Research & Analysis of Business Problems
Assignment
Format/Requirements
• Hand this in at the beginning of class, not by email.
• Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, 1-inch margins as indicated in the homework template.
• In contrast to the paper - this should be 2-sided and single-spaced.
• Use the Homework Template.
Questions
1) Now that you have written a Situation Analysis, you should have a good overall understanding ofyour chosen company. Now, using that information, continue identifying symptoms (signs and indicators) of deeper problems that might be facing the company. Try to find as many as you can, but ensure that you have found at least two or three, and write them down as part of this assignment.
Be specific and use quantitative metrics 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 and the actual. 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, or a symptom of an underlying problem!
Once you have identified these symptoms, continue your research and begin a root cause analysis. In other words - ask why the symptoms occurred. Referring to the "profit" example in the first paragraph, think about why they did not meet their profit goals. Perhaps a new product was not as successful as planned. Note that it's possible that many symptoms may lead back to the same root cause. Or one symptom may have many possible causes.This analysis is the core of your problem description and is a crucial component in your research paper, so I would recommend that you spend some time on it.
You won't be able to develop solutions if you have not answered the question "why did these symptoms happen?"If you uncover symptoms that are completely unrelated, pick one as a focus for your paper.Ultimately, the goal is to uncover one, core problem that you will focus on solving as you write the rest of your paper.
Try to keep this to a one-page (one-side) summary, single-spaced!
2) Pick one of the reputable research sources used in your work to date, and create and include with this assignment a properly formatted MLA Bibliography entry as shown and explained in the research class lecture. This is practice for what is required on the Bibliography page of your final paper. I will be extremely critical on formatting for this assignment - so follow the guidelines.