Posted: April 7th, 2015

Corporate Performance (Balance Score Cards)

Corporate Performance (Balance Score Cards)

GROUP PROJECT GUIDELINES

A.    Project overview

Project work is to be done in groups based on the number of students in this class. The team is expected to work together and each member is expected to make a significant contribution to the project. This project is an important requirement in this course and is worth 30% of the total grade.

More specifically, the purpose of this project is to allow students to develop a deeper understanding on the balanced scorecard benefits and challenges in this region in today’s ever changing and turbulent business environment. This project will enrich students’ knowledge and experience on this very important topic by tackling various theoretical and empirical assumptions, ideas, and facts.

Each team will pick a real company or more of their choice where accessibility to data and to research is a must. These companies could be local or multinational. List of background information about the company and the target sample should be provided using the questionnaire shown below at the end of the project guidelines.

Each team should use the provided questionnaire to survey at least 50 staff (managers or non-managers) at different levels. The hard copy of these interviews/survey transcripts along with the contact details of these managers should be provided to the instructor in the submission day.

B.    Consider the following guidelines:

Formatting and Structuring
1.    The project report should contain the following sections: A clear introduction about the practical importance of the topic to managers and organizations in the UAE in general and your company in particular.
2.    A very recent and well cited literature review about the main components of your topic (The balanced Scorecard)
3.    As for the third section of your report, it includes the methodology part that in turn includes (Sampling, Data collection, Analysis techniques)
4.    Fourth section contains the results and the discussion of your findings
5.    Fifth section is all about your recommendations for the participated companies.
6.    Finally, the list of references (APA Style) and any other appendices.

While doing the project, you are kindly requested to care about the following criteria.
I.    Clarity of purpose. Is the topic/problem/issue clearly laid out? Why is the topic/problem/issue relevant for study?
II.    Thoroughness of research. Have the relevant sources of information been collected?
III.    Have the relevant sources of information been researched and referenced?
IV.    Style of presentation. Is the paper well written and persuasive? Does it effectively communicate its ideas to the reader?
V.    Grasp of the subject. Is the paper a mere rephrasing of the material from other sources or, does it demonstrate the team’s grasp of the subject?
VI.    References styling. The references should be in APA style. In addition, it is expected that the student uses the rule of (90:10:0) 90% research papers, 10% relevant text or references books, and 0% websites.

Length
The project should be typed (double-space), font size 12 times new roman and maximum of 2500 -5000 words. The project report should be clear and must provide an accurate reflection of the efforts put into the report.

Ethical Consideration
Each and every project must be plagiarism free. A proper citation must be in the body of the report and at the references list too. Therefore, the instructor will use the Turn-it-in software to trace any plagiarism.

A. Project overview
Project work is to be done individually or in groups based on the number of students in this
class. In case of group-based projects, the team is expected to work together and each
member is expected to make a significant contribution to the project. This project is an
important requirement in this course and is worth 25% of the total grade.
More specifically, the purpose of this project is to allow students to develop a deeper
understanding on the balanced scorecard benefits and challenges in this region in today’s ever
changing and turbulent business environment. This project will enrich students’ knowledge
and experience on this very important topic by tackling various theoretical and empirical
assumptions, ideas, and facts.
Each team will pick a real company or more of their choice where accessibility to data and to
research is a must. These companies could be local or multinational. List of background
information about the company and the target sample should be provided. This information
includes the following:
I. Job Title:
II. Department:
III. Number of years in the organization:
IV. Type of or the nature of business of organization (education, health,
banking..):
V. The ownership of organization (governmental, private, semi governmental,
free zone…)
Each team should use the provided questionnaire to survey at least 20 mangers at different
levels. The hard copy of these interviews/survey transcripts along with the contact details of
these managers should be provided to the instructor in the submission day.
B. Consider the following guidelines:
Formatting and Structuring
– The project report should contain the following sections:
? A clear introduction about the practical importance of the topic to managers
and organizations in the UAE in general and your company in particular,
? A comprehensive, very recent and well cited literature review about the main
the balanced scorecard (definition, benefits, challenges and the criticism).
? As for the third section of your report, it includes the analysis. In this section,
you and your team members are advised to use the themes mapping, content
analysis techniques, descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation,
frequencies. This will help you reporting on your data that leads to rich
findings and valuable recommendations for your companies.