Purpose: The purpose of a case study is to learn how to take a real-life business situation and make recommendations by doing research and applying the terms and concepts covered in this class.
Brief Overview: You will provide an analysis of the case along with recommendations for addressing the case. Your framing, analysis and recommendations for the case will be supported by outside research and documented with in-text citations and a Works Cited or a Reference page.
Required Sections: Please label the sections of your case.
Framing the Case: Write a brief overview (no more than 150 words) of the case. Do not repeat the history (what is in the case).
Issues and Opportunities: Discuss the issues and opportunities present in the case.
Assumptions: state the assumptions you are making about the case. (for example: You assume that funding will be available for your recommendation or you assume that the economy will not be in recession as your recommendation is implemented.)
Addressing Issues and Opportunities: List the various ways that the issues and opportunities could be addressed, including a list of Pros and Cons for each item in the list.
Recommendation and Justification: State your recommendation for addressing the case, along with a justification for your recommendation.
Research and Citation: The assignment requires outside research, meaning you need to find and cite sources outside of the course textbook. A successful Case Study assignment will likely employ 3-4 sources for undergraduate case studies and 6-7 sources for graduate case studies. You should use business databases to find relevant sources. A few good examples would be: LexisNexis, Bloomberg, Statista, EBSCOhost, and D&B Hoovers. (Wikipedia is NOT a valid source) All citations should follow either MLA or APA citation style.
Additional Requirements and Helpful Tips
Do not include the answers to the questions in the case analysis unless they apply to what you are writing about.
Even if you do not think you need it, you should run your Case Study through a grammar checker and a spell checker in addition to proofreading carefully before submitting.
Make sure that all sources are cited in the text of your Case Study and in your Works Cited/Reference page. For guidance on finding and documenting sources, see owl.purdue.edu for both MLA and APA formatting guidelines.
I am including a sample Case Study in this week’s module. The purpose of providing this sample is to provide you with a sample of my expectations, but I expect you to NOT copy the sample. You are expected to produce your own original ideas for your case study assignments.
Note: Using someone else’s work, your own work from prior classes and even using someone else’s sentence structure and ideas count as plagiarism. When Turnitin is used for an assignment any plagiarism percent over 10 percent is too much. (Normally that 10 percent is restated headings and questions.
Word count
Undergraduate Students: 750 word count minimum
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