Updating the department on the latest research.
Your manager has approached you about updating the department on the latest research. (Consider your
department and its functions your area of academic interest: marketing, sports events, and tourism marketing,
hospitality management, management, entrepreneurship, real estate, finance, accounting, international
business, business analytics, management information technology, or retail merchandising and management.)
Your manager wants to make sure the department is abreast of the latest empirical findings that could have
implications on your organization and your clients.
YOUR TASK
PART 1
1. Choose an article from the list of scholarly journal articles provided to you. You can choose one in
your concentration or one that you’re interested in reading.
2. Read the article a few times. Trust me, you will need a few times as these articles are a bit
complicated and technical. Many articles follow a similar organization: Abstract, Introduction, Review
of the Literature, Hypothesis, Methodology (data collection and analysis), Results, and Conclusions.
Each section will guide you to an understanding of the article.
3. Write a summary report in the form of a memo to your manager that is a 2–3-page summary of the
article. Your memo should include:
– An opening sentence or two that gives a brief explanation as to why you are writing the
memo.
– Overview – In a short paragraph, summarize the what the article is about. The article abstract
will provide a high-level summary of the article.
– Key questions – What are the authors trying to answer? These are usually written in the form
of hypotheses.
– Methodology – How was data collected? What methods did the authors use to obtain their
data?
– Statistical technique(s) – What, if any, were the statistical technique(s) used to analyze the
data? You can simply list them.
– Results – What were the results of the authors’ analysis of the data? Include a chart, graph,
table, or figure the authors used and briefly explain what it is revealing.
– Conclusions – Based on the research, what did the author(s) conclude?
– Limitations – What did the researchers indicate were the limitations of their study?
– Applications – Why is this research important to our business or the industry?
– Reference – Include at the end of your memo the complete citation of the article in APA
format (Do not use a separate works cited page but do provide the complete citation should
your reader wish to find the article.
4. End your memo by telling me you’ll be glad to discuss any questions I may have and/or write
something that ends with a positive tone.
5. Upload your memo to Canvas on the date specified in class.
