DESCRIPTION

Each of you will be required to submit a final paper describing how a company's human resources are a source of competitive advantage. You may choose a company where you have worked in the past, where you currently work, or a company with which you have a familiarity or interest.

GUIDELINES

Write an 8- to 10-page formal report (not including appendices) that addresses the following items. Include a reference list with 8 to 10 professional or scholarly resources.

1. Briefly describe the organization's relevant history, what it does, who its customers are, and any other pertinent information.

2. Discuss the challenges and/or opportunities the organization faces.

3. Describe the company's key HR functions and analyze whether these practices are effective, including an explanation of why they either are or are not effective based on theories, models, and concepts of human capital management.

4. Describe the major strategies you would recommend to improve the quality of selected HR management practices within your area of influence. Be specific and justify your approach.

5. Discuss the value or impact that your improvements will have in driving competitive advantage.

6. Evaluate your data management techniques and describe how you would measure and report the success of your plan.

REPORT SPECIFICATIONS

Your final report should adhere to these guidelines:

• Follow accepted research approaches and APA citation format.

• Be well-developed and convey your understanding of the readings and concepts.

• Be organized, coherent, and unified.

• Be free of spelling, structure, and grammatical errors.

SOURCES

Be sure to use published journal articles as your sources, not less-reliable Internet web sites. Reference your paper very carefully and tightly. Appropriate source journals include (among others):

• HR Magazine

• Academy of Management Perspectives

• Personnel Journal

• SAM Advanced Management Journal

• Journal of Management

• HR Focus

• Human Resource Development Quarterly

• Training and Development

• Public Personnel Administrator

• Strategic Management Journal

• Monthly Labor Review

• Journal of Applied Psychology

• The Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies

• Organizational Dynamics

Academic integrity is of the utmost importance in this term paper. The instructor may run papers through turnitin.com which will document any plagiarism, intentional or unintentional. Be sure that if you are using the ideas or work of someone else, that you credit that person, book, article, etc. This must be done regardless of whether you use direct quotes or whether you paraphrase someone else's work. Further, any time you use more than three words in a row that came from someone else, you must use quotation marks. (If you copy someone else's work and then put the source at the end of the copied material, this is still plagiarism.) Also, do not overuse quotes in your work. It is the job of the graduate student to read material, synthesize it, and put it in your own words while acknowledging the source. Remember that APA references require that if you quote material, you must add the page or paragraph number of that quote to your citation (author, year, page). All referencing should be in APA style unless directed otherwise by the instructor (such as using the heading Introduction).