Your paper can focus on either a current or past employer of yours, or some other company with which you have significant familiarity.

Your paper can focus on either a current or past employer of yours, or some other company with which you have significant familiarity. What's needed is some knowledge of the inner workings of the company--its struggles, its strengths, its climate, and so forth. The paper should include the following four sections:

1. Organization - Provide just enough details on the company for me to be able to understand the problem that will be described. Resist the urge to provide irrelevant details and feel free to omit or disguise any details that might be sensitive in nature.
2. Problem - Describe, specifically, one problem that the company is struggling with that will serve as the focus of the paper. Resist the urge to discuss multiple problems--focus on one specific issue with which the organization is struggling. Be sure to focus on a problem that can be impacted by the relevant topic.
3. Topic - Choose one topic from the list below, and apply that topic to the problem. Describe very specifically how the concepts, principles, and findings represented in the topic matter to the problem, and how they can be leveraged to articulate a solution.

• Value-percept theory
• Job characteristics theory
• Challenge-hindrance stressors
• Expectancy theory
• Goal setting theory
• Equity theory
• Psychological empowerment
• Cognition-based trust
• Justice
• Ethical decision making
• Cognitive ability
• Emotional intelligence
• Team processes
• Types of power
• Transformational leadership

1. Recommendations - Provide a list of very specific recommendations/action steps that flow out of the discussion of the topic and that can help solve the problem. In thinking about how to craft the topic into those recommendations, strike a balance between being practical and being bold. Every organization has key constraints that need to be taken into account when designing interventions. Although those should be considered, resist the urge to "play it safe", as that tendency often leads to modest interventions that are ultimately ineffective.

Beyond the parameters above, please bring your own self-expression, initiative, and creativity to the content and style of the paper. 80% of the paper grade will revolve around content issues, with 20% revolving around writing style issues.

Grading for these assignments is detailed in the provided rubric and will take into consideration not only the direct answers to the questions at the end of each case, but the detail with which you include the information covered in the book (e.g., concepts, theories, etc.), as well as the inclusion of information found (and properly cited) beyond the book is imperative in achieving a good score.

It is expected that you will use not only the text, but some of the required readings in the course to support your analysis of the case. Appropriate parenthetical citations are expected and an accompanying references page is also required. The reference page does not count towards the 2-3 page expectation.