How do I... - Monday 09 October 2017
An information research
During you studying years you can be brought to write various types of work: syntheses, case studies and later professional theses or dissertations. It requires documents researches and proper studies according to the work to be done.
To help you, we propose a practical case of document research with a concrete subject : Corporate social responsibility in India.
Type of information to find
From your subject, you have to define specifically the type of information you are searching. For this, ask yourself the good questions: What are we talking about? Who is involved? Where? When?
For the following practical case, you need informations about:
- Global corporate social responsibility informations
- Datas about India
- Both subjects informations
If you have to write dissertations or theses, answering those few questions: What? Who? Where? When? How? Why? will help you consider all the dimensions of your topic.
From here you have to make a right assessment of the time and volume of work needed. For example, if you have to write a few pages synthesis work, don’t spend too much time reading academics articles. Priority must be given to professional press articles.
Key-words
For your work you have to define appropriate key words thinking of the different terms that you can use to consult the different resources.
Don’t stop to the first term that arises, but try to think about synonyms, close terms, so that you can keep moving on if your first results are not satisfying.
For example for a research about Social responsibility in India:
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Social responsibility of Business
- Corporate Social Responsibility India
…
Your different readings will help you to find new terms.
Consult the right sources
At the Learning Center you have access to more than 50 resources in which you can find serious and updated informations for free.
Books
Discovery is the first entrance to your research for finding books about your subject. Give priority to recent books, meaning less than 2 years.
Academics articles
Very useful if you write a thesis or dissertation because they were written by experts and reviewed by other experts before being published.
They also update and complete the information found in books.
Business Source Complete offers full text articles from academic journals, magazines, and trade publications in all fields of economics and business.
About Social Responsibility in India, you can find:
RAHMAN, F. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN INDIA & THE LAW. International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management. 8, 9, 44-48, Sept. 2017
AMALKUMAR, P. CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN INDIA WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS TO SBI. International Journal of Research in Commerce & Management. 7, 11, 79-81, Nov. 2016
Search from a single interface many research works from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. An interesting following to Business Source Complete.
KUMAR, S. The Post-Economic Reforms Possibility of Corporate Social Responsibility in India. Journal of Institute of Public Enterprise. 39, 3/4, 155-172, July 2016
MANCHIRAJU, Hariom et RAJGOPAL, Shivaram. Does corporate social responsibility (CSR) create shareholder value? Exogenous shock-based evidence from the Indian Companies Act 2013. 2015.
Tip: read through bibliographies at the end of articles to find new titles.
If you search a journal or a magazine title consult Discovery.
Articles from professional periodicals
You can find information with a professional and practical point of view in articles from professional periodicals. There is a great number of journals and magazines providing access to this type of articles.
With Factiva and Europresse try to find articles about your question. Maybe you will not find the exact information you are searching but try to accumulate general informations on Social Responsibility and companies cases.
Country Profiles
With GlobalData Explorer, you can find Country profiles, including PEST and PESTLE analyses, which provide you information on all aspects of a given country.
Web
You must pay critical attention to results found on the internet. Give priority to official organisms websites and try to identify the author of the site or the blog.
Tip: Don’t collect more documents than you can deal with! You have to make right evaluation of your work.
Evaluate the results
You must systematically ask yourself if the documents you collected are valuable.
Information you collect in the Learning Center databases are reliable as they are professional tools.
Moreover a document can be reliable, but not relevant to your needs, and what you want to demonstrate.
Restitution
- You may use quote marks and mention the source in the footer. Footnotes are superscript numbers located at the end of the quotation.
- If you want to use an illustration (picture, graph, chart…) you must mention the source right below the illustration it-self or in a footnote as you would do for a text quotation.
- If you rewrite with your own words someone else’s lines, you must quote the source with a footnote.
When you finish your work, you must write the bibliography in which you list all the documents you used. Choose and keep one way to present each sort of document (book, article, website…). Click here to access a guide.
And don't forget: We are here to help you!
