Group Report Projects
Group reports bring together students with many different writing styles. For group projects, the subject is usually a country, company or specific case analysis. In many introductory business courses at the University of Vermont, you will encounter these various projects at full speed. Directions, sometimes very indirect, will be given to you and three or four other classmates. As a group, your goal is to analyze the subject and come up with something substantial to say about your findings.
Group research, teamwork, compliance, and hard work will be required of you and your teammates in order to receive a desirable grade. In other words, everyone in your group MUST contribute to the best of their ability in a timely, efficient manner. Be firm, be consistent, and be motivating. Your group members will rely on you at times, and it’s important for everyone to be on their toes when it comes down to crunch time. While working with your team members, act as though you are in a business meeting. Conduct yourself with professionalism, and it will—I repeat, it WILL—rub off on others. Be a leader, and others will follow.
Types of Group Reports
Country Analysis
Pick a country, preferably one that would be a feasible place to begin business, and one for which information will be easy to find. The sub-topics will vary by class and professor, but may include demographics, marketing and advertising, politics, legal system, wealth distribution, banking system, etc.
Company Analysis
Company analyses focus on issues related to divesting/ investing. What about the company did you find that would make an investor want to put money into this company? Find out some things about the company’s stock value, about where the company has been and where it’s headed. Company reports should have a section dedicated to talking about the environment of the industry the company is in. Who are their competitors? How are they doing? How are we doing compared to them?
Case Analysis
Case analyses should include the following:
- Clearly Define the Problem: Focus on true causes and not “symptoms.”
- Problem Solution: May be many, or just one. Discuss/explain the strengths and weaknesses of each proposed solution.
- Selected Solution: Describe the chosen solution, justify your selection, and provide a plan for how to implement the solution.
- Summary: Summarize your analysis of the situation. Provide the reader with a summary that could explain the entire report, mentioning all of the main points.
Getting Started
You’ve been partnered up with other students in your class and have been asked to write a group report on a company, country, or case. What’s next? Each of these projects will require the following steps to get started.
First, call a group meeting
This is a great time to learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Don’t be afraid to announce your writing ability, or disability. If you feel your writing is below par, and you would be more beneficial to team success by working more closely with the presentation aspect of the report, don’t be afraid to speak up and speak out.
Communicate: Exchange phone numbers, emails, and/or friend each other on Facebook
As a team, it’s important you all stay on the same page at all times. Make a Facebook group for your team; it’s a great tool for sending out one message to all group members. Do whatever it takes to make sure you can stay or get in contact with all team members.
Delegate the research
Your professor should provide you with a list of things he wants to know about your topic. Let’s call these subtopics. Your job is to come together, and decide who is researching what. The delegation of research is very important. If there are ten subtopics to research and five team members, have each member pick two subtopics. In the unfortunate situation when there are an odd number of subtopics, try and give the person who has the extra topic some of the easier ones such as a brief history, or a brief description of the company.
Researching Your Topic
You do not want to wait until the last minute to get this started. Group projects are often very long, time-consuming assignments. Get started with your research as soon as you possibly can.
Be fair, be wise, and be diligent. The research YOU personally do will reflect on the entire team as a whole. Make sure you use trusted and reliable sources, and make sure you do enough research to know the material. The research you do will ultimately be the foundation for your entire report. The more you know, the better it will be.
When researching, use all resources available to you. To gather all of your information
- Use the reference desk and set up an appointment to get help from the reference librarian connected to the Business School
- Use trusted and reliable sources from the internet.
Writing Your Group Reports
Decide on a focus
When all the research is completed, meet as a group and decide on a focus. With every report, there needs to be a purpose, a clear “take away” for the reader. Once all the research is done have another meeting and decide what your writing should focus on. What is the goal of your report? To prove that the country is in good condition to hold business? To prove that the country should be considered a good place for investment? Or is to prove the opposite? If your research found that the country is in a terrible economic position, then make sure everyone in your team is aware that this will be what you are going to try and prove.
Choose one or two editors
If you are a good writer, now is the time to tell your teammates. In place of doing some other aspect of the project, such as preparing the power point, offer your writing ability as a tool for your team to put the report together. The problem with having everyone just plot their sections in the report is that everyone has a different writing style. Having everyone’s original writing may not allow for the pieces to fall together, or for the report to flow. Having 1 or 2 people do the majority of the revision and editing will allow for the report to have the same writing style throughout the report, hence allowing for the sections to flow together. Sections should be neatly organized and placed in an order that makes sense of the progression of your research.
Write your individual sections
You now need to start the process of putting together your report. Each team member should write his or her own section separately. Important: Everyone in the group needs to do some research and writing. Don’t leave the research to one or two people.
Make sure that when writing, you completely avoid “I” statements. Your writing should be objective and formal.
Plan the introduction and conclusion
When everyone in the group is done writing, have a meeting to develop ideas for the report’s Introduction and Conclusion. These portions of the report should be written as a group after each member is done with their own research and writing, but before the whole piece is stitched together
Each report you write should include very clear and strong intro/concluding paragraphs. Having a purpose statement in your introduction will arouse the reader’s interest. Make sure you clearly state what it is you are researching and why. For example, in a country analysis you may want to see if the country in question has a good foundation for business, and whether or not companies should move to that country. Subsequently, after proving in the body sections of your report that this country was either good or bad for business, you NEED to make sure you leave the reader with your answer. EX, yes, businesses should move here because the distribution of wealth is even, and almost everyone can afford to buy luxuries.
Stitch the sections together
If there are two members who know that they are good writers, assign them to this task: take everyone’s section, and put them into one cohesive, professional report. Having a clear, factual tone is appropriate for this type of writing. List the facts out, and then make sure the relevance of these facts (or quotes) is explained in the report.
Write the Executive Summary
Executive summaries are the last portion of group reports that should be written. Executive summaries should be placed right in the beginning, before your table of contents. This should be no longer than a page in length, and should include a short summary of each team member’s sections. Try having each member of your group come up with two or three sentences that best summarize their sections. From there, incorporate your purpose from your introduction and findings from your conclusion in order to capture the entire spectrum of the report. It will be important to truly capture the most important aspects of your report, so be diligent and concise with your work here.