Research and Real World Perspective Paper

Students will complete individual perspective papers, exploring a topic relevant to the course from both the perspective of the research community and the business practitioner community.  Papers should be a minimum of 10 pages (including title page and references page, which means the content should be at least 8 full pages of paragraph-style text in length: this means minimal-to-none bullet-pointed lists, graphs/figures, and quotes) and follow APA format.  Reference sources should include a minimum of three scholarly journal articles (e.g., Journal of Applied Psychology, Personnel Psychology, Academy of Management Review) and three business practitioner articles (e.g., HR Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Harvard Business Review, NY Times). 

Papers should be structured as follows:

1.              Title Page;

2.              Introduction/overview and explanation of the topic;

3.              Organizational relevance and focus on this topic – what are the trends, challenges, and best practices as reported by today’s businesses;

4.              Key research findings and developments – what have researchers found in this topic area that could possibly be important and useful to organizations to apply;

5.              Your original perspective on this topic – why did you select it to examine, how well (or poorly) do you believe the research community is aligned with the business world in terms of presenting findings that could really translate into organizational improvements, and where do you believe this area is headed in the future;

6.              Conclusion – tie all your loose ends together and wrap up the paper with a logical ending;

7.              References Page