Posted: April 7th, 2015

EVIDENCE BASED CONSULTANCY REPORT

ASSIGNMENT : EVIDENCE BASED CONSULTANCY REPORT

This assignment must be based on one option from the five options listed below

Word length:  2500

OPTION ONE:

From:    Head of HR, State Police Department

We have been thinking about using psychological testing for selecting entrants to the police force for many years, but never really followed it up.  Given your work, can you tell me if there is current research on using psychological testing to ensure better quality selection in organizations like ours e.g. police forces, defence forces etc.
If we were to use psychological testing would it make us more or less attractive to potential applicants?

OPTION TWO:

From:    Head of HR, Major Bank

I’ve always worried that our selection processes for staff working in the bank don’t pay enough attention to workforce diversity.  Can you tell me if there is current research that that shows how other banks and financial institutions are addressing this issue, the benefits and risks involved and how we might do better in this area?

OPTION THREE:

From:    Head of HR, Multinational IT Business

We’ve been approached about participating in an “employee engagement” survey for our industry. Can you research why (and if) we should be concerned about employee engagement, and whether – and on what conditions – we might participate in a survey. I’m not sure what “engagement” even means in this context, so I’d really like to hear your views of whether we should participate and what we might gain or lose.

OPTION FOUR:

From:    Head of HR, Telephone Technical Support Department of major corporation

We have been thinking about using incentives to encourage our telephone technical support staff to improve their efficiency and effectiveness in responding to customer queries, but we have never really followed it up.  What is the “state of the art” on using incentives? I’ve always heard there is “dark side” to incentive rewards; we certainly wouldn’t want that! …but if they’d improve performance, we’d be interested.

OPTION FIVE:

From:     Senior Principal, large private secondary school

We currently have a system that involves a mentor for each school teacher, and then supervision through their Head of Area (Science, Arts, etc.) The mentor advises on development and assists in reflection on practice; the supervision meetings focus on outcomes and achievements, and determine whether the teacher is paid a bonus and/or gains promotion.  Each meeting occurs formally twice a year, though informal meetings may occur at other times, and generally the meetings do not occur at the same time; performance meetings tend to happen at the end of terms 2 and 4; mentoring at the end of terms 1 and 3.  The payments for these meetings is really starting to add up, and the School Board of Advisors have asked if we could combine mentoring and supervision into one performance management meeting a year – to appraise the past year, and set goals for the next – and eliminate the other three as well as the separate roles of mentor and supervisor.

What does the research suggest about the frequency and role of performance management meetings?

Additional Advice on Assignment 1
The assignment should be based on one of the topics from the list .
Articles chosen must be research- based i.e. provide evidence and findings based on original research conducted by the author(s). Articles that solely review prior literature and do not contain the findings of any original research are not acceptable.
The 9 articles must be from peer reviewed academic journals, preferably (but not necessarily) post 2004.
Articles should be relevant to the topic e.g. for topic 1 articles selected for review would ideally address psychological testing for selecting entrants to police forces. You may not find all aspects of the questions raised addressed in each journal article e.g. some articles may discuss psychological testing in terms of job or task fit whereas others may discuss the ramifications for hiring or training appropriate recruitment specialists and others may discuss the effects in terms of attracting job applicants. You will therefore need to assemble a number of articles that collectively address the question posed by the topic option.
The 9 journal articles may be listed in any order in the annotated bibliography but should be listed in alphabetic order in the Reference List at the end of your report.
Citations may be Harvard or APA- main requirement is consistency. DOIs should be included with references where available.
The reference details cited before each article summary in your bibliography are not included in the word count.

Writing an Annotated Bibliography
What is an Annotated Bibliography?
An annotated bibliography provides a brief account of the available research on a given topic. It is a list of research sources that includes concise descriptions and evaluations of each source.
The annotation usually contains a brief summary of content and a short analysis or evaluation. An annotated bibliography may be a component of a larger assignment or it may be a stand-alone assignment. While an annotation can be as brief as one sentence, the standard annotated bibliography consists of a citation followed by a short paragraph (see example below).
Purpose of an Annotated Bibliography
Depending on your specific assessment, an annotated bibliography may serve to:
•    review the literature of a particular subject
•    demonstrate the quality and depth of reading that you have done
•    exemplify the scope of sources available—such as journals, books, web sites and magazine articles
•    highlight sources that may be of interest to other readers and researchers
•    explore and organise sources for further research
Questions to Consider
You need to consider carefully the texts that you select for your annotated bibliography. Keep the following questions in mind to help clarify your choices.
1.    What topic/ problem am I investigating?
2.    What question(s) am I exploring? Identify the aim of your literature research.
3.    What kind of material am I looking at and why? Am I looking for journal articles, reports, policies or primary historical data?
4.    Am I being judicious in my selection of texts? Does each text relate to my research topic and assignment requirements?
5.    What are the essential or key texts on my topic? Am I finding them? Are the sources valuable or often referred to in other texts?
Which writing style should I use in the annotations?
•    Each annotation should be concise. Do not write too much—remember, you are writing a summary, not an essay.
•    Background materials and references to previous work by the same author usually are not included. As you are addressing one text at a time, there is no need to cross reference or use in-text citations to support your annotation but you should include the full list of articles in your reference list at the end.
•    Unless otherwise stipulated, you should write in full sentences using academic and professional vocabulary.
Contents of an Annotated Bibliography
An annotation may contain all or part of the following elements depending on the word limit and the content of the sources you are examining.
•    Provide the full bibliographic citation
•    Indicate the background of the author(s)
•    Indicate the content or scope of the text
•    Outline the main argument – you should not have to re-read the article.
•    Indicate the intended audience
•    Identify the research methods (if applicable)
•    Identify any conclusions made by the author/s – what have they “proved”
•    Discuss the reliability of the text
•    Highlight any special features of the text that were unique or helpful (charts, graphs etc.)
•    Discuss the relevance or usefulness of the text for your research
•    Present your view or reaction to the text
Sample Annotation
The citation goes first and is followed by the annotation. Make sure that you follow the required citation style (APA or Harvard). The summary needs to be concise (please note the following example is entirely fictitious).
In the sample annotation below, each element is numbered (see Key). These numbers are to aid your understanding and should not appear in your written assignment.
(1) Trevor, C.O., Lansford, B. and Black, J.W., 2004, ‘Employee turnover and job performance: monitoring the influences of salary growth and promotion’, Journal of Armchair Psychology, vol 113, no.1, pp. 56-64.
(2.) In this article Trevor et al. review the influences of pay and job opportunities in respect to job performance, turnover rates and employee motivation. (3) The authors use data gained through organisational surveys of blue-chip companies in Vancouver, Canada to try to identify the main causes of employee turnover and whether it is linked to salary growth. (4) Their research focuses on assessing a range of pay structures such as pay for performance and organisational reward schemes. (5) The article is useful to my research topic, as Trevor et al. suggest that there are numerous reasons for employee turnover and variances in employee motivation and performance. (6) The main limitation of the article is that the survey sample was restricted to mid-level management, (7) thus the authors indicate that further, more extensive, research needs to be undertaken to develop a more in-depth understanding of employee turnover and job performance. (8) This article will not form the basis of my research; however it will be useful supplementary information for my research on pay structures.    Key
(1) Citation
(2) Introduction
(3) Aims & Research methods
(4) Scope
(5) Usefulness (to your research/ to a particular topic)
(6) Limitations
(7) Conclusions
(8) Reflection (explain how this work illuminates your topic or how it will fit in with your research)

http://www.lc.unsw.edu.au/onlib/annotated_bib.html

http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu/ref/research/skill28.htm

Summary
Your annotated bibliography report should be structured as follows (for further information see Assessments overview)
•    Cover page
•    Contents list
•    Introduction
•    Bibliography (follow sample annotation style as described above)
•    Analysis
•    Conclusions and Recommendations

Expert paper writers are just a few clicks away

Place an order in 3 easy steps. Takes less than 5 mins.

Calculate the price of your order

You will get a personal manager and a discount.
We'll send you the first draft for approval by at
Total price:
$0.00
Live Chat+1-631-333-0101EmailWhatsApp