Contemporary Business Thinking

If you are taking Contemporary Business Thinking (COMM 210), you are probably a new student at JMSB. This guide is designed by Olivier Charbonneau, Senior Business Librarian at Concordia University, and aims to support the activities planned by your instructor over the semester. This guide is divided in two sections: Tutorials to improve your searching skills as well as Three tips to succeed on your final project.

See also, these other library guides: 1) Business Research Portal for the best business sources; use the 2) Ask-A-Librarian to get help; and the 3) citing business sources in APA format for your bibliography.

This page supports the learning objectives of COMM 210 Contemporary Business Thinking

Tutorials to improve your searching skills

You can view the following vides as a single playlist here: YouTube videos created by Olivier Charbonneau for COMM 210 as a single playlist. The playlist is comprised of the following videos:

Olivier explains how Google may provide underwhelming results for your paper, Direct link: https://youtu.be/iNtJvWanw7s
Olivier provides ideas on improving results you obtain from Google, direct link: https://youtu.be/8H6a6BkqVNc
Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is simply a starting point to search for high quality sources for a university paper, you are expect to dig much deeper than the entry from an encyclopedia. Direct link: https://youtu.be/DuUXgzphBao
Business intelligence can be expensive to acquire. That’s why your librarian has curated a collection of industry reports, market research and news sources. Complement googling with library searches. Direct link: https://youtu.be/aDQhN21rvtQ

Three tips to succeed on your final project

The Globe and Mail, a Canadian newspaper, provides for a list of top growing companies in Canada. You are called upon to select a company from this list and then, search for sources to support your critical analysis of contemporary issues. To succeed in this project, you must provide evidence from credible sources to support your claims. It is essential that you search for sources and evidence (and read them!) BEFORE writing your paper. Here are three tips, drawn from the videos above, to assist you in completing your project.

Tip #1 – Primary sources

Primary sources are, generally, documents created and made available by the company you are researching. The company’s website is obviously a source for these. Locate their corporate website and look under the “about us” section.

Here are some ideas as to locate some others, based on the tutorials above.

Canadian or Quebec government websites can contain primary sources provided to government agencies and made available on the internet. This usually lets you discover old job postings. Use the “site:” command, explained in the “How to train your Google” video. Keep your company names between quotes (“my company name here“) to get better results. Here are some examples:

site:.gc.ca “your company name”

site:.gouv.qc.ca “your company name”

Searching government websites will let you discover jobs posted on government employment websites

Search library databases containing news and filter for press releases also known as wire feeds. ProQuest Business Databases and Eureka.cc are good library databases allowing you to filter for old press releases or wire feeds. Search for your company name and filter the results on document type.

Search library news databases for interviews. In ProQuest Business Databases or Eureka.cc, try this:

“your company name” AND interview*

Remember that the quotes are needed if your company name is a phrase (as opposed to a single word) and the asterisk (*) is the truncation or wildcard operator, meaning you get interviews, interviewing, etc.

Tip #2 – Industry reports and market research as secondary sources

Branch out to the industry or the market.

Two: Consider the broader business environment with industry reports by IBISWorld. Use Passport by Euromonitor to get market insight.

Tip #3 – Trade and academic articles as secondary sources

Three: use ProQuest to find secondary sources, namely trade and scholarly articles about your company and its industry.

Recap and parting thoughts

Google is a powerful search engine, which presents popular web results, curated to your specific interests. Alas, it is no longer sufficient to simply use Google for your projects. Searching for evidence and sources to support your claims in a university paper, involves leveraging sources on the free web, all the while supplementing them with sources you can download from library subscriptions. Understanding how to locate high quality sources from the free web as well as from the library will increase your capacity to succeed in all your JMSB projects.

Lastly, please remember these other library guides: 1) Business Research Portal for the best business sources; the 2) Ask-A-Librarian to get help; and the 3) citing business sources in APA format for your bibliography.

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 2020-08-24 à 4:35 pm.