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Unit 4: Lecture

Developing a Proposal

Unit 4 focuses on developing your topic for your final report and conducting some preliminary research for your final project. Your reading for this unit (Chs. 15, 17 and Appendix C ) cover how to research and write proposals, as well as how to cite your work in a business report. Make sure to review these chapters carefully as you prepare your discussion and assignment for this unit.

What are Proposals?

A proposal is a persuasive genre in which a writer convinces an audience to accept or approve some course of action. As your book says, “proposals argue for work that needs to be done” (552).

In business contexts, a proposal might outline a new policy and request implementation or request money to fund a special project. For our purposes, your proposal will focus on seeking approval for your topic for your final business report.

According to Ch. 17, good business proposals answer the following questions:

What problem are you going to solve or what opportunity do you hope to fill?
Why does the problem need to be solved now or the opportunity explored immediately?
How are you going to solve it?
Can you do the work?
Why should you be the one to do it?
When will you complete the work?
How much will you charge?
What exactly will you provide for us?

For our purpose in this class, we are not going to worry about the questions about timelines, qualifications, or fees, as our timeline is already set, everyone has to do the report, and you will be writing your report for experience and learning, rather than money. However, be mindful that in a real world situation, all of these questions may be important to address.

Defining a Problem to Explore in your Proposal and Report:

According to Ch. 15, a good problem to explore for a business report should use the following guidelines:

The problem is real, significant enough to be worth solving, and narrow but challenging
The audience is also real and has the power to make decisions based on your report
The evidence (e.g. data, facts, sources) is sufficient to show the importance of the problem and to prove that your recommendations will solve the problem.

When writing your proposal, use the advice in Chapter 15 about writing a purpose statement and review the example on pg. 492.

How to Conduct Research:

There is a wide range of research available to you that could be used to develop your report.

For example, you may find any or all of these types useful in a business report:

Newspaper articles (For example, The Washington Post)
Articles in popular magazines or non-fiction books (for example, Newsweek)
Articles in industry-specific publications (for example, HR Magazine)
Websites and publications of professional organizations (for example, The National Association of Business Management Professionals)
Journal articles and books written by academics (for example, Business Communication Quarterly)
Surveys or interviews you have conducted

For your project, you cannot use Wikipedia or other encyclopedias as a source, as they merely summarize other sources. However, because Wikipedia articles generally end with a bibliography, they can be a great place to look for sources relevant to your project!

Your textbook also includes a long list of web sources you may find useful on pgs. 494-495.

Where to find sources:

Park University Library databases and catalogue

Google Scholar (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Plain old Google (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Each of these sources has its pros and cons, but you can search all three places to find a diversity of sources.

Doing Research at Park:

Review the following tutorials to help you conduct research using Park University resources:

Searching Basics Using the Park University Library

(A PowerPoint "slideshow" -- click on the speaker icon to enable audio)

How to use Google Scholar to Access Park University material

And read either:

Purdue’s OWL MLA guide (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

-Or-

Purdue’s OWL APA guide (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Note: While you will be using APA or MLA to format your in-text and end-text citations in the report, you will not be using their guide to formatting page layout (spacing, paragraph breaks, etc.). Instead, you will continue to use business format and document design techniques.

Evaluating Sources:

All sources need to be evaluated to determine their credibility, authority, and usefulness. This is especially true for web sources, which may have few limitations or editorial oversight. Make sure you review the information on evaluating sources in Ch. 15 carefully, and consider the questions listed in Figure 15.4 for all sources, not just websites: (I have attached this to the email)

Who are the authors and what are their credentials?
How sufficient is the evidence supporting the author’s claims?
How complete is the information?
How current is the information and is currency important for your purposes?
Who is the intended audience of the material?

One other important question your book does not include, but is very important for evaluating a source:

What is the author’s purpose in writing?

This last question can tell you a lot about the drift of a particular article. For example, if the author’s ultimate purpose is to sell you something, we can probably surmise that the information may not be very complete as it is not in their best interest to tell us about the drawbacks of their product. However, this does not mean the source is necessarily useless. While we would not use such a source to prove a product’s quality, we may use such a source to list the technical specifications of the product.

Evaluating a source can help you decide not only whether to use a source, but also what it can be used for.

Scholarly vs. Non-Scholarly Sources

Your assignment this unit requires that you find at least 1 scholarly source to annotate in your proposal/bibliography. You might be wondering: How can you tell if a source is scholarly?

What is a scholarly source?

Scholarly sources are those that are written by and for scholars. Basically, it is the writing of experts who study topics in particular disciplines and produce writing for other experts in that discipline.

Why do we use scholarly sources?

Scholarly sources represent sustained and serous study about particular topics; the claims made by scholars are generally well-evidenced, and academic writing tends to be very detailed and complex which makes it very useful for gathering lots of reputable information.

Scholarly sources also carry a lot of credibility because the bar to become a scholar and to publish work is set very high. One of those bars scholars have to jump is the peer-review process. Most reputable academic presses and journals have a peer review policy that dictates that any work submitted will be sent out to other experts in the field for review before it can be published. This ensures a level of quality control that is absent in popular sources. Some peer-review is even conducted blind, meaning that the authors and/or reviewers’ names are not revealed, which is supposed to remove a measure of bias. While peer-review is not perfect, it is a better control mechanism than is present for other kinds of sources.

How can I tell if a source is scholarly or not?
This guide can help you determine if a source is scholarly. If you can't decide from these hints, ask a librarian or your instructor for help.

Scholarly Source	Non-Scholarly Source
Will be peer-reviewed by other members of that academic field	May be reviewed by a professional editor, but not necessarily reviewed by experts in the field.
Articles or books are written by a scholar or a professional in the field. The author has a string of letters, titles, or institutional affiliations after their name (such as Ph.D., Professor of African Studies, University of Alabama, Institute for Professional Communication, etc.)	May be written by a professional writer who is not an expert in the field.
Always cite their sources of information in the form of footnotes or bibliography.	Rarely offers information (footnotes or bibliography) about the sources of information.
Text gives research results, includes specialized vocabulary and is aimed at a scholarly audience.	Text reports events or opinions and is aimed at a general audience (easy to read).
Journal cover and pages tend to be plain in design, with few or no pictures or graphics.	Tend to be highly pictorial. Magazines accept advertising.
Most are published by professional organizations, associations, scholarly groups or universities and colleges.	Are generally published for profit. May be intended as a vehicle of opinion: political, moral, or ethnic.
Authors are always named, and their institutional affiliation is given.	Authors may be anonymous.
Journal issues are likely to be successively numbered (for example, issue 1 includes pages 1-356, issue 2 has pages 357-585, etc.)	Magazine issues are likely to begin with page 1 each issue.
Articles may be long.	Articles may be short, some only 1-2 pages.
Journal issues tend to be published less often (monthly, quarterly, semi-annually).	Magazine issues tend to be published more frequently (monthly, weekly, daily).
Journals would usually be found in a library or in a professor's office.	Magazines can be found at any bookstore or convenience store.
Examples: Articles in Journal of American History, Journal of Educational Psychology or books published by a University Press written by a scholar with footnotes.	Examples: Articles in Newsweek, National Review or books published by Scribner written by a journalist or professional writer without footnotes.

Adapted from: St Charles Community College (2008), Scholarly vs Non-Scholarly Sources, http://www.stchas.edu/library/scholar.shtml (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.

Does this mean that only scholarly sources are credible or useful?

No, it just means that they are often more detailed and somewhat more reliable in terms of their claims, evidence, and expertise, and scholarly sources can be used to back certain kinds of claims you could not support with a less detailed or more popular source.

However, sources published in other types of venues can still be useful in your research. For example, say you wanted to discuss a recent fad in tech companies: pointing to articles on tech blogs or technology industry magazines would be a good way to illustrate the trend. Likewise, if you wanted to show that a particular business practice is causing other companies to end up in court, you would probably cite news accounts reporting on those lawsuits. The important thing is to think critically about the range of sources available to you and the kinds of uses to which they can be put.