Part 5: Reports and Proposals
This three-chapter part starts with a dedicated chapter on finding, processing, and communicating
information in today’s technology-driven environment. The next two chapters focus on reports and
proposals, the major leagues of business communication. These are the tools used to analyze complex
problems, educate audiences, address opportunities in the marketplace, win contracts, and even launch
new companies through compelling business plans. We focus here on the particular challenges of
long-format messages, including some special touches that can make formal reports stand out from the
crowd.
Chapter 13: Finding, Evaluating, and Processing Information
This chapter offers students a cohesive process for finding, evaluating, and processing the information
they will need for many business reports and other writing and presentation projects. If your institution
requires a separate course in research strategies, you might want to cover this chapter in a cursory fashion.
CHAPTER OUTLINE
Planning Your Research
Maintaining Ethics and Etiquette in Your Research
Familiarizing Yourself with the Subject
Identifying Information Gaps
Prioritizing Research Needs
Conducting Secondary Research
Evaluating Sources
Locating Sources
Finding Information at the Library
Finding Information Online
Search Tips
Documenting Your Sources
Conducting Primary Research
Gathering Information with Surveys
Gathering Information with Interviews
Processing Data and Information
Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
Analyzing Numeric Data
Gaining Insights
Guarding Against Mistakes and Misinterpretations
Applying Your Findings
Summarizing Your Research
Drawing Conclusions
Making Recommendations
Managing Information
Learning Catalytics is a “bring your own device” student engagement, assessment, and classroom
intelligence system. It allows instructors to engage students in class with real-time diagnostics. Students
can use any modern, web-enabled device (smartphone, tablet, or laptop) to access it. For more
information on using Learning Catalytics in your course, contact your Pearson Representative.
LECTURE NOTES
Section 1: Planning Your Research
Learning Objective 1: Describe an effective process for conducting business research.
When there’s a need for research, it’s tempting just to punch some key words into a search engine and
then grab the first few results that show up. However, effective and efficient research requires a more
thoughtful approach. To maximize the chances of finding useful information and to minimize the time
spent looking for it, follow these planning steps:
Familiarize yourself with the subject so that you can frame insightful questions.
Identify the most critical gaps in your information.
Prioritize your research needs.
Before launching any research project, be sure to take a moment or two to consider the ethics and
etiquette of your approach.
Maintaining Ethics and Etiquette in Your Research
Research tactics can affect both the people from whom we gather information and the people who use
our results. To avoid ethical lapses, keep the following points in mind:
Don’t force a specific outcome by skewing research.
Respect the privacy of research participants.
Document sources and give appropriate credit.
Respect the intellectual property and digital rights of sources.
Don’t extract more from sources than they actually provide.
Don’t misrepresent who you are or what you intend to do with the research results.
Familiarizing Yourself with the Subject
Allow plenty of unstructured time at the beginning of the project to explore the general subject area.
When you have a basic grasp of the subject area, develop a problem statement that defines the
problem or purpose of the research—the decision you need to make or the conclusion you need to
reach at the end of the process.
Identifying Information Gaps
A problem statement frames the purpose of your research, but it often doesn’t tell you what specific
information is needed.
Your next task is to dig deeper to discover the specific information gaps that need to be filled through
research.
You or someone in your company may already have some of the information you need, and you don’t
want to waste time or money gathering information you already have.
To get useful information, break this topic down into specific issues.
Prioritizing Research Needs
Prioritizing research needs is important because too many unnecessary questions will cost you time
and money.
Moreover, if using interviewers or surveys, limit the number of questions you ask so that you don’t
consume more time than people are willing to give.
Prioritize by dividing questions into “need to know” and “nice to know” and toss out everything else.
Using a technique such as information gap analysis will give a clear idea of the information truly
needed.
Class discussion question: What are the risks of immediately jumping online to do research as soon as
you are assigned a report? What steps should you consider before doing any research?
Section 2: Conducting Secondary Research
Learning Objective 2: Define secondary research and explain how to evaluate, locate, and document
information sources.
When it’s time to begin research in earnest, the first step is to see whether anyone else has already done
some or all of the research you need. Consulting research that was done previously for another purpose is
considered secondary research. Start with secondary research because it can save considerable time and
money. In contrast, primary research is new research done specifically for the current project.
Evaluating Sources
It is your responsibility to separate quality information from unreliable junk, so you don’t taint your
results or damage your reputation.
Social media have complicated this challenge by making many new sources of information available:
On the positive side, independent sources communicating through social media can provide
valuable and unique insights.
On the negative side, these nontraditional information sources often lack the editorial oversight
commonly used in traditional publishing.
You cannot assume that the information you find in blogs and other sources is accurate, objective, and
current. Answer the following questions about each source of material:
Does the source have a reputation for honesty and reliability?
Is the source potentially biased?
What is the purpose of the material?
Is the author credible?
Where did the source get its information?
Can you verify the material independently?
Is the material current?
Is the material complete?
Are all claims supported with evidence?
Do the source’s claims stand up to logical scrutiny?
Focus your efforts on the most important or most suspicious pieces of information.
Locating Sources
Within your company, there may be a variety of documents prepared for other projects that offer
helpful information.
Outside the company, there is a wide range of print and online resources. Public corporations often
have more information available than private companies.
If your company doesn’t have an in-house research librarian, consider beginning your search for
secondary information at the nearest public or university library.
Finding Information at the Library
Libraries offer an enormous array of business books, databases, newspapers, periodicals,
directories, almanacs, and government publications.
Some of these printed sources provide information that is not available online, and some of the
online sources provide information that is available by subscription only.
Reference librarians are skilled in research strategies and can often help find obscure information.
They can also direct you to many sources of business information. Also, many library websites
now have a business portal, with links to helpful resources and advice on finding information.
Whether you’re trying to locate information in printed materials or in databases, each type of
resource serves a special function:
Newspapers and periodicals. Libraries offer access to a wide variety of popular magazines,
general business magazines, trade journals and academic journals.
Business books. Although less timely than newspapers and periodicals, business books
provide in-depth coverage of a variety of business topics.
Directories. Many include membership information for all kinds of professions, industries,
and special-interest groups.
Almanacs and statistical resources. Almanacs are handy guides to factual and statistical
information about countries, politics, the labor force, and so on.
Government publications. Information on laws, court decisions, tax questions, regulatory
issues, and other governmental concerns is often available in collections of government
documents.
Databases. Databases offer vast collections of searchable information, often in specific areas,
such as business, law, science, technology, and education.
Finding Information Online
The Internet can be a tremendous source of business information, provided that you know how to
approach a search, where to look, and how to use the tools available. Roughly speaking, the tools
fall into two categories:
Search for existing information.
Monitor selected sources for new information.
The most familiar online search tools are general-purpose search engines, which scan millions of
websites to identify individual webpages that contain a specific word or phrase and then attempt
to rank the results from most useful to least useful. Search engines have the advantage of
scanning millions or billions of individual webpages.
For all their ease and power, conventional search engines have three primary shortcomings:
No human editors are involved to evaluate the quality or ranking of the search results.
Various engines use different search techniques, so they often find different material.
Search engines can’t reach all the content on some websites.
A variety of tools are available to overcome the three main weaknesses of general-purpose search
engines, and you should consider using one or more of them in your business research.
First, web directories use human editors to categorize and evaluate websites. A variety of other
directories focus on specific media types, such as blogs or podcasts.
Second, metasearch engines help overcome the differences among search engines by formatting
your search request for multiple search engines, making it easy to find a broader range of results.
Third, online databases help address the challenge of the hidden Internet by offering access to
newspapers, magazines, journals, electronic copies of books, and other resources often not
available with standard search engines.
A variety of specialized search engines now exist to reach various parts of the hidden Internet.
One of the most powerful aspects of online research is the ability to automatically monitor
selected sources for new information so that you can get new information without doing manual
searches repeatedly.
Exercise care when setting up monitoring tools, however, because it’s easy to get overwhelmed
by the flood of information.
Search Tips
Search engines, metasearch engines, and databases offer a variety of ways to find information.
Unfortunately, no two of them work in exactly the same way.
The most basic form of searching is a keyword search, in which the engine or database attempts
to find items that include all the words you enter.
To make the best use of any search engine or database, keep the following points in mind:
Think before you search. After you have identified what you need to know, spend a few
moments thinking about where that information might be found, how it might be
structured, and what terms various websites might use to describe it.
Read the instructions. You can usually find a Help or Support page that explains both basic
and advanced functions.
Pay attention to the details. Details can make all the difference in a search.
Review the search and display options carefully. Pay close attention to whether you are
searching in the title, author, subject, or document field and whether the search is limited
to full-text documents or full text plus abstracts. Each choice will return different results.
Try variations of terms. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try abbreviations,
synonyms, related terms, different spellings, singular and plural forms, nouns and
adjectives, and open and compound forms.
Adjust the scope of your search, if needed. If a search yields little or no information, broaden
your search by specifying fewer terms. Conversely, if you’re inundated with too many
hits, use more terms to narrow your search.
Look beyond the first few pages of results. Don’t assume that the highest-ranking results are
the best sources for you.
Information-discovery and research-management tools continue to evolve, so keep an eye out for
innovations.
Media curation and social bookmarking sites can be put to great use as research tools.
Class discussion question: When you conduct online research for academic or personal needs, do
you look beyond the first page of two or search results on Google? Have you ever read the Help
advice on Google or your favorite search engine? Do you try other search engines, metasearch
engines, online databases, Twitter searches, or other tools? Do you phrase your search queries in
various ways to make sure you cast your net as widely as possible?
Documenting Your Sources
Documenting the sources you use in your writing serves three important functions:
It properly and ethically credits the person who created the original material.
It shows your audience that you have sufficient support for your message.
It helps your readers explore your topic in more detail.
Be sure to take advantage of source documentation tools whenever you can to help ensure that you
accurately track all your sources.
Whatever method you choose, documentation is necessary for anything you take from someone else,
including ideas and information that you’ve re-expressed through paraphrasing or summarizing.
However, you do not have to cite a source for general knowledge or for specialized knowledge that’s
generally known among your readers.
In general, avoid relying to a great extent on someone else’s work. When you can’t avoid it, contact
the copyright holder (usually the author or publisher) for permission to reprint. You’ll often be asked
to pay a fee.
Section 3: Conducting Primary Research
Learning Objective 3: Define primary research, and outline the steps involved in conducting surveys and
interviews.
If secondary research can’t provide the information and insights needed, the next choice is to gather the
information yourself with primary research. The two most common primary research methods are surveys
and interviews.
Gathering Information with Surveys
Surveys can provide invaluable insights on a wide variety of business topics, but they are useful only
when they’re reliable and valid:
A survey is reliable if it produces identical results when repeated.
A survey is valid if it measures what it’s intended to measure.
To conduct a survey that generates reliable and valid results, choose research participants carefully
and develop an effective set of questions. When selecting the participants, the most critical task is
getting a representative sample of the population in question.
To develop an effective survey questionnaire, start with the information gaps identified earlier and
then break these points into specific questions.
The following guidelines will help produce results that are both valid and reliable:
Provide clear instructions to make sure people can answer every question correctly.
Don’t ask for information that people can’t be expected to remember.
Keep the questionnaire short and easy to answer.
Formulate questions that provide answers that are easy to analyze. Numbers and facts are easier
to summarize than opinions.
Avoid leading questions that could bias your survey.
Avoid ambiguous descriptors such as “often” or “frequently.” Such terms mean different things to
different people.
Avoid compound questions such as “Do you read books and magazines?” People who read one
but not the other won’t know whether to answer yes or no.
Make the survey adaptive. With an online survey, you can program the software to branch
automatically based on audience inputs. Not only does this sort of real-time adaptation
deliver better answers, but it reduces frustration for survey respondents as well.
Before conducting a survey, test it on a sample group first to identify questions that might be
confusing or that might generate unexpected answers.
Online surveys offer a number of advantages, including speed, cost, and the ability to adapt the
question set based on a respondent’s answers.
However, they must be designed and administered as carefully as offline surveys. You can’t assume
that the results from a survey of a sample group on your company’s website will reflect the attitudes,
beliefs, or behaviors of the population as a whole.
Gathering Information with Interviews
Getting in-depth information straight from an expert or an individual concerned about an issue can be
a great method for collecting primary information.
Interviews can dig deeper than the “hands-off” approach of surveys, and skilled interviewers can also
watch for nonverbal signals that provide additional insights.
Interviews can take a variety of formats, from email exchanges to group discussions.
Be aware that the answers you receive in an interview are influenced by the types of questions you
ask, by the way you ask them, and by each subject’s cultural and language background:
Ask open-ended questions to solicit opinions, insights, and information.
Ask closed questions to elicit a specific answer, such as yes or no.
Think carefully about the sequence of questions and the subject’s potential answers so you can
arrange questions in an order that helps uncover layers of information.
If your questions might require research or extensive thought, consider providing the person with a
list of questions at least a day or two before the interview.
During the interview, be alert to new topics that you might not have considered while planning the
interview, and pursue them if they will be beneficial to the interview outcome.
Immediately after the interview, write down your thoughts, go over your notes, and organize your
material. Look for important themes, helpful facts or statistics, and direct quotes.
Face-to-face interviews provide the opportunity to gauge reactions and observe nonverbal signals.
In addition to individual interviews, business researchers also use a form of group interview known as
the focus group:
In this format, a moderator guides a group through a series of discussion questions while the rest
of the research team members observe through a one-way mirror.
Allowing a group to discuss topics and problems in this manner can uncover much richer
information than can a series of individual interviews.
Section 4: Processing Data and Information
Learning Objective 4: Describe the major tasks involved in processing research results.
Once all the necessary secondary and primary information has been collected, the next step is to
transform it into the specific content needed.
When there’s a significant amount of information or raw data, you need to process the material before you
can use it. This step can involve:
Quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing textual material
Analyzing numeric data
Drawing conclusions
Making recommendations
Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
Textual information from secondary sources can be used in three ways.
Quoting a source means you reproduce the material exactly as you found it (crediting the source, of
course).
Paraphrasing information is restating it in your own words and with your own sentence structures.
Paraphrasing helps maintain consistent tone, present information using vocabulary familiar to the
audience, and avoid the choppy feel of too many quotations.
To paraphrase effectively, follow these tips:
Read and reread the original passage until you fully understand its meaning.
Restate the central ideas of the original passage using your own words.
Check your version against the source to verify that you have not altered the meaning.
Use quotation marks to identify unique phrases you have used exactly from the source.
Record the source accurately to give proper credit if this material is used in your report.
Summarizing presents the main idea of the material in fewer words than the original:
An effective summary identifies the main ideas and major support points from source material but
leaves out minor details, examples, and other information that is less critical to the audience.
Like quotations and paraphrases, summaries also require complete documentation of sources.
All three approaches require careful attention to ethics:
When quoting directly, take care not to distort the original intent of the material by quoting
selectively or out of context.
When paraphrasing and summarizing, take care not to distort the original intent when expressing
the ideas in your own words.
Analyzing Numeric Data
Research often produces numeric data:
By themselves, these numbers might not provide the insights you or your audience require.
These are the insights managers need in order to make good business decisions, so analyzing the
data is a key component to reporting it.
You can use simple arithmetic to extract powerful insights from sets of research data.
Three common and useful measures that can give you different insights into a set of data:
The mean (often referred to as the average) is the sum of all the items in the group divided by the
number of items in that group.
The median is the “middle of the road,” or the midpoint of a series (with an equal number of
items above and below).
The mode is the number that occurs more often than any other in a sample.
Next, look at the data to spot trends—definite patterns taking place over time. By examining data
over a period of time, patterns and relationships can be detected that help answer important questions.
Statistical measures and trends identify what is happening. To help you understand why those things
are happening, look at:
Causation (the cause-and-effect linkage between two factors, where one of them causes the other
to happen)
Correlation (the simultaneous change in two variables when reliability drops); bear in mind that
causation can be easy to assume but difficult to prove
Numbers are easy to manipulate with spreadsheets and other computer tools, so be sure to guard
against computational errors and misinterpretation of results.
Even without advanced skills, you can take these precautions:
Avoid faulty comparisons. Make sure you compare “apples to apples.”
Don’t push research results beyond their limits. The temptation to extract insights that aren’t
really there can be quite strong.
Steer clear of misleading presentations. Even valid data can be presented in invalid ways, and it’s
your responsibility to make sure the visual presentation of your data is accurate.
Section 5: Applying Your Findings
Learning Objective 5: Explain how to summarize research results and present conclusions and
recommendations.
After all the planning, research, and processing, it’s time to apply your findings. This can involve
summarizing results, drawing conclusions based on results, and making recommendations.
Summarizing Your Research
A research summary is an unbiased condensation of the information uncovered in your research.
Summaries should not include opinions, conclusions, or recommendations:
Readers will judge your ability to separate significant issues from less-significant details.
Make sure to identify the main idea and the key support points; separate them from details,
examples, and other supporting evidence.
Focus on the readers, highlighting the information that is most important to them.
Focusing on the audience doesn’t mean conveying only the information they want to hear:
A good summary might contain nothing but bad news, if that’s what the research uncovered.
The audience will appreciate and respect honest, complete, and perceptive information.
Drawing Conclusions
A conclusion is the logical interpretation of the facts and other information in a report.
Reaching good conclusions based on the evidence at hand is one of the most important skills required
in building a solid business career.
For a conclusion to be sound, it must meet two criteria:
First, it must be based strictly on the information in the report. Don’t introduce any new
information in the conclusion. Don’t ignore any of the information that’s been presented,
even if it doesn’t support the conclusion.
Second, the conclusion must be logical, following accepted patterns of inductive or deductive
reasoning. Conclusions should not be based on unproven premises, appeals to emotion, or
hasty generalizations.
Your personal values or the organization’s values may influence your conclusions; be sure that you’re
aware of how these biases can affect your judgment. If your personal biases affect the conclusion, tell
the audience.
Although conclusions must be logical, they may not automatically flow from the evidence:
Many business decisions require assumptions, judgment calls, and creative thinking.
The ability to see patterns and possibilities that others can’t see is a key attribute of
innovative business leaders.
Making Recommendations
A conclusion interprets information; a recommendation suggests what to do about the information.
To be credible, recommendations must be based on logical analysis and sound conclusions. They
must also be practical and acceptable to your readers, the people who have to make your
recommendations work.
When making a recommendation, clearly detail the steps that come next. Readers need to know
exactly what is expected in order to act on your recommendation.
Managing Information
Individual research projects are important contributions to an organization’s collective knowledge.
To organize information and make it readily available to everyone in the company, many firms use
some form of knowledge management (KM), a set of technologies, policies, and procedures that let
colleagues capture and share information throughout an organization.
Social media tools have also enhanced the flexibility and capability of KM systems, making it easier
for more people to contribute to and benefit from shared knowledge.
HIGHLIGHT BOX: DIGITAL + SOCIAL + MOBILE: TODAY’S COMMUNICATION
ENVIRONMENT
Research on the Go with Mobile Devices
1. Some ways to use a mobile phone (we’re assuming a full-featured smartphone here) to gather
information during a research visit to a college including taking photos and videos, using the phone’s
GPS to navigate around campus, accessing Wi-Fi networks to conduct online research about the
college while on campus (such as learning more about a particular building or lab facility), and using
the college’s mobile app (if available). These apps can provide everything from updated dining hall
menus to on-campus bus routes to news on athletic teams.
2. Possible privacy violations include unauthorized photography or video capture, unauthorized audio
recording, unauthorized document scanning, unauthorized location tracking, and the inadvertent
violation of bystanders’ privacy (such as capturing them in the background while you are video
recording an interview with someone else).
COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES AT STRATEGYZER
Individual Challenge
The problem statement for this research project should reflect the decision that the research is designed to
support, which in this case is two-part question: Are Fortune 500 executives likely to devote a half day of
their time to attend a mini-course and what topics should the course cover? An effective way to phrase
this problem statement could be: Which Business Model Canvas topics would be most compelling for
Fortune 500 executives, and if we offered these topics in a half-day mini-course would they be likely to
attend?
Team Challenge
Two of these four research tactics (a and d) could yield useful information, and two of them (b and c)
aren’t likely to generate many helpful responses.
a. If you could get through to the executives on the phone and get them to commit to interviews, this
approach could yield useful information. However, this is a big if. Option (d) is likely to be more
effective since it targets a group of users who are motivated to get their companies to adopt
Business Model Canvas methods. Ideally, you would be able to combine the two approaches.
Option (a) could give you a different spin on the resistance than option (d), since the executives
might give different reasons to an outsider interviewer than they would give to their own
subordinates. For example, if some executives were simply uncomfortable with changing the
methods they grew up with or if they were afraid of losing control of the process, they might hint
at these reasons to an interviewer but might not admit them to their subordinates.
b. You’re not likely to get many responses with this approach. These target customers aren’t using
Business Model Canvas methods in their organizations, so there’s little chance they are using the
associated app.
c. Like (b), this option isn’t likely to get many responses: the target executives apparently aren’t
interested in Business Model Canvas, so there’s not much change they would be visiting the
Strategyzer website.
d. Either on its own or combined with (a), this is likely to be most effective approach. The target
subjects are motivated to respond, they probably visit the website from time to time, and they can
forward the feedback regarding resistance they’ve been hearing inside their organizations.