Tips for Writing Academic Process Analysis Essays - Essay Example

Essay Writing 2007 ESSAY WRITING The process of writing academic essays involves dealing with certain facts, theories and/or ideas. Theinitial step in this process is accumulation of knowledge on a specific subject: this knowledge is retrieved from the relevant literature. However, mere reproduction of the accumulated knowledge on paper does not make a good academic essay. It is necessary to process the knowledge, analyze and interpret it, and effectively use to build the argument. Therefore, the process of essay writing implies such vitally important steps as analyzing the question, establishing the core argument/point of view, research on the topic, planning and organizing the ideas, editing and referencing (Kane 1983). The below example of an essay in the field of human resource management illustrates the most important elements and stages of the essay writing process. Human resource management is a very broad field of study: it is necessary to identify a specific aspect or element within this discipline to avoid confusion. For example, an essay can be written to demonstrate increasing prevalence of human-centered approach in modern management practices. In order to fulfill this task the writer is supposed to perform a solid review of relevant literature in order to understand the management practices of the past and present and draw a comparison between them. The key problem here is making decisions concerning what information out of the available mass must be included and what left out. However, the literature surveyed within the framework of this study must not necessarily deal with only one specific HRM aspect: the most essential criterion is the ability of publication to show the core tendencies in management practices during certain period. Only credible sources such classic texts and peer-reviewed scholarly articles are taken into consideration during the review. The fastest and most convenient way to locate the materials required for such study is via online libraries. Since abundant amount of credible studies have been identified during the search, the only inclusion criteria that have been applied in selection of sources are English language and thematic relevance mentioned above. Other criteria such as methodological soundness or date of publication have not been considered. Analysis of the most relevant literature selected during the search suggests the following essay plan: 1. Introductory part: this part starts with a broad description of the subject and then narrows down to the main thesis of the essay, namely increasingly human-centered approach in management practices: Over the last decades, the way in which people are managed, promoted and stimulated at workplace has become the primary field of interest in terms of assessing and improving organizational efficiency and marketability. Growing competitiveness in the market forces modern companies increasingly rely on skilled and motivated personnel then on mere technologies. In the environment where company's history of success does provide a ticket to the cloudless future there is a need to rely on human resources. Increasing attention to human resources has recently called into being a new set of methods, principles and techniques known as Human Research Management. The importance of HRM has already been recognized by virtually any company which follows western standards of business. Evidently, organizational performance depends not only on the technological basis, but also on the human resource, their competence, motivation, attitudes, communication and other variables: "HRM is the core of company's general efficiency and the basis for effective management" (Gunnigle et al, 2002: 12). In a similar vein Beardwell (2003: 15) believes that despite the visible simplicity, the area of HRM is exceptionally complex due to potentially unpredictable nature of human resources. However, despite such complexity of the existing management approaches and theories the key feature of modern HRM paradigm is increasingly human-centered approach. 2. Main body consisting of the following parts: A) Overview of the basic features of early theories and approaches in management (Frederick Taylor and Harrington Emerson (Wright & MacMahan 1992; Drucker 1985)); B) Overview of the basic features of later theories and approaches in management (Elton Mayo, Abraham Maslow, and Douglas McGregor (O'Connor 1999)). C) Analysis of and comparison between the two approaches in order the reader could see the most essential outcome of the paradigm shift, namely increasing human-centeredness of management practices. D) Overview of the management practices implemented by contemporary organizations (Beardwell 2003). Analysis of two recent case studies which describe two different types of management practices: human-centered and technology-centered. One of the case studies chosen for this essay deals with IBM (Price 2000) corporation and the second one describes the HRM practices in a relatively small Finnish company Tieto-X (Wickstrom 2004). E) Discussion of the case studies with reference to the findings revealed during comparison of the early and modern HRM practices. 3. Conclusion which summarizes the study by moving from specific to general: Modern HRM is a complex science based on psychology, social science and management research which relies on the established organizational theories, psychological and sociological research, and management studies. Recent trends in the global business clearly show that effective use of HRM principles and practices is probably the key factor in ensuring sustainable competitive advantage in the market. The overview of early HRM theories clearly demonstrates that they failed to capitalize on the potential of human resources focusing on the technological aspects instead. Emergence of more human-centered approach in the middle of the last century coincided with the rapid development of companies and corporations, and apparently played a role in that development. The example of IBM that has been one of the pioneers in human resource management vividly demonstrates how HR-centered approach in recruitment, assessment, training and motivation contributes to the company's success in the market. This helps IBM to be one of the leaders on the global market, promotes company's marketability and competitiveness in terms of globally challenging business. On the other hand, failure to follow the HRM principles in promoting the HR-centred approach is likely to result in much less motivated and effective personnel and seriously undermine the company's positions. Thus, the most serious drawback of Tieto-X was the company's failure to switch from a product-driven to customer-orientated organization. The value of Human Resource Management practices was severely underestimated as seen from Wickstrom's (2004) case study of Tieto-X: organizational change attempted by "Tieto-X" in an effort to restore its market positions focused primarily upon IT sphere of business while human factor was excluded from the list of necessary changes. This resulted in poor effectiveness of the attempted change and failure to restore the company's once strong market position. Such structure of the essay enables the writer to build the argument on the basis of scholarly data and theories described in relevant literature. The use of scholarly theories is necessary in this case because personal statements do not allow the reader to correctly assess validity of the writer's conclusions and understand the subject content. The case studies serve as an additional topical example in support of the overall argument and the thesis. These examples are appropriate because the goal of an academic essay is to persuade the reader of the writer's idea based on scholarly evidence: a mere recording of information about the topic is not enough to fulfill this task. References Beardwell, I., Claydon, T., & Holden, L. (2003). Human Resource Management: A Contemporary Approach, 4th Edition. Financial Times Management. Drucker, P. F. (1993). Management: Tasks Responsibilities Practices. Harperbusiness. Gunnigle, P., M. Morley, and J. Kelly (2002). "Human Resource Management, Employee Relations and the Labour Market." Employee Relations: The International Journal, 24 (4), 371-460. Kane, T. S. (1983). The Oxford Guide to Writing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. O'Connor, E. (1999). "The Politics of Management Thought: A Case Study of Harvard Business School and the Human Relations School." Academy of Management Review 24(1): 117-131. Price, A (2000). Human Resource Management in a Business Context. International Thomson Business Press Wright, P.M. and G.C. MacMahan (1992). 'Theoretical perspectives for strategic human resource management." Journal of Management, 18, 295-320. Wikstrom, C.-E. (2004). "A Case Study of Emergent and Intentional Organizational Change: Some Implications for Customer Relationship Management Success". Proceedings of the 37th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences Read More