Business Writing

English 3130 040 CRN 83895 Minimester 1 Fall 2008

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Assignment: Group Multicultural Project

Multiple parts
Worth 30% of the final grade

You are an employee of Business Writing Inc. (BWI) and are on a team that has been selected to research and recommend other countries (besides the USA) in order to determine the best choice of the location of the new “international” branch of BWI. BWI is works with documentation, reports, and grants and often takes writing-based contracts with other business or the government.

For this project you will be working in a team of 3-4 people. Do give your team a name. You team must research three countries (of your choice, but only one can be English speaking) and choose one to recommend to BWI as the international branch location. You will be evaluating each county with a list of criteria:

Cultural issues: formality of the country, directness of the communication, attitudes towards things like women in leadership roles (after all your CEO is a woman), working with American, color meanings, and more
Language issues
Money: Cost of doing business there from taxes, to rate exchanges, to cost of living, salaries, and so on
Business ethics issues: what are the business ethics of the other country—for instance do they need a signed contract or a verbal agreement and hand shake?
One additional criteria you choose

Using these criteria, evaluate each country and then in a recommendation report present your evaluation and recommendation.

This project has many parts:

Part	% of project grade
Proposal	15%
Recommendation Report	50%
Presentations	20%
Peer Evaluations	15%

Note: You will need to do research for this project and you will need to draw on several sources. It is expected that your evaluation of each country by the criteria will draw heavily on outside sources and be heavily cited (although most of it should be paraphrased and not just quoted). Any information, images, text, or even ideas from these outside sources needs to be correctly cited. The company not only expects that as part of your project (and proof that what you are saying is correct) but correct citations will prevent issues with plagiarism and failing project or class grades due to plagiarism. Plus, the citations give you ethos and support for your recommendations. It sounds much better if you cite the information—your readers will more likely believe you.

Proposal:

Length: a 2-3 pages (single spaced)
Worth: 15% of project grade
Due: 9/24 email (.doc attachment by 11:59 pm) or paper (end of class)

The purpose of this proposal is threefold, to get me (as both President/CEO and professor of this class) to:

approve your project as planned
agree to your choice of three countries
accept your additional criteria and any adjustments you made to my criteria

This is a proposal to let me know what you are planning to do before you get too involved in the project. These should be a 2-3 pages long. Tell me what you are doing for this project. What three countries did you choose and why? You will be writing this proposal for my approval of your project, which means I must agree that the three countries you choose are the best choices for you to research. So, use this to persuade me that your countries are BWI’s best options. If you project is not approved I will not accept the rest of the project (but if the idea is not approved you will have opportunities to provide me with more information so it may be approved). Do set this up in memo format.
Parts of the proposal:

Introduction, Purpose, Summary or Overview: a concise paragraph or so summarizing the whole proposal, which includes

Purpose and subject of proposal
Objective and overview of plan
Any necessary background

Project Description & Work Plan: with a detailed discussion of

Problem: What leads to this project?
Project Goal/Purpose/Objective: What is the purpose? What is your objective? How does this solve the problem?
Scope & Methods: What specific issues, points, or areas will you investigate? What methods will you use?
Work Plan: What do you plan to do? What will the project look like? What tasks and activities will you complete? What have you already completed? Who will be doing what?
Timetable: When will the work begin? How will the work be divided into phases or stages? When will you be finished? What schedule or timeline have you set or been given? When will you have certain tasks, activities, phases, and stages done? Who is responsible for these activities? [Note: go beyond the class deadlines]

Qualifications/Personnel/Facilities: Partially Optional: include the personnel section if you have assigned titles or roles in your group. Provide information on the qualifications of your team, personnel, and facilities. Discuss the roles of your personnel.
Budget: Optional, not needed for this proposal
Conclusion: which includes

Summary of the proposal
A statement on why the audience (of the proposal, in this case me) should accept your proposed proposal idea

For examples of proposals check out the resources page. But do note that these are for different projects and are set up a bit differently.

Feedback from past classes:

Make the reasoning behind your choice of countries clear. Provide support and reasoning. This can be as little as a sentence or two on each country. This should be summarized in the introduction section and the full reasoning should be provided in the project description and work plan. Depending on how you handle the sections, this is best in the project goals/purpose/objective section (preferred) or the scope and methods section.
Make the roles of your group members clear. Who is doing what? This is part of the work plan.
Make sure you differentiate between project goals and proposal goals. For instance, the goal of the project is to evaluate three countries and then recommend a country, but the goal of your proposal is to get approval of your three countries and your project.
This proposal does not require you to choose a best country yet, just argue that the three you are researching are the best choices for BWI to further investigate. You will need to do some research for this proposal to best argue for these three countries.
When submitting memos from a group it is best to have the “project lead”, “manager”, or main author of the document should be who the project is from. The remaining group members should be CC:ed. If you are really feeling team unity then you can have it from all of you, but do include your names, not just the group name (the group name can be used as job titles if you would like). Regardless do make sure it is initialed.
Fulfill the purpose. The purpose of this proposal is threefold, to get me (as both President/CEO and professor of this class) to:

approve your project as planned
agree to your choice of three countries
accept your additional criteria and any adjustments you made to my criteria.

Recommendation Report

Length: 3-6 pages (single spaced) plus appendixes and front and end matter.
Worth: 50% of project grade
Due: 10/6

This is your "big" report for the class, in the form of a recommendation report. You will also be including necessary front and end matter. In this report you will present your evaluation of the three counties and the related research, and then recommend a single country for the "international branch" of BWI.
Parts of the recommendation report:

Introduction/Overview: brief section (a paragraph or so) providing:

Immediate orientation and overview of the report
The background (short summary)
Main point and purpose of report
Summary of the findings and recommendations

Background: provides details about what led to the report
Requirements and Criteria:

Present and discuss the requirements of criteria you will use to evaluate your options
Discuss the relative importance of each criterion

Discussion of the Options :

Present the options you will be evaluating
Explain how you chose these options
Provide brief descriptions of the options

Comparison and Evaluation:
- Begin with an explanation of your methods of inquiry
- Evaluate the options by applying the criteria, you may choose to do this criteria by criteria or choice by choice (the former is recommended)
- Conclude each evaluation section with either a summary of the evaluations (if doing a choice by choice comparison) or a statement of the best choice (if doing a criterion by criterion comparison)
Conclusions: Unlike other conclusion sections, this one will probably not be short

Summarize and restate conclusions so far, starting with the individual conclusions for each evaluation
Settle any conflicts by presenting secondary conclusions, which balance out conflicting individual conclusions
Present and defend a final conclusion

Recommendations:

Echo the most important conclusions leading to the recommendation
State the final recommendations
Include the benefits of the recommendations and any drawbacks

In addition to the report itself, you will need the following front and end matter:

Front Matter:

Cover (optional)
Title page
Letter of Transmittal
Table of Contents
List of Figures and List of Tables (as necessary)

End Matter :

Glossary (not needed for this class)
Appendixes (as needed)
Works Cited or Bibliography

Presentations:

5-10 minute presentations
Worth: 20% of Project Grade
Due: 10/6

Your group will report on your research including your evaluations of the three countries and your final recommendations. Think of this as the verbal equivalent to your recommendation report, although they will be different (you certainly should not just read your report). You goal is to not only report on your findings and recommendation, but also to persuade the audience (your co-workers and boss) that your recommended country is the best option for the company. You will have 5-10 minutes for the presentation an additional 2 minutes for questions (if needed). You will be using PowerPoint for the presentation and will need to hand a print copy of your slides in to me.

Peer Evaluations:

Due: 10/6 11:59 pm
Worth: 15% of the project grade

This reflection opportunity for you to discuss how the collaboration component of your group project went. For these evaluations, you should discuss your group work experience and evaluate each member, including yourself. With the exception of the last two item, rate each person from 0-10 on each of the following, with 0 being the lowest and ten being the highest. You must be able to provide support for whatever rating you give, especially a 10 and a 0.

Timeliness
Dependability
Cooperation
Quality of work
Contribution to proposal
Contribution to research
Contribution to oral presentation
Contribution to report
Overall contribution (do this in percentage of 100%, so the groups' scores add up to 100%; you may also give them a 0-10 if you want)
Your desire to work with this group member again

You might consider making a table or other figure to make it easier for me to communicate this information. You should add explanations for why you chose the ranks you did, and these can either be in the visual or in accompanying text. You may want to email the memo to me, or you may wish to give it to me in class. Either option is acceptable. Please make certain that you give each person a ranking in each category, including yourself (except for 10, you will have to work with yourself again).

Feel free to be honest, as this reflection will be kept confidential. Your grade for this refection will be based 80% on the scores you received from your group and 20% on the quality of this reflection (but if you do not hand this in you will receive a zero). You may turn this is a regular email, or you may include it as a Word or Rich Text attachment.