Business Report Information
Business report and presentation.png

You will select ONE option from ONE theme. Here are the themes for your eventual business report and business presentation:

Theme: Accounting:

After the corporate scandals of the early 2000s, Congress passed legislation that it hoped would renew faith in the accounting profession. Study the laws that were passed and examine the effects of those laws. Why were they passed? How has the accounting profession changed as a result of the laws? What conclusions can you draw from your findings? What recommendations can you make to accounting educators regarding programs that train accountants?
Analyze the effects recent congressional tax laws will have on either businesses or the general population. What will be the advantages and/or disadvantages of these laws? What recommendations can you offer to your chosen audience to take advantage of these changes? Or, what must your audience do to avoid being negatively affected by these changes?
Theme: Finance:

A frequent topic in business is the issue of CEO compensation. Critics complain that CEO salaries have become exorbitant and should be capped. Is it unethical for executive salaries to exceed, lets say, 24 times the average wage of employees? Should executive pay be tied to an organizations profits? Select a large public company for which salary data are available. As a member of a stockholder watchdog group, you have been asked to examine its executive salaries and report to the group, which thinks salaries are excessive. What conclusions would you draw, and what recommendations would you make to stockholders?
2. Many banks are facing increasing competition from online services and cellular phone companies. These new companies are offering consumers and merchants an alternative to processing customer-purchase payments, for which banks traditionally have charged a fee. Investigate how this trend will affect traditional banking practices in the future. How will banks cope with these changes and retain customers?

Theme: Human Resources:

Because of the tight job market and the difficulty of hiring qualified people, you realize that its important to sell your company to your own employees. Research has shown that respect and cooperation from coworkers and managers, compensation, and other rewards, help to retain good employees.  What it boils down to is promoting your company from within.  What are other companies doing to self-promote?  Based on an analysis of what other companies are doing, offer recommendations to managers of your company.

Because you feel you could be more productive working at home than in the office, you prepare a proposal that would allow you to telecommute. Because no one in your company has yet been allowed to telecommute, you decide to suggest a telecommuting pilot program. Naturally, guidelines, rules, and expectations will have to be established. Volunteer to help to develop them. Be sure to cite all the benefits to the employer. Numerous online articles are available to provide ammunition. Prepare a schedule explaining exactly what days you would work at home. Instead of discussing staffing, discuss your workspace, explaining what you have done to make telecommuting succeed. Instead of discussing budget, you might include a section on costs. If you need the company to provide you with equipment, spell it out. Be aware, though, that your proposal is likely to be more successful if you can do your at-home work without costing the company much.

While its not a topic many employees feel comfortable discussing, the issue of drug and alcohol abuse needs to be addressed, according to the manager of your human resources department. She has chosen you to assess what other companies are doing about employees suffering from drug or alcohol abuse.  She wants to know what approaches these companies are taking and what programs they offer.  She also wants you to recommend a reasonable policy.

Theme: Marketing:

U.S. News & World Report states that more than 90 percent of the products advertised on childrens television are high in fat, sugar, or salt. As an intern at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, you have been asked to complete your own independent study of childrens programs. Your objective is to confirm or refute the contention that 90 percent of the food products advertised are not nutritious. Decide on the scope of your study. Do you want to limit your study to Saturday morning programs? Based on your findings, what conclusions can you draw? Do you want to relate your study to the huge increase in childhood obesity in this country and abroad? Make recommendations that are appropriate for a center devoted to public interest issues.
What recent advertising campaign on a national level has been a failure? What campaigns have been tremendously successful? Select one or the other, analyze why the campaign failed or succeeded, and offer recommendations to other marketers
Theme: Information Systems:

Should Company X (your choice) consider offshoring one of its operations, such as call center or tech support? As a consultant, you have been asked to research the pros and cons of outsourcing and offshoring.
Theme: Management:

Your company is opening a branch in another country (your choice). You’ve been asked to review and analyze what other companies have done to prepare their managers for such a move. In addition, you must come up with a detailed plan for selecting and training these managers.

2. Numerous articles suggest that company wellness plans cut firms healthcare costs. You’re intrigued, but not totally sold. Surely these plans must have disadvantages as well. You decide to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of wellness plans. It might help to get a sense of how rank-and-file employees feel about these plans as well as reviewing the published materials. Do the advantages really outweigh the disadvantages?

Theme: General Business/Education/Campus Issues:

Student-run businesses, such as Georgetown Inc, provide part-time help on and off campus. They also help students gain marketable experience. Georgetown Inc. employs 260 undergraduates in operations ranging from a video rental store to a storage agency to a one-hour photo shop. At Harvard, Stanford, and Columbia, students publish travel and other guides to life on and around their campuses. Students research, write, and market the books. At the University of Dayton in Ohio, Dayton Student Agencies runs a campus supermarket and coffee shop. In teams explore the possibility of starting a campus business that employs students in part-time work. Write your report as a feasibility study or a proposal to secure start-up funding.

It is estimated that as many as 70 percent of members of corporate executive offices come up through the ranks of a given company. Yet once these employees become executives, they are often vulnerable to the pitfalls of the upper ranks, and they often aren’t prepared. Not every prospective executive has basic management skills in areas such as motivating people, delegating authority, dealing with employee conflicts, and crunching numbers. To deal with this problem, many business schools have begun offering more courses devoted specifically to sharpening personal management skills. Write a report that evaluates how this problem is being addressed in your school of business. You may want to investigate how other business schools have dealt with the problem, what courses they offer, etc. Present your report to the dean of your school of business.

According to a recent survey of more than 2,300 workers by KPMG LLP, illegal or unethical behavior in the workplace has soared. More than three fourths of those surveyed said they had observed unethical behavior, including deceptive sales practices, unsafe working conditions, mishandling proprietary or confidential information, discrimination, and sexual harassment (Allesandra Losciale, Newsday). What are corporations doing to address these issues? Aside from the strict penalties for corporate crime, what effect does ignoring these problems have on employee retention, for example? What can corporations do to ensure an ethical workplace?
Business Report Assignment Requirements

You must include secondary source materials (minimum of 5 sources) and document them properly in either MLA or APA format;
Your report must be 8-10 pages (this does not include reference page or title page), Times New Roman, 12 font (either single or double-spaced);
Your report must include at least two visuals directly relating to the data or content
40 Points Formative Assessment

Rubric In addition to the presentation rubric, I will be using  a combination of the checklists for Editing and Revising and Completing and Reports and Presentations.

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Depending on which theme you select, you will compose one or a combination of the following report types:

Analytical report Informational report Proposal

For more information, click on

Analytical Report Information  (Links to an external site.)

Informational Report Information- you will need to do an internet search. Out of the three choices, this should be the least likely.

Business Proposal Example (Links to an external site.)

Sample Report (Links to an external site.)

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Each report should have the following organization:

Title page
Table of Contents
Overview or Introduction
Statement of the Problem
Background
Executive Summary
purpose of report
aims and objectives
7. Business Analysis

Current status
Research method
Item 1 analysis
Item 2 analysis
Item 3 analysis (if warranted)
8. Theme insight/Company insight

What goes in this section depends on which type of report you are doing.
Can give a reflection what can other companies learn from this problem?
9. Conclusion

10. Recommendation, Proposal summation, final analysis

11. References