The Report Structure must be:

• Cover page/Title Page – Name, student number, tutor name/day/time, word count
• Executive summary (no longer than one page) – overview the purpose, type of analysis/methods, most important findings in summary, most important conclusions and recommendations. Look at how journal articles write an abstract as this is similar.
• Table of contents (should also include a list of figures / tables if used)
• Introduction (estimated 150 words):
  • Overview of the business problems
    • Introduce the company and what it does
    • Provide a statement of the business problems from the symptoms (see lecture on how to do this properly)
  • Overview of literature on the topic (Estimated 800 words):
    • Write a literature review that overviews what previous empirical work (journal articles) has found regarding the topic – see the lecture on literature reviews.
    • Overview the theory you will use to investigate the business problems:
      • Overview the theory and explain the concepts and elements of the theory
      • Justify why this theory helps to explain the business problems
      • Write a managerial decision statement and corresponding research objectives and research questions based on the theory and literature.
      • Do not include any results / transcripts in this section
    • Methods and Results (Estimated 500 words):
      • Introduce what qualitative analysis is (describe in one paragraph). Remember the audience may not have any knowledge of what a qualitative analysis is. Make sure you use references to academic literature when describing it – do not just copy from the lecture notes.
      • Report what the method was and how the interview data was collected. Write in enough detail that someone else can understand exactly what was done and how. Report on the internal/external validity (see lecture notes)
      • Present the findings of the analysis in a table AND figure, ensure you reflect on the findings and summarise (do not just show a table/figure with no explanation). Refer to the course materials to help.
    • Recommendations and Conclusions (Estimated 500 words):
      • Based on the findings give the CEO some recommendations about how to improve the business problems. This should link to the academic literature and theory from the introduction.
    • List of references – either APA or Harvard (choose one and be consistent)
    • Appendices – if needed

Report format:

Font size 12, Times New roman, double spacing, and word count 2,000 (+/- 10% 1,800-2,200). Note. The word count does not include the executive summary, headings, tables, graphs/figures, the reference list or appendices.

Topic information: Academic Misconduct

You are creating a business report for the Business school Deputy Head of Learning and Teaching at the University of the Sunshine Coast. It must be professional in presentation and contain insightful content for the school to make business decisions. Please view the university website for more information concerning the business school (www.usc.edu.au).

The Business School has been facing issues of Student Academic Misconduct. This means that students have been copying from other sources or working together to complete individual assessment. Academic misconduct is any action or attempted action that may result in creating an unfair academic advantage for oneself or another student. This could include:

• Plagiarism is defined as use of intellectual material produced by another person without acknowledging its source
  • Copying and pasting without paraphrasing and referencing the source
  • Self-plagiarism
• Collusion is defined as working with any other person to complete an individual assessment.
  • Acquiring or commissioning work
  • including giving away, swapping, or providing for sale your own work
  • asking someone to write your assignment
  • using a previous student’s assignment
  • sharing writing with your friends

Academic misconduct is a very serious issue as it means that students are not learning Academic Integrity or the knowledge they need for their future job roles. See: https://www.usc.edu.au/current-students/student-news/2018/may/academic-integrity-because-honesty-is-the-best-policy

The Deputy Head of Learning and teaching wants to understand why academic misconduct happens?

They think that it might be due to students lacking academic skills, such as time management.

You have interviewed six business school students. The interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes each and you followed a semi-structured interview style with an interview protocol. The interviews were conducted onsite in a quiet meeting room. The transcripts are available in a file labelled “BUS101_anonymous transcripts”.

You need to code the transcripts for common themes, creating a table and graph as shown in lecture 5 and tutorial week 5.

For the report you must paraphrase the above information, i.e. put it in your own words – do not directly copy and paste. The literature review needs to cover academic misconduct and JDR theory from the perspective of a student. Think about the resources and demands that students might have.

Theory: Job demand Resources theory (JD-R)

Reading to start:

1. Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2017). Job demands–resources theory: Taking stock and looking forward. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 22(3), 273.

You must locate multiple readings regarding the topic and the theory. A minimum of eight articles should be cited.