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Instructions

    Management consultants are routinely asked to research specific issues or problems, and provide recommendations to upper-management on possible solutions or steps that the business should take to address them most effectively.  That research often includes a description of best practices.  Best practices are ways that specific organizations effectively deal with a problem or issue, or recommendations made by subject matter experts about how to deal with a problem or issue.    Your writing assignment for this class will include the following:Identify an industry type or setting. This can be a specific company, a trade association, an overall industry, a government agency, or a nonprofit.Select an organizational situation or challenge of interest to you.  There are several possibilities here.  Choose something that really interests you, and that will keep your focus and attention. Scan our text book's table of contents.  These various subjects (relative to modern management challenges, planning, organizing, influencing / leadership and controlling) might help you generate a few ideas. Research that topic in various academic, practitioner, and on-line sources to identify best-practices, benchmarks or recommended solutionsYou should write-up your findings from the perspective of an external Management Consultant. The written paper should include a cover page, 5-6 pages of text (1500 words minimum) in double-spaced 12pt Times New Roman font. Be sure to include a reference page.     There will be an early checkpoint for selecting your topic, and for selecting reference sources that you might use for your paper.  This checkpoint is intended to ensure that you have a meaningful topic and adequate reference sources on which you can base your paper.  During the checkpoint, I might steer you in a different direction if I think you topic is problematic (e.g., too broad, too narrow, not enough sources).Your completed assignment should include 3 major sections:Describe the state-of-the-industry and/or organization, e.g. competitive landscape, customer trends, technology, regulatory / legal, etc.Describe the problem (e.g., legal requirements or laws, social trends, adoption of new technology, etc.) and why this is of concern to organizations, and;Describe your best practices and/or recommendations for addressing the problem. Remember, this paper is designed to give you practice writing a report on a specific issue to upper level managers.     I expect that you will integrate a minimum of 5 different sources into your paper, though you might rely more heavily on some than others.  These sources might include practitioner-oriented publications (e.g., CEO Magazine), news sources (e.g., WSJ, Newsweek, Time, etc.), academic journals (e.g., Academy of Management Journal), books, or even company websites. If you cannot find at least 5 legitimate sources (dictionaries and Wikipedia are not legitimate sources), pick another topic!     Beware of plagiarism. Always make reference to the work from which your information is taken (even if you are not using actual text from the source), and if you use text directly from someone elses work, you must put that text in quotes and reference the original work. In general, you should use very few (if any) quotes.  You may use any standard referencing format (e.g., MLA, APA) as long as it is complete.     Your paper will be graded based on a number of criteria: clarity/content (e.g., was the problem described clearly).  Were the arguments straightforward and easy to understand, structure (e.g., was the paper organized in a clear mannerintroductory problem definition, argument 1, argument 2, argument 3, conclusion), and style (e.g., writing is compelling, appropriate grammar, references). To be clear, inattention to detail (spelling, basic grammar, etc.) will result in a lower grade.

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