Full Title of Your PROJECT REPORT. [Put your full name here] [student number] [date] [Course Code – e.g. MGT726 Managerial Project] School of Business Faculty of Arts and Business University of the Sunshine Coast   NOTES FOR STUDENTS: The format that your report will take is as you can see in the layout below. Your table of contents will be self generating if you get the formatting done correctly using word. This template has been set up so it should automatically generate your table of contents for you. If you need help with this formatting you might like to view this YouTube tutorial: https://youtu.be/Y5kFdH31k-g There are many other excellent tutorials available on YouTube. [Adapted from Perry, C (2013), Efficient and effective research, AIB Publications, Australia p.5 and 6] Executive Summary Table of contents List of Figures List of Tables Glossary References Appendices Don’t forget to insert your details in the footer. NB: This instructional section should be deleted prior to submitting your report.   EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Put your Executive Summary here (do this last). Make sure you actually summarise and cover all areas of your project. Refer to the BUS703 Toolkit Section 10.6 for tips on preparing a good Executive Summary. As suggested in the Tips, one approach would be to have five paragraphs in the Summary, one for each of the major sections in the report. For a 5,000 word report this summary should be about one page long.   Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ii 1. Introduction 1 1.1 Purpose 1 1.2 Background and significance 1 1.3 Research question and objectives 1 1.4 Research boundaries 1 1.5 Report outline 1 2. Literature Review/Theoretical Framework 2 2.1 Introduction 2 2.2 Topic 1 3 2.3 Topic 2 3 2.4 Topic 3 3 2.5 Implications 3 3. Methodology 4 3.1 Introduction 4 3.2 Sources of data and justification 4 3.3 Details of specific techniques 4 4. Analysis of Results 5 5. Conclusions and Recommendations 6 6. References 7 7. Appendices 8 7.1 Appendix A: Glossary 8   List of Figures [Format your document so your figures are listed here: if you would like more help in how to correctly format your captions for your figures here is another excellent YouTube tutorial to show you how to do this: https://youtu.be/PQxo-dM-0cwv] List of Tables [Format your document so that the tables are listed here; if you would like more help in how to correctly format your captions for your tables here is another excellent YouTube tutorial to show you how to do this: https://youtu.be/PQxo-dM-0cwv] 1. Introduction 1.1 Purpose Clearly state purpose of the report 1.2 Background and significance Background to the research problem. Briefly present the circumstances that have led to the immediate problem. Why is it worthy of investigation - expected benefits? 1.3 Research question and objectives Clearly state the research question you are addressing and your specific research (information) objectives. 1.4 Research boundaries Note any boundaries of your topic e.g. only looking at a specific product within a product range or only looking at a certain group of customers. May also be a geographic boundary eg only looking at a certain market, state or province. 1.5 Report outline Let your reader know what is coming, e.g.: After this Introduction, this report reviews the relevant existing literature (Section 2) before then outlining the methodology used to gather data to address the research objectives (Section 3). Section 4 reports the results while the final section 5 draws conclusions and makes recommendation to address the management issue 2. Literature Review/Theoretical Framework The literature review should demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the area and provide arguments to support the study focus. The aim of the literature review is to set up the research question. The literature review needs to: • Critically evaluate the literature rather than merely describe previous literature (i.e., what is good/bad about the body of literature?). • Show a synthesis and be integrated rather than being more like an annotated bibliography. • Identify key authors and the key works in the area. • Constitute an argument. • Clearly identify the gap in the literature that is being addressed by the research question. NOTE: in some cases the literature review may vary in format and focus more on selection of a theoretical framework. To illustrate, in the example project about New Product Development, the literature review served to identify existing theories and models of NPD and identify which was most appropriate to apply to the case study. Similarly in the example of the use of environmental analyses to assist in identifying markets, or in the case where a product range may be analysed to assist in decided which products to drop, the literature review will focus more on justifying why the theoretical framework or tool is the most appropriate to address the research question. 2.1 Introduction Start with an overview of this section by outlining the topics to be discussed. For example: This section will review literature on the following topics: Topic 1 (Section 2.2) [briefly describe the topic]; Topic 2 (Section 2.3) [briefly describe the topic]; and Topic 3 (Section 2.4) [briefly describe the topic]. Section 2.4 highlights the implications from the literature impacting on this study. 2.2 Topic 1 Present and discuss your first topic. 2.3 Topic 2 Present and discuss your second topic. 2.4 Topic 3 Present and discuss your third topic. 2.5 Implications Discuss the implications from the literature for your study – the theoretical framework for your study. Highlight gaps in the existing literature that you will now fill. 3. Methodology This section of the report should outline the design and methodology of your project. The basis for the choice of research method should be about how and why it will help you answer your research question. 3.1 Introduction Give an overview of what is to be included in this section. For example: This section describes the design adopted by this study to achieve the aims and process objectives stated in Section 1.3. Section 3.2 discusses the methodology (or sources of data) to be used in the study ……. 3.2 Sources of data and justification Discuss the methodology you will use in your study. If using stages, outline them here. The methods used must link explicitly to the research question and must be suited to the nature of the question. If applicable give details of who will be the participants in your study (including, if applicable, sample type and size, reasons for the number selected and the basis for selection). 3.3 Details of specific techniques List all the instruments to be used in your study for data collection and discuss their theoretical underpinnings, that is, justify why you will be using these instruments. Outline the procedure to be used in your study (the techniques to be used for the data collection) and the rationale for that procedure. If this is done in stages, give a timeline for the completion of each stage. 4. Analysis of Results Section 4 details the results of your study. In this progress report you will only be outlining your proposed analysis. Think about setting up dummy tables or figures that you will use in your final report. In a final report you can put the analysis of the results here. The analysis needs to be done for each of your research objectives. In cases where you have gathered primary data through focus groups, interviews or surveys, this section will begin with a profile of respondents so your reader knows ‘who’ has provided the data. 5. Conclusions and Recommendations This section contains conclusions, limitations, implications and recommendations and should link back to your Research Question and Management Decision, that is, take the results from section 4 and apply them. 6. References [Use Harvard style. Make sure all sources used in the report are listed here only list the sources that you actually referred to in your discussion, and make sure every source you used in your discussion also appears in your list. It is a common error that students make that they forget to include sources they used in their discussion. Please audit your references as part of your proof read before you submit your report. Please refer to the style guide check list on BlackBoard or any the other resources available in the ‘Help’ section on BlackBoard.] Start here:e.g Smith, A (2012) “Writing reports”, Journal of XYZ, Vol 1 Iss 3, p# 7. Appendices 7.1 Appendix A: Glossary [Go through your report and make a list of all the acronyms and abbreviations that you have used. This helps the readers have a clear understanding of what you are writing about. Don’t forget to use the full term when you first introduce the acronym. You can call it a list of abbreviations or simply call it glossary. You can alter this template to suit what you prefer.] [The rest of this section is optional and should only be used for supplementary information that you want to include to support your report. If you don’t have any appendices to add please delete this from your report. You might include in your appendices, for example your questionnaire if you were using one your project.]