BBS301: Long Consultancy Project- Literature Review Assignment

Internal Code: MAS1703

Literature Review Assignment:

Task: Consulting is a term that includes virtually any form of advice-giving in a business setting. Consultants are hired advisers to organisations (clients) in areas such as information systems and software solutions, human resources, corporate communications, mobile communications, financial services, and e-commerce. Consultants tackle a wide variety of business problems and provide solutions for their clients. Client companies hire consultants when they are up against problems that require expertise beyond what their staff can provide, or when they need the fresh perspective of an outsider. For consultants, this means constantly being exposed to the greatest challenges companies face: how to integrate staff and work processes after an acquisition, how to restructure after bankruptcy, where to set up manufacturing facilities abroad, how to attract and retain the right employees. Depending on the size and chosen strategy of the firm, these problems can be as straightforward as researching a new market or as complex as rethinking the client's entire organisation. No matter what the project is, consultants have to engage in research in order to advise a client to acquire a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars, or to reduce the size of its workforce by thousands of employees. In this project, you have taken on the role of the consultant, and it is your job to research a problem put forward by your client and come up with a range of solutions. The consultancy project is a multistage major assessment. Broken up into several phases, upon completion the project will be worth 70% of your final grade. In order to complete your project, you will be required to undertake the steps in the business research process model. Some of these steps will be submitted as part of the formal assessment for this unit, but all steps will need to be undertaken to effectively complete this task. Systematic literature review: After you have chosen your topic, your next task towards completion of the consultancy project is to determine what has already been written about your topic. You will be required to complete a systematic literature review for submission and assessment. This work is to be submitted individually. A systematic literature review is a specific style of literature review, different from both a narrative review and a meta-analysis. The systematic review process, as the name suggests, is methodical in nature, with the reviewer following a prescribed set of steps in order to search the literature and identify relevant material for review. These steps are made explicit in the write up of the review. Due to limitations in terms of time and scope, for this assessment, the systematic review process will be simplified somewhat. The steps which you need to complete are outlined below. Learning activities designed to address the purpose and importance of the literature review should be revisited when completing this section of the project. See LMS for more details. Conducting a systematic review of the literature: 1. Develop list of key words to use in your search which aligns with your topic based on a cursory search on Google Scholar. 2. Using the inclusion/exclusion criteria below, choose the 10 most useful articles from your search. a. Limit your search to the databases Proquest and/or Informit. These databases have been chosen as they cover a range of disciplines, with Proquest including a wide range of international sources and Informit representing a comprehensive Australian database. b. Limit your search to articles published between August 2015 and August 2016. If you cannot find appropriate literature within this timeframe, expand your search backwards by one year at a time. c. Articles must be empirical, peer-reviewed and written in English. 3. Take notes and prepare a summary table of the 10 articles. For each article, this table should include: the reference, aim, method, sample, results, findings and limitations. This is for your personal reference and should not be submitted as part of your assessment.