MGMT 3276 – Organizational Behaviour Team Project: Research-Based Case Analysis

 

GUIDELINES

MGMT 3276 – Organizational Behaviour

Team Project: Research-Based Case Analysis

 

Professor: Harris Rubin

Email: [email protected]

 

Purpose

The world of work requires careful responses to issues, changes, and problems that arise in our organizations. To practice these skills, your team will write a research-based case report based on an organizational issue assigned to you. The report will include a discussion of how your issue applies to the case, an evidence-based analysis of the issue (using academic articles), and at least three actionable recommendations that are based on information from the case and your data collection plan.

Students will work in groups of 5 to conduct this case analysis.

The purpose of the team project is to:

• Gain a deeper understanding of how organizational behaviour issues occur within organizations
• Create a plan to collect information that can be used to address the issue in this case
• Apply peer-reviewed academic research evidence to this issue
• Provide students with an opportunity to hone their written and oral communication skills, as well as their ability to work effectively in project teams

Overview

Your group is to take the role of consultants who have been tasked with analyzing and resolving organization behaviour-related issues from the case study. After the professor gives you feedback regarding your project plan, your team will move forward with your analysis of this situation and make some specific evidence-based recommendations. Part of the analysis of your issue will take the form of a search for relevant academic articles that have results you can use to inform your recommendations. For example, if your topic is motivation, you will find peer-reviewed academic articles that have studied the topic of motivation and found results that can help you decide what to recommend to this company. Your recommendations should be specific and include details related to what you expect to change, by how much, how long it will take, and how you will know your ideas are working as intended. Your recommendations should be evidence-based, and informed by course material, information from the case, and findings from your academic articles. You may also include information that you expect to gather from your data collect plan. The paper should have a formal writing style that is appropriate for a business audience. The paper should take the perspective that you are a group of consultants writing a report that can be used by the company from the case study.

The team project will include the following:

1. Team formation

Students are encouraged to form their own teams. Students must submit the names of their proposed team members by the third week of classes (see course outline). The professor reserves the right to adjust the proposed teams in order to achieve better balance and/or to accommodate those students who have not identified with a particular group. Teams will complete a contract during the class the groups are due.

 

2. Project plan (due week 6—see course outline)

Your project plan should include the following:

• Completed team contract
• A definition of your assigned topic and a description of how this topic applies to the situation you read about in the case. Include some specific details from the case to back up your claims.
• A plan for how you would gain additional information to help you resolve the issues. Provide a rationale for who you would interview, what specific questions you would ask, and any additional data you would collect.

 

The professor will provide you with feedback regarding your proposed project plan.

 

3. As a team, discuss the feedback from your project plan. Start thinking about possible recommendations by identifying areas that could be improved at this organization.

 

4. Conduct a thorough review of the academic research literature on the Organizational Behaviour concept you group has been assigned. Select six relevant articles (minimum) from reputable, peer-reviewed academic journals. One article may be a case. Please see Blackboard for helpful tips on reading journal articles (Corporate Analysis Project Information à MGMT 3276 Reading Journal Articles). Each member of the group should contribute (i.e., find, summarize) at least one relevant article.

 

5. Write the report (due week 12—see course outline).

See Appendix A for suggested content and Appendix B for course policies.

 

 

 

Peer Evaluation

• Each group member is expected to contribute in some way to each aspect of the project (e.g., project plan, written report). The details of each member’s expected contributions should be outlined in the group contract.

 

• Each group will be responsible for evaluating its members based on behaviours and responsibilities determined by the group and outlined in the group contract. The professor will then assign a percentage of the group’s overall grade to each member based on the peer evaluation. For example, the group may determine that, because Tom didn’t complete his part of the report on time, he should only receive 80% of the group mark while the other members all receive 100% of the mark. We will discuss the peer evaluation component in class. If a group does not submit a peer evaluation I will assume that all members contributed equally. Peer evaluations are due in class on (or before) the last day of class.

 

• If a team faces issues with some of the members, its members should exercise maturity and compromise to manage the situation in a reasonable and professional manner. If the situation becomes unmanageable, please bring the problem to the professor’s attention ASAP.

 

Helpful links

• APA referencing style –  http://www.mtroyal.ca/library/files/citation/apa.pdf
• How to find research articles from the MRU library: http://lgdata.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/docs/1352/412031/mgmt_3276_Winter_2012.pdf
• Purdue Owl Online Writing Lab: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/
• MRU Writing and Learning Services: http://www.mtroyal.ca/AcademicSupport/ResourcesServices/StudentLearningServices/WritingLearningServices/index.htm
• A Grading Rubric is posted on Blackboard
• Additional resources may be posted on Blackboard

 

appendix a: Suggested content for written report

 

• Introduction & Relevance of the Topic
  1. Clearly describe and define the OB topic you were assigned
  2. Describe why this topic is relevant to the case. Use details from the case to back up your claims
  3. Identify the issues that you will be focused on improving
  4. Outline your data collection plan and link it to the issues in part c)

 

• Review
  1. Summarize and explain the academic journal articles that you are using to support your analysis. Consider including the articles’ main hypotheses, methodology, empirical findings, and implications. Use APA formatting for all paraphrases and quotations.

 

• Analysis of Issue Using Research Evidence (Academic Articles)

Write an evidence-based analysis of the issue/situation.

1. Based on course material and evidence from your academic articles, diagnose what is causing the issues at this organization
2. Identify the important organizational constraints

• Indicate if there are controversies/limitations in the evidence that are relevant to your analysis

 

 

• Recommendations

Provide at least three specific, actionable recommendations that the organization could take. Your recommendations should be evidence-based and follow from the ideas you discussed earlier in the paper. Include details related to what, specifically, you are trying to improve and include a plan to evaluate if your recommendations are working as intended.

 

• Conclusion

Tie the paper together in a meaningful, coherent way.

 

• Reference List: Minimum 6 references, from peer-reviewed academic journals only.
  1. Use APA style for referencing the ideas in the paper (in-text citations) and in the References list.

 

• Appendices

 

Please include the following appendices with your report:

• Appendix A: Project plan (including the professor’s feedback)
• Appendix B: Screen shots of the first page of your articles

 

Details:

• 10-12 pages (double-spaced) – not including title page, reference list, or appendices.
• APA referencing style.

• 1 inch margins, 12-point font (Times New Roman or Arial), .doc.
• Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the date assigned. Students will lose 20% if an assignment is submitted between 5 minutes and 24 hours after the due date. Students will receive a 0 if an assignment is submitted more than 24 hours after the due date.
• Stapled or clipped only (please no fancy binders)
• Title page should include: name of the course, section, professor’s name, date of submission, title of report, your names
• Please number the pages
• Students will lose 5% for each ½ page over the 12-page limit (e.g., if the paper is 13 pages, a 10% deduction will apply)
• Students will lose 10% if they are missing any of the appendices detailed above

 

 

appendix b: course policies

 

Late assignments

 

• Assignments are due at the beginning of class on the date assigned. Students will lose 20% if an assignment is submitted between 5 minutes and 24 hours after the due date. Students will receive a 0 if an assignment is submitted more than 24 hours after the due date.

 

Correctness policy

• Virtually all readers of business documents expect correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, and word usage. Based on this expectation, all courses offered through the Bissett School of will require competence in these areas.
• In all written work submitted for MGMT 3276 credit, students will be allowed, on average, a maximum of two errors per page without penalty. For example, in a ten-page report, a student (or students) will be allowed a maximum of twenty errors. After the maximum allowable number of errors has been reached, students will be penalized as follows: 2.01-2.40 average errors per page = 10% deduction; 2.41-2.80 average errors per page = 20% deduction; over 2.80 average errors per page = 30% deduction.
• Common errors:

• Sentence structure: fragments, fused sentences, comma splices
• Agreement: subject-verb and pronoun-antecedent
• Spelling
• Apostrophe usage (e.g., its vs. it’s)
• Word usage errors (e.g., a word is used incorrectly; e.g., the employees like there manager)
• Punctuation errors (e.g., omissions, incorrect use of commas, semi-colons, periods, and question marks)

 

Academic misconduct

 

• Please familiarize yourself with Mount Royal University’s Code of Student Conduct (http://www.mtroyal.ca/wcm/groups/public/documents/pdf/code_student_conduct.pdf). Particular attention should be paid to the sections on Academic Dishonesty and Plagiarism. Specifically, “plagiarism occurs when an individual submits: (i) the words, ideas, images or data of any other person as his/her own in any academic work which is a component of a course or program of study at Mount Royal; (ii) information or data which have been altered or contrived in any way that is intended to mislead; and/or (iii) work which includes misleading references to material or references that do not accurately reflect the sources used by the individual.”

 

• If you did not participate in the preparation of the report (e.g., attend group meetings, help with writing and review), you are strongly advised not to include your name on the final group report. If you do, this constitutes academic dishonesty. Taking a zero grade on this component of the course is preferable to the consequences of a formal academic misconduct investigation.