Research papers
Objectives
The course objectives met by this assignment include:
• Course specifications are available online from the USQ website https://www.usq.edu.au/course/specification/ . Always check the website for the latest version.
Overview
This assessment item requires you to find two organisations that you will be using for the other assignments in this course.
In your essay, you need to provide information about these two organisations you selected.
Background
You are required to find two organisations: one large organisation with more than 5,000 employees and one small-to-medium organisation with between 50-1,000 employees.
The size of these organisations is important as their current and future requirements would be different. When you are selecting these organisations, consider their footprint, such as are they operating within one country only, are they branching out to another country or are planning to do so, or are they already operating on a global scale? Other points you need to consider at this point is the type of business (pharmaceutical versus distribution for example). You may find some information on their history that provides some clues. You could look at their mission, vision, values statements. An organisation may be small now (they might have just started) and has the potential to grow. Some organisations pride themselves to be a family business and their expansion would encompass minimal risks, while large conglomerate organisations may have more assets to take larger risks. Some organisations are owned by another organisation, and this may impact their current and future situation differently.
Please do not contact any organisation to obtain information. There are security reasons why this information is not availably publicly. What you need to do for your assignments it to use the technical aspect of this course to make your own assumptions and deductions from the information that is publicly available. Then translate this into a managerial view.
In addition, it would be more beneficial and workable to select two organisations that do not have the same product or type or operation. This will assist you in the requirements of the other assignments in this course.
General Note
For all assignments in this course you are expected to write clearly, with the relevant theme of the specific assignment requirements flowing from one point to another, and succinctly addressing the issues within the word limit given to you. This is a normal expectation when you work in the industry, and therefore also of this course.
Essay
In your essay for this assignment you need to provide the following for each organisation:
• describe these two organisations
• explain why you have selected them
• provide the URL of the web sites
• describe their main product(s)
• provide the number of employees
• details about their presence (global, local)
• type of business (family owned, multinational)
One last point to consider is that in your other assignments you will be looking at the organisations requirements for the technologies we are covering in this course. Not how an organisation is going to provide this technology to their customers - a big difference to be aware of when selecting your organisations.
Structure
The structure of this assignment is essay type - please refer to the communications handbook for guidelines.
Please note that all assessment items in this course must adhere to the correct Harvard specifications for in text citing and reference list. For this purpose links have been provided to you on the study desk. However, you can consult the library web site for further details and clarifications. It is optional to use Endnote, and the links are provided to you on the study desk for the course. Endnote is of great assistance to get the citing and referring correct. However, you can do this without Endnote, but you need to make sure that the format of in text citing and the format of the list of references are correct according to the Harvard guidelines.