Research based Term Paper

Research based Term Paper

One of the end products of this project is the Research Based Term Paper. This project requires you to develop a specialist understanding of a particular global sourcing facet by investigating an authentic research opportunity or data source. Your aim is to produce a cogently argued presentation of research motivation, insights gained from research, and the implications of the findings with possible future work.

The theme for the term paper this year is:

Measuring the impact of IT outsourcing: the relationship between sourcing activity and social impact occurring in [replace with name of country] 

The theme for next year's term paper will be:

Understanding the relationship between education activity and ICT service activity in [replace with name of country]: Is increasing educational attainment driving ICT activity or is increasing ICT services activity prompting educational attainment and workplace participation? 

How do you interpret it? Can you phrase this statement as a question? How would you attempt to try to answer your question? Each student or student pair to research a single country. Pick from the list on page 5 of Higgins & Saadatmandi (2016).

Higgins, A. and Saadatmandi, B. (2016). Country selection and impact it sourcing: Relationships between business factors and social inequality. In The 27th Australasian Conference on Information Systems. (view or download the article)

Comments:
The initial goals of the research project are to identify primary data in two broad categories:
a) ITO and BPO sourcing activity (any/all) within the country over time. (aggregate data)
b) The relative measures of social good and humanitarian values (your choice, e.g. unemployment rates etc), within the country over time. (aggregate data)
Analyse and draw findings from your analysis of the data.

You may then consider expanding your research, perhaps contact actors in the field, conduct interviews or other modes for gathering empirical data. More involved research questioning would depend on the kind of access you gain and the types of evidence you find. Extending your scope might include some or all of the following:

1. What (if any) actual social enterprises (or businesses with an overriding social mission) are there and how are they doing? Social enterprises of most interest (although you might relax the criteria just to get evidence) in this instance would be those in which locals provide service/products -- ideally digital and or digitally mediated -- to distant clients.
2. Researching the wider financial welfare effect of having any kind of local business, even the effects of individuals, sole traders' business activity through involvement in microsourcing for example. The welfare effect is the economics term for eventual outcomes of profit accumulation. It assumes profits will filter back into the economy, may also be construed negatively, that social costs of unethical business may be carried by the wider community.
3. There may be evidence of impact in terms of what might be called social capital, civic community activity etc. This could be the kind of social cohesion that Robert Putnam talks about.
4. You may be detecting (in your evidence and/or data) that 1, 2, and 3 are all present and may be co-existing or co-dependent and could be understood as a kind of mesh-work or organisational ecology.
5. Recalling the mention of ISO 26000 Guidance on social responsibility you might have another angle to develop, justified of course by the evidence and/or data you gather.

General pointers on writing...

Writing styles: The term paper is written in an academic style, presenting your background reading, method, research, analysis, theorising and critiquing aspects, for example of the the history, situation, processes etc of a particular sourcing context. Consider identifying an exemplary paper that you aspire to emulate or to compare your own paper with.

You must use the specified scientific conference template for the term-paper. Choose between either the LaTeX or Word template from the ECIS 2015 conference. Copies are available on (Google Drive link). By using the ECIS template your paper will conform with the scientific format guidelines for that conference.

Most important! Please ensure that any direct use of 3rd party material (particularly internal documentation) is presented within quotation marks or boxed or otherwise marked in some way and with the appropriate citation/identification. 

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Term Paper Submission: Submit the term paper via SafeAssign in Blackboard.
Presentation Submission: Email a link to the video (e.g. from Vimeo or YouTube) or slides (e.g. from SlideShare).

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Possible structure of a journal style paper - not all sections may be needed

Title
The title and abstract should both capture the essence of the study.

Abstract 

Introduction / Literature (positioning)
Give a brief introduction to the literature and positioning for the study.

Research Design / Methods / Context
Outline your research design, and method.

Data / Findings
Tell the story, provide the evidence, findings, account or narrative.

Analysis / Discussion
Analysis and discussion allow you to draw out the significance of what you have discovered. This is where you can apply/trial various analytical models or produce your own interpretation of the data, in order to better understand the evidence.

Conclusions
Conclusions summarise the findings concisely, often in a page. This is a overall synthesis distilling your analysis and its relevance to theory and the literature.

Bibliography/References
The bibliography/reference section is crucial to get right as it is the index to prior research and literature that you have referred to previously.

Appendices (if needed)
Use appendices to provide additional detail if necessary. Usually data samples, or intermediate representations, for example a sample of the data analysis process, coding frames, stages in the coding and summary or intermediate categories from data.

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Grading
Grading will consider the following criteria:

1. Research area and method defined and explained.
2. Critical understanding of topic/area and assumptions stated.
3. Empirical work, data and evidence presented.
4. Structure of argument, interpretation and conclusions.
5. Use of literature and overall quality of the written document.

A brief explanation of letter grade descriptors is provided below.

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Modular (letter) grades.

A+/A

• The report is suitable for submitting to conference, journal, or executive with little revision.
• There is a compelling logic to the report that reveals clear insight and understanding of the issues.
• Analytical techniques used are appropriate and correctly deployed.
• The analysis is convincing, complete and enables creative insight.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid, thoughtful and integrated manner-with complete grammatical accuracy and appropriate transitions.
• The report is complete and covers all important topics.
• Appropriate significance is attached to the information presented.
• Research gathered is summarised in some way, research and analytical methods described and discussed, evidence linked to argument and conclusions.

A-/B+

• The report may be suitable for submitting to conference, journal, or executive if sections are revised and improved.
• There is a clear logic to the report that reveals insight.
• Analytical techniques used are appropriate and correctly deployed.
• The analysis is convincing, complete and enables clear insight.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid, and thoughtful manner-with a high degree of grammatical accuracy.
• The report is complete and covers all important topics.
• Appropriate significance is attached to the information presented.

B/B-

• The report may be suitable as a discussion draft for further development or refinement.
• There is a clear logic to the report.
• Analytical techniques are deployed appropriately.
• The analysis is clear and the authors draw clear, but not comprehensive conclusions for their analyses.
• The report is written in a clear, lucid and thoughtful manner, with a good degree of grammatical accuracy.
• The report is substantially complete, but an important aspect of the topic is not addressed.
• The report may have used or presented some information in a way that was inappropriate. 

C

• The report may be suitable as a preliminary draft but needs substantial revision in a number of areas to develop further.
• The basic structure of the report is well organised but may need rebalancing.
• The content of the report may be partial, incomplete or unfinished with important aspects not addressed.
• The report used information that was substantially irrelevant, inappropriate or inappropriately deployed.
• The report’s analysis is incomplete and authors fail to draw relevant conclusions.
• The report may contain many errors in expression, grammar, spelling.

D/E

• The report may appear to be preliminary, speculative, and/or substantially incomplete.
• Whatever information provided is used inappropriately.
• The structure of the report may be inappropriate or need substantial reorganisation and/or rebalancing.
• There may be little analysis, evidence may not be founded, the findings may be inconclusive.
• The report appears to frequently use information that is substantially irrelevant, inappropriate or inappropriately deployed.
• The report may be poorly written, organised and presented.
• Frequent errors of grammatical expression.