competitive advantage

Research Project

Each student must complete an individual semester long research project. Each student will

begin the research project by gathering information about his/her assigned company’s strengths,

weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, financial standing, and competitive advantage. The

research will identify if a competitive advantage exists and what it is based on.

Each student will gather information from professional business sources, videos, and scholarly

works (professional journals) to develop a final paper that will include a concise analysis of:

1. Key factors external environment; 2. Key factors internal environment; 3. Key financial analysis; 4. Analysis of the company’s competitive advantage.

The final paper will consist of a cover memo, a three-page main body, and a list of 5-10

references.

• The cover memo will be an executive summary of the paper written to me and will be formatted SINGLE spaced using Times New Roman, 12-point font. An executive

summary is a short concise narrative of the most important facts contained in the attached

paper. This is not just a quote of the attached report, but rather an informative summary

of the main points from the paper.

• The body of the paper will be single-spaced and written in Times New Roman using a 12-point font. The paper will be written in 3rd person generally following the APA style

(see the Research Paper Guide Book on Moodle for examples and further details). The

paper will be submitted to Turnitin (no more than 25 percent of the paper, excluding

references, can be non-original).

The research project will be accomplished in two phases:

1. In Phase 1 each student will submit a complete outline of the final paper and an annotated bibliography of at least 5 references to be used in the final paper and is valued at 25

points.

2. In Phase 2 each student will complete and submit the final paper as described above and is valued at 75 points.

Reliability of Information

The following information was copied (with permission) from Dr. Debbie Norris’

instructions to her GBU 321 class:

• As a general rule, our library databases provide quality information from scholarly journals, general interest publications, and newspapers. Begin with the databases

suggested on the Business Research Guide at http://mc.libguides.com/business/databases.

Business Source Complete is a good place to start for business topics, while Academic

Source Premier has good articles on more general topics. Remember, even if a source

provides quality information, if it is not relevant to your topic, it is not a good source for

you to use.

• A quality source would not be another student’s paper, but the original work.

• If the source is a website, check the URL to see where the information was generated. Here is a website to help you decide if the website is considered a quality source:

http://mc.libguides.com/research/eval.

The choice of your reference material is vital when presenting the research either orally or in

writing. Please choose references carefully; make sure they provide the information you need;

and are from an unbiased source (as much as possible).