Effective Decision-Making in the Age of Cloud Computing
Assignment Orientation and Research Database Overview
During this semester, you (and the other members of your Virtual-Team), will complete seven assignments. These assignments are matched to the seven Topics that are covered during this semester. Each assignment asks your Virtual-Team to examine the "inner workings" of major BioTech/BioMed companies. Learning how these companies "make effective decisions" is a theme that flows through all assignments. At the end of this semester, Virtual-Team members will place themselves in role of CEO for the companies they have studied. In the CEO role, your Virtual-Team will decide what new product or service should introduce into the marketplace by the companies that yo have studied during this semester.
You will also develop a variety of database research skills by using a giant business research database titled, Business Source Premier (BSP)/Business Source Complete (BSC). Libraries on the UMass Amherst; NUI Galway; American Univeristy in Cairo; and The National Chiao Tung University campuses subscribe to these databases. Database content, features, indexes, and output options are described below.
Business Source Premier (BSP)/Business Source Complete (BSP) - Database Features and Functions
Connect to BSP/BSC: NUI - Galway; UMass Amherst; AU - Cairo; Chiao Tung U
| Content Summary: | Largest full-text collection of business journals and magazines: 2,200 titles; 52 million+ articles. |
| Content Types: | Academic journals; trade journals; magazines; company reports; market reports; and country reports. |
| Indexes: | All text; author; title; subject terms; geography; people; products; companies; industries; and ticker symbols. |
| Limiters: | Full text; scholarly (peer reviewed) journals; publication date; publication type; document type; and image type. |
| Result Sorts: | Publication type (academic,trade, magazine, report), publication date; and relevance (word frequency). |
| Output Options: | Print to paper; save to file; email; persistent URL link; alert service; and RSS feed. |
| Access: | Available on or off campus to NUI Galway, UMass Amherst, AUC and Chaio Tung students and faculty. |
| Career Prepartion: | BSP/BSC is utilized by large global corporations for real-time decision-making. |
Executive Summaries - Composition, Layout & Formatting Instructions
After completing the necessary research for each of your seven Virtual-Team assignments, your Virtual-Team will be asked to create a new Word 2013 document, and write a three-page Executive Summary (no more than 750 words) describing what your Virtual-Team discovered by researching online with BSP/BSC. Please make sure to include citations for any articles you quote in the Summary.
Page layout and format. Your Executive Summary should be double-spaced. The top, bottom, left and right margins should be 1 inch. The font should be Times New Roman (12 point). At the top of your Summary’s first page, list the file name on the first line. On the second line, list the names of your Virtual-Team embers. The two lines should be placed against the right margin. The rest of your Summary should be placed against the left margin.
Multiple copies of the file. When you finish your Executive Summary, please make sure to save multiple copies of your Word 2013 file. The name of your file should describe what your summary covers, and the first and last names of all team members. For example: Loews Company Profile—Rich Jones, Bryna Smyth, and Fran Adams. When your Executive Summary is completed, post it to your Virtual-Team's Sub-Site in the Cloud Course Portal.
Business Source Premier
2,200 full-text journals 50 million+ full-text journal articles online, current articles plus archive - including HBR:
