1. Do not repeat in summary form large pieces of factual information from the case. The instructor has read the case and knows what is going on. Rather, use the information in the case to illustrate your statements, to defend your arguments, or to make salient points. Beyond the brief introduction to the company, you must avoid being descriptive; instead, you must be analytical.

2. Make sure the sections and subsections of your discussion flow logically and smoothly from one to the next. That is, try to build on what has gone before so that the analysis of the case study moves toward a climax. This is particularly important for group analysis, because there is a tendency for people in a group to split up the work and say, "I’ll do the beginning, you take the middle, and I’ll do the end." The result is a choppy, stilted analysis because the parts do not flow from one to the next, and it is obvious to the instructor that no real group work has been done.

3. Avoid grammatical and spelling errors. They make the paper sloppy.

4. In some instances, cases dealing with well-known companies don’t include up-to-date research because it was not available at the time the case was written. If possible, do a search for more information on what has happened to the company in subsequent years. Following are sources of information for performing this search:

The World Wide Web is the place to start your research. Very often you can download copies of a company’s annual report from its Web site, and many companies also keep lists of press releases and articles that have been written about them. Thoroughly search the company’s Web site for information such as the company’s history and performance, and download all relevant information at the beginning of your project.

Compact disk sources such as Lotus One Source and InfoTrac provide an amazing amount of good information, including summaries of recent articles written on specific companies that you can then access in the library.

F&S Predicasts provide a listing on a yearly basis of all the articles written about a particular company. Simply reading the titles gives an indication of what has been happening in the company.

Annual reports on a Form 10-K often provide an organization chart.

Companies themselves provide information if you write and ask for it.

Fortune, Business Week, and Forbes have many articles on companies featured in most cases.

Standard & Poor's industry reports provide detailed information about the competitive conditions facing the company's industry. Be sure to look at this journal.

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You will find this guide presented in modern English version. It is meant to be simple, easy to follow and to understand. So let us get STARTED.

Disclaimer:

The answers and model answers guide do not guarantee you distinctions. We do not take responsibility for any plagiarism that you may incurred if you followed the answers on these model assignments. They are meant to be examples and samples of good answers and not to be copied exactly for submission to your universities.

Getting Started!

Getting started on your assignment is the hardest step to take. The assignment itself or doing the assignment is not so difficult once you have started But getting started is really, really difficult.

Somehow, students just can’t get started or maybe they don’t know how to get started. Come to think of it, in my 28 years of teaching, none of my lecturer or tutor even taught me how to get started on the assignment. Rather I learnt if from a class mate.

The first step.

Read the assignment question, not once but TEN times. Read it fast, read it slow. Take some notes, dissect the question, jot down some key ideas. Break the question down into understandable parts. Get what the assignment want you to do. This is very important so that there is no misinterpretation of the question or assignment.

Look at the marking criteria section. In many assignments, there is a detail breakdown of the marking criteria. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. Follow the items or requirements stated in this section because this is how the marks are given. Read and reread this section several times. Jot down the key criteria required of the assignment.

Plan your essay or report around the criteria requirements. This must be followed strictly. The markers are given instructions based on these marking criteria. It makes sense that if your substance give according to what is required and stated on the marking criteria, you will be given full marks based on those points. So keep in mind the requirements of the assignment at all times. Students failed because their assignments were off the point in most cases.

Read up the materials required to answer the assignment. You cannot write the assignment unless you have ideas, materials and substance to write about. So where do you get these ideas, these points? From the required readings of course! Most students do not read sufficiently. They read the minimum required. They read the text chapters that was stated and then go straight into the assignment. Insufficient readings result in shallow substances because your ideas are limited and your understanding is also limited. Your references are also limited.

And Readings take time. You have to read several times before you can get the real things. And it is only after several readings , that you are able to sieve out the unwanted information from the ones that is required for the assignment.