Task

Task A (10 marks):

Study “Case DATA ANALYSIS: AstraZeneca Terminates $1.4B Outsourcing Contract with IBM” in your text book [Chapter 12] and answer the following questions:

• What mistakes did AstraZeneca make?
• What mistakes did IBM make?
• Why are outsourcing contracts for five or more years?
• Why do you think two major corporations could make such mistakes?
• Do you think the 2007 SLA was doomed to fail? Explain your answer.
• What provisions in the 2012 SLAs protect AstraZeneca and the vendors?
• Why would parties prefer to use an arbitrator instead of filing a lawsuit in court?

Task B (17 Marks):

Write a paper, 4 pages (2-column format) in length, on a topic covered in our textbook. For this assignment, you need to plan, research, and, use your initiative to express the knowledge you learnt in this subject as well as your own independent thinking and reasoning.

Possible topics

Your attention in this paper can be focused on any of the following topics covered in our text:

• Information Management / IT Architecture.

• Database, Data, Warehouse, and Data Mining.

• Networks, Collaboration, and Sustainability.

• CyberSecurity, Compliance, and Business Continuity.

• E-Business & E-Commerce Models and Strategies.

• Mobile Technologies and Commerce.

• Social Media.

• Enterprise Systems and Applications.

• Performance Management Using Data Visualization, Mashups, and Mobile Intelligence.

Approach

Choose a topic which you are interested in and/or which is related to your work. You should do this as early as possible. Once you have chosen a topic, read our text carefully followed by detailed research. Once this is done, you should set up a structure/a series of subtopics and decide what to write under each section (subtopic).

Here is a suggested structure (you don’t have to follow it, but your own structure must be logical):

Abstract: a condensed summary. If someone reads your abstract only, he/she should understand your main points. You may want to write this section last;

Index terms: list the key words used in your paper;

Introduction: introduce the topic you are going to write about. This section must be related to the topics you learnt during the Session. However, you should branch out by carrying out your own research to enhance this section;

Subtopics and supporting argument: write a series of body paragraphs with sub-points;

Conclusion: Many students get confused between the conclusion and the abstract. In the conclusion, you can reflect on how your topic relates to larger issues; evaluate the concepts you have presented; issue a call for action on the part of your audience; ask questions generated by your findings; make predictions, recommend a solution or give a personal statement about the topic.

With your structure in order, you have a skeleton for your paper: you can now begin by writing out your analyses of the passages you have chosen. As you write and revise, you may have the need to add to your analyses or to re-order your chosen arguments. Using a structure as the skeleton for a paper in this way can carry you more than halfway to a completed draft.

Types of papers

Academic papers can be broadly categorized into 2 types:

1. Argumentative Papers;

2. Analytical Papers.

For details, please see http://www.writeawriting.com/academic-writing/how-to-write-academic-paper/

Format and mechanics

Your lecturer will provide you with a format template during the Session, you must strictly follow the format provided in the following link, such as space, font, margin etc…

Task C (5 marks):

1. Generate a Turnitin originality report and submit this report via Turnitin;

2. Submit an early draft to Turnitin for self-checking, then look carefully at all the matches marked in bold font and various colours in the self-check/originality report.

3. Answer the following questions to interpret the Turnitin originality report

1. a)     Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report missing in-text references?  (We need to avoid plagiarism of ideas.)

1. b)     Do any of the bold, coloured text matches in my self-check report include more than three words in a row copied from the original source without quotation marks?  (We need to avoid plagiarism of language.)

1. c)      Do direct quotations take up more than 10% of the essay?  (We need to change some of the direct quotations to summaries and paraphrases so that at least 90% of every essay is written in our own words.)

1. d)     Are any of the bold, coloured text matches in my originality report purely coincidental?  (Sometimes our words coincidentally match with words in other online sources that we have never seen before and that are completely irrelevant to our research topic.  If so, we do not need to change anything at all.)

1. e)     Do any of the short strings of matching text indicate that my attempts at paraphrasing were not completely successful?  (We need to avoid sham paraphrasing, one type of plagiarism, by using synonyms and changing the sentence structures completely. Remember that we should not copy more than three words in a row from the original without quotation marks.)

1. f)      Have I synthesised all of the sources’ ideas into my essay by introducing each piece of source information with a signal phrase and by adding my own comments or interpretation to it in the following sentence?  (We need to avoid dropped-in quotations and simply reporting facts or other people’s ideas because that approach means that instead of building our own arguments and writing our own essays, we are merely stringing together other people’s words and ideas.)