BUS 381: Introduction to Human Resource Management

This guide describes some of the resources that you could use to complete your research paper.  It includes tips on how to effectively search our catalogue for books, as well as on how to look for journal articles in our index databases.  It also includes suggestions for ways to find company examples.

Use this guide as a starting point for your research, but remember that there are many more sources than those listed here.

If you need assistance using the resources mentioned in this guide or finding further/alternative sources, please don't hesitate to ask for help.  Visit the help desk at any of our campus libraries, or contact our reference librarians by telephone/chat/email via our Ask a Librarian services. 

 TABLE OF CONTENTS

BEFORE You Start Searching

Analyzing your topic

SEARCHING

Books and more via the Library Catalogue
Articles in business journals/magazines/newspapers
Company examples
White papers
Other SFU Library guides

AFTER (and During) Your Search

Evaluating information sources
Help with presentations
Writing your report
Citing your sources
Plagiarism

Handout (Burnaby) (Spring 2012)

Powerpoint (Burnaby) Spring 2012

BEFORE You Start Searching

Analyzing Your Topic

Before searching the databases, analyze your topic and break it down into concepts. Think of synonyms, broader terms, and narrower terms for each idea. Your research will be more successful if you think of several synonyms for the words in your topic. You may also want to use terms that are broader or narrower as you refine your topic.

When searching library catalogues or other electronic databases, use truncation symbols to find all variations of a term.

• The asterisk (*) is the most common truncation symbol. It's used by many of the databases available through the SFU Library. For example, the SFU Library catalogue, Business Source Complete, and CBCA all use it.   A search for "forest* " in any of these databases will result in items containing any of:  forestry, forest, and forests.

Boolean operators, named for English mathematician George Boole, allow you to combine terms to narrow or broaden your database searches.

• AND requires BOTH terms to be found in search results
• OR requires EITHER term to be found in search results
• NOT eliminates term(s) from search results

Sample Search Question

• Topic: What are the current HRM practices in Japan?
• Concepts: human resources AND japan*
• Synonyms: (personnel or human resource management) AND (asia or japan)

SEARCHING

Books and more via the Library Catalogue

To find books and reports in the SFU Library, search the Library Catalogue by KEYWORD or SUBJECT  using the terms analyzed from your topic. It's always a good idea to search first by KEYWORD.  SUBJECT searching is more precise, but you might miss useful titles if you don't search the exact subject heading(s) used by the catalogue or other databases. 

For example, if you do a WORD search for human and resource* and japan, the computer will look for any book or report that has those three words in its title, author(s), subjects, or notes.  The three words don't have to be together and you may get some completely unrelated items -- you could get a book published in Japan about the huge amount of resources that humans use! Nevertheless, some of the search results will probably be relevant and you can use the subject headings from those items to find more good items . 

Check out their subject headings of the items that you get from your search (above) for human and resource and japan.  You'll find that some of your search results have such subjects as Comparative Industrial Relations, Employees -- Training of -- Japan, Personnel management -- Japan -- Case studies, and Personnel management -- Japan. ** Note that the subject Personnel management is used in our catalogue (and in most other library catalogues) instead of Human resource management.

The SFU Library Catalogue Search Guide will give you a step-by-step guide to searching the Catalogue.  You could also try our online tutorials.

Articles in business journals/magazines/newspapers

Articles in trade journals and business newspapers are a great source of infomation about companies, industry trends, new practices and regulations, and other topics.

If you are looking for information on a specific country, industry, or company, you don't have to flip through journals and newspapers hoping to find relevant articles. There are comprehensive indexes to business publications which you can search online to find articles about your topic. These indexes will give you citations to print journals and newspapers and many of them will also provide the full text of the articles on your computer. At SFU, as in many libraries, we refer to online versions of these indexes as Databases.

As with the Library Catalogue, it is often a good idea to start with a keyword search, then refine your search using some of the subjects found in your first search results.

Moving beyond business-focused databases:

• Moving from Citation to Article explains how to find the actual article(s) after you have searched the periodical indexes.

Recommended journals

Notes about the table below:

1. This is just a sample list of some key publications in the HR field. It isn't comprehensive, and it isn't required that you use only these publications. See your assignment for details.

2. For a clear discussion of the difference between scholarly and non-scholarly sources, see What is a Scholarly Journal?

3. You might want to scan recent online copies of a few of these journals to get ideas for potential topics.

 Company examples

Finding details on the internal HR issues and practices of organisations can be difficult. Most organisations are not willing to release such information. 

1. You could try contacting any companies you have have personal contacts with and interview someone. Given how difficult it is to find published information of this sort, interviews may be your best option. Remember that small businesses have HR issues just like huge corporations -- don't just think about the big targets!

2. Books often have more detailed examples and are more likely to actually name the companies they are talking about.  Try an advanced keyword search for in the SFU Library catalogue for ....

[your HR concept] AND (case stud* or example*)
e.g.: (employee selection) and (case stud* or example*)

Also consider replacing [your HR concept] in the search with personnel management or human resource*. General texts often have cases on specific HR issues.

3. Try the many Best Companies to Work For lists. Such lists often include articles about internal HR & corporate culture practices in named companies. Hard to find such info elsewhere.  See section 5c of our Job Searching guide for a few online examples of such lists.

4. Search/browse in many practitioner magazines -- publications such as the Canadian HR Reporter, HR Focus and HRMagazine which tend to be read (and written) by people working in HR departments. These magazines often have good overviews of the most recent trends and issues in HR: summaries of new HR studies released, changes in the regulatory environment, and issues being encountered in the workplace.

Many of the anecdotes in practitioner magazines don't actually name companies, but you can sometimes get lucky. It's probably best to just browse some recent issues looking for named companies. At least they may help you understand current issues, then you can try to identify companies most likely to be dealing with such issues and research them further.

5. Business news sources such as Business Week and the WSJ (both listed in the table above) are also possible sources, although, again, many companies only let HR details out if they are very proud of themselves (think Best Companies to Work For again) of if they've done something so bad that they've been sued.  Speaking of being sued... Canadian Employment Law Today often has examples of cases where the companies are named.

6. Career Insider guides: SFU Business students have online access to the Vault.com guides, many of which profile companies from the perspective of prospective employees. Possibly useful information for your purposes. To get access to these guides, log in to the Beedie Career Management Centre's Career Network site.

White papers

Your instructor might require that you cite a white paper in one of your assignments.

The term white paper can mean different things in different disciplines: an in-depth piece of marketing collateral published by a company, a technical paper in the IT industry, or even an official government report produced by the British Parliament. In the context of business, however, a white paper typically refers to a non-academic, but informative paper, written on a topic of interest by a company or organization, and published informally -- usually on the internet. For example, a white paper posted on the Hewitt Associates website, "Ten HR Administration Cost-Reduction Strategies for Tough Economic Times" suggests ten ways for HR professionals to reduce costs and operate more efficiently.

Before finding a white paper for your assignment, the first thing to do is clarify with your instructor what the expectations are for an appropriate white paper. If you are able to use an article from a trade publication for your assignment, you can often find these quite easy in databases like Business Source Complete and CBCA Fulltext Business. In both resources, you can limit your results to articles from trade publications. In Business Source Complete, you can even specify the minimum number of pages for an article. (You can include the minimum article length by clicking on the link 'More Options' near the bottom of the search screen in Business Source Complete.)

If you need to find a white paper rather than a trade publication article, think about who would produce your white paper. If you are looking for something similar to the Hewitt Associates paper above, these are most likely to be found on a company’s website. Because white papers are non-scholarly documents, they are much less likely to be indexed in databases like Business Source Complete (although a small number can be found in that database).

If you are searching for white papers associated with HR issues, you can start with a search engine. Combine the phrase “white paper” in quotation marks with HR or “human resources”, plus any other concept you need to put in the mix. Using the 'Advanced search' screen in Google can also be useful here. (You can find the link to the right of the Google search box.) You might want to try limiting your results for 'File type' to PDF. (This often helps to bring more actual white papers to your results list, rather than links for websites that want you to register to access white papers.) 

There are also numerous websites which position themselves as white paper “libraries” (sample). Most of these require laborious log-in procedures in order to view the papers. However, you can find white paper titles from an initial search at these sites, and then re-search for them again in a search engine like Google Scholar to circumvent website registration. Remember to put the title in quotation marks for better results.

Other SFU Library Guides

• Try the Course Guide page for Business 272 (Organizational Behaviour) as there is significant overlap between the resources used for 272 and 381.
• Use the Company Information Library Guide for tips on how to research a particular company.
• Use our Case Studies guide if you need cases.

AFTER (and During) Your Search

Evaluating information sources

Evaluate information found on the web by the same criteria as information you find in books, journals, newspapers, electronic databases, television, radio, converstations with friends, etc.  You can apply the following criteria to information found in many sources:

• ACCURACY
  Are the facts presented accurate? You may want to cross-check statistics or other facts against other sources.
• AUTHORITY
  What are the qualifications and reputation of the writer/speaker/publisher? Are they experts in their field? What is their point of view? Information about the effects of clear-cut logging will be very different from Greenpeace or from the Forest Alliance of British Columbia.
• COMPLETENESS
  Is the information presented complete or does it seem that something might be missing? For example, a list of stock exchanges world-wide with less than 5 entries would be questionable.
• CURRENCY
  Up-to-dateness is especially important for statistical data or political or socio-economic studies. A detailed report on doing business in China in 1957 would be historically interesting but not currently useful.
• DOCUMENTATION
  Does the book/journal/Web page explain the sources of its information and how the information was obtained?
• LEVEL
  Who is the intended audience for the information? Is the level of treatment academic or popular, expert or novice?

More detailed discussions of the criteria to use when looking at any information source can be found in How To Critically Evaluate Sources and Critically Analyzing Information Sources (Olin & Uris Libraries, Cornell). Evaluation is particularly important when finding information on the web.

Help with presentations

The SFU Library has many books on creating effective business presentations and on public speaking in general, including several recent titles that are available online for SFU researchers. The Student Learning Commons offers technology workshops including PowerPoint workshops. Note also that SFU students can sign out a projector from the Library to use in our bookable group study rooms -- a great way to practice your presentation!

Writing your report

Research is only half the battle! You also need to communicate your findings in a clear, well-structured paper, Check the SFU Library guide to Business Writing and the SFU Student Learning Commons resources for Writing for University for resources to help with paper structures, grammar, spelling, and more.

Citing your sources

You also need to correctly cite all of the books, journal articles, and sites that you used in your research. Start with the SFU Library guide to APA Style listed near the top of our style guides page.   A couple other guides that you may want to start with are Citing Sources (Duke University Libraries) and Diana Hacker's APA/Social Sciences site.

There are a growing number of guides to citing electronic or Internet sources. Concordia University Library's Citation & Style Guides includes links to APA, MLA, Turabian, ISO, and other standard citation style guides.  The APA offers a bit of online guidance for those citing electronic materials in APA format at their APAStyle page. Note that one of the topics they cover is Citations in Text of Electronic Material.  Note also that some of our article indexes have information within their Help pages on how to cite articles found in databases using common formats such as APA, MLA, and Chicago, and that some of them will even allow you to save/email your citations in a specific format like APA (e.g., Business Source Complete has this feature).

NOTE: Save time and avoid a headache! The SFU Library provides access to a citation management tool called RefWorks. You can export your citations directly from databases like ABI/Inform and Business Source Complete into your personal RefWorks account, then have RefWorks automatically create a bibliography for you. See RefWorks at SFU for more information, including a tutorial on how to use it.

Plagiarism

Learning how to properly credit others when you use their ideas is a dfficult, but important part of research. Start with the SFU Library's interactive tutorial "Understanding and Avoiding Plagiarism" to test yourself and to learn more about plagiarism. Also read the SFU Library Guide on Plagiarism for further discussion of this critical topic and for links to other plagiarism guides.