Assignment Four: Management Research Topic, Designation of Case and Annotated Bibliography
As a consequence, both assignments involve the same research question and case study:
• A topic in management related to organizational theory
• A case study of an actual organization in which that topic is at issue.
For example, the topic of organizational life cycle or the topic of innovation and change are both topics that could be found as an issue in the American Red Cross, on which much has been published in scholarly publications.
Both the topic and the case - must appear in both Assignment 4 and Assignment 5 or else you will not receive full credit on those assignments.
1. Select a topic that is of interest to you from the following list of organizational theory issues. (Note: There may be another topic related to this course that interests you. If so, in order to ensure its appropriateness, please get your professor's input before proceeding.) Sample topics: boundary spanning, bounded rationality, bureaucracy, change, control and coordination, design for the international environment, diversity management, ethical behavior, external environment, innovation, interorganizational relationships, learning organization & knowledge management, manufacturing technology, open systems, organization decline, organization design and/or redesign, organization life cycle, organizational culture, political features and use of power, reciprocal interdependence, social responsibility, sustainability, teams, virtual organization.
2. Find a case study in the UMUC virtual library that involves that management issue and provide the full reference to its source. Though not required, to get the most from this assignment, this case study could be in an industry where you work or plan to work in your career. For example, it might be health care, government, manufacturing, hospitality, technology, global trade, child care, national security, transportation, energy, etc. - whatever is your interest. Select an organization in that industry for your case study. By choosing an industry that is relevant to you, you'll learn more about it from this assignment. In addition, your insider knowledge will give you a framework for understanding how an organization in that industry operates that will make the assignment easier for you.
A published case study is any article that discusses in sufficient detail the issue facing an actual single organization and how that organization addressed that issue. Some of the databases in the virtual library allow you to search using "case study" as a criteria. However, just because the term case study exists in the title of the article may not mean that the article actually gives you enough information to work with; you have to make that judgment. Two of the best sources of articles - ABI/Inform Global and Business Source Complete - don't allow for searches using case study as a criteria, so you may have to do some digging. Generally speaking, a published case study should be between 10 and 15 pages in length to give you enough information to work with.
3. Develop a research question to explore the issue as it relates to the topic within the selected case study organization.
4. Find and read at least five articles in scholarly journals in the UMUC library databases that discuss the issue you selected and that may assist in answering your research question.
5. Develop an annotated reference list that includes at least five scholarly articles (in addition to the case itself). See additional information under the Course Content tab for readings about both annotated reference lists and case studies: Creating Annotated Bibliographies and Analyzing a Case.
6. Your information on the management issue must come from articles in scholarly journals found in the virtual library, not from the Internet, Wikipedia, newspapers, popular magazines (e.g. Time, Newsweek, Business Week), etc. Academic journals are those usually published by universities or by professional societies (e.g., The Journal of the AMA). Just having the word "journal" in the title of the publication doesn't actually make it a journal; after all, The Wall Street Journal is still just a daily newspaper.
Additional supplemental information about the organization you're studying (not the issue) can come from non-academic sources. While there are many organizations that have been the subject of published case studies and even some (such as, again, the American Red Cross) that are more frequent subjects of case studies, you may need to go outside the journals in the UMUC library for additional information specific to that topic as it relates to that organization. That is acceptable provided the primary source of your information about the case is the study in a scholarly journal in the UMUC library. For additional information on how the organization is addressing the management issue, you can use non- library resources (e.g., the organization's web site, articles in newspapers and general interest magazines, etc.).
Note: Do not employ Wikipedia and other encyclopedia-type sources. These are "open sources", meaning that anyone - knowledgeable or not - can contribute. They are not subjected to the same form of editorial scrutiny as are newspapers and magazines, much less to the extent that peer-reviewed articles are scrutinized for quality.
In a similar vein, be appropriately skeptical of what organizations post to their web sites; they can sometimes be nothing more than puffery. A statement such as "we have increased sales by 4.5% annually for each of the past five years" is one thing, especially if it is backed up by statistics; a statement of "we are the leading provider of quality widgets" is another matter, especially if there are no statistics provided to support that.
In your references list, for any supplemental sources on the organization (case) from the Internet, include the site where you found it and the date you retrieved it.