Create a 500 to 750-word letter or memo to your proposal decision-maker requesting permission to pursue research to develop your proposal idea. In your correspondence, provide your decision-maker with justification for the research project.You must Include a description of the benefits you believe the proposed idea will bring to the organization. Your document should make it clear you are contacting the decision-maker to request permission to move forward with your research.
Following are some potential scenarios. Use these as a starting point to come up with a situation and expand on it based on your own knowledge and experience. You are encouraged to create your own scenario. The examples below are only for ideas or if you are unable to think of a suitable problem to research and solve.
• Crowding in your place of employment results in shared office space and limited resources. A proposed solution could be implementation of a telecommuting program to permit some employees in suitable occupations to work from home on a full- or part-time basis. Think about how employees will communicate and how the company can support communication.
• Your child's elementary school does not have an effective communication process with parents and the community. You can develop a strategy to facilitate a streamlined communication. Your report may be directed to the school's principal or even the PTA.
• Rising health care costs are a concern nationwide. To address your company's issues, you are proposing implementation of a wellness program. The benefits of implementing a program like this are many, ranging from lowering health care costs to boosting morale. Think about how communication within the workplace would help with this implementation.
• Communication among members of a local church is difficult to facilitate and the leaders are seeking a solution to the communication issues. You could propose establishing a website or other social media for congregation members to read updates, participate in discussion, contact other members, and so on.
• Communication among different offices within your own organization may be difficult. Propose some interoffice communication strategies to facilitate communication and show how these might affect the organization's bottom line.
• Social media is now an important aspect of doing business. You could write a report recommending that your company set up an interactive customer blog or use social media to improve customer service.
Note: You use a letter format when the recipient is outside your organization. You use a memo format when the recipient is in the same organization as you are.
Follow guidelines for setting up a letter or a memo. Including a logo as part of your letterhead (if you are writing as a company) adds credibility to your letter. Your memo or letter must be persuasive, identify and justify the problem you are researching and for which you are making recommendations. You also want to show how these problems are lowering productivity or costing the company money.
You need to include 5 annotated bibliographic entries to demonstrate that you understand how to do this type of research. This means researching your proposed topic in the UMUC Library and finding some articles, relevant published material or current websites that will support your proposal. You should list the citations in proper APA format and write a two to three sentence description about the material in the source you identified.