any combination that helps communicate the root causes of the gap. This analysis should go deeper than just identifying symptoms; try to get to the underlying causes of the issue.

Finally, a few general comments.......... (1) Try to use headings and subheadings to organize your answers to this question. (2) Make sure to provide MLA citations for factual information in your answers. (3) Avoid editorial comments like "my research showed", "I found", "I think", and similar phrases. (4) For the first 3 independent issues you cover, each part of the answer is worth 15 points (9 points reflects an "average" answer) and additional points are awarded for identifying and discussing more issues.

2) Find at least one "peer-reviewed (refereed)" research article for your term paper. Don't search too narrowly - for example, "General Mills problems." It's unlikely that a researcher would write an academic paper on this subject. Try something more general like - "Cereal market segments." Provide evidence that the article is peer-reviewed by printing out and including therelevant page from the Ulrich's web site. Write up and include a properly formatted MLA Bibliographic entry for this article.Please do not include a copy of the article.

Remember that you will typically find peer reviewed articles in the other databases (for example, Business Source Premier) but you will confirm that the article has been peer reviewed by using Ulrichs.