Second term essay instructions.
Winter Term Essays #
1
Length: about 2000 words
These essays will
address substantive topics covered in the winter term and the last 3 weeks of
the fall term. They will require you to analyze and
synthesize course materials (assigned readings and lectures) as well as a
modest amount of outside research.
The topics for the
first essay are based on assigned readings and lecture materials from the last
few weeks of the fall and first half of the winter term. so a good first essay
may include relevant illustrative material drawn from readings assigned for the
second half of the winter
In addition to
assigned course materials, essays will be expected to incorporate additional
outside research. This research should include both academic (scholarly, peer reviewed) sources and other kinds of
sources (such as journalistic reports and reports by government agencies,
corporations and business groups, civil society NGOs, think-tanks, etc.). The
selection of sources should display a coherent focus and, preferably, a range
of perspectives. They should not be just a random assortment of books, articles
etc. that are vaguely or tangentially related to the topic or each other.
Discussion of both
the course materials and outside sources should be substantively informative
and display an accurate grasp of the content and significance of the
sources. The discussion should have a
coherent argument and should synthesize positive, normative and strategic
analyses. . For more details, see “Tips
and suggestions on essay writing”, below.
The paper will be
graded on research, argument (reasoning, evidence), organization and writing.
For more details, see “Essay grading criteria” below.
Topic for Essay # 1
Discuss the “business case” for CSR. What is the relationship between a
firm’s social responsibility (social performance) and its profitability? How
might one affect the other, and what factors might affect both? Why does Vogel
doubt that CSR is profitable for most firms? How cogent and empirically well
grounded are those doubts? For what kinds of firms is the business case for CSR
most (and least) salient?
Some organization websites and other
internet resources you may find useful for research.
Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and
International Trade Report 14 on CSR and Canadian mining companies. http://www.miningwatch.ca/updir/FAAE_Rpt14-e.pdf
Worldwide
Responsible Accredited Production http://www.wrapapparel.org/
Responsible Care http://www.responsiblecare.org/page.asp?p=6341&l=1
Forest Stewardship
Council http://www.fsc.org/ ; http://www.fsccanada.org/about.htm
Natural Step http://www.naturalstep.org/com/nyStart/
United Nations
Global Compact http://www.unglobalcompact.org/
Industry Canada CSR
site. http://www.ic.gc.ca/epic/site/csr-rse.nsf/en/Home
Business for Social
Responsibility http://www.bsr.org/
Canadian Business
for Social Responsibility http://www.cbsr.ca/
Sustainable
Business http://www.sustreport.org/business/intro.html
CSR Asia http://www.csr-asia.com/
Ethical Corporation
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/
Fairtrade Internationalhttp://www.fairtrade.net/?id=361&L=0
TerraChoice
Environmental Marketing [conducts EcoLogo third-party product certification] http://www.terrachoice.com/
No Sweat Apparel http://nosweatapparel.com/
Free the Children http://www.freethechildren.com/index.php
Chris MacDonald’s
Business Ethics Blog http://www.businessethics.ca/blog/
Christian Aid 2004 “Behind the mask: the real face of corporate social
responsibility” can be downloaded from BHRRC below and other sites.
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
http://www.business-humanrights.org/Links/Repository/537619/link_page_view
Corporate Knights (Canadian CSR magazine) http://www.corporateknights.ca/
Corporation Watch http://www.corpwatch.org/
MiningWatch Canada http://www.corpwatch.org/
China CSR Watch http://www.csrcsr.com/
Halifax Initiative http://halifaxinitiative.org/
Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability http://cnca-rcrce.ca/
Instructions, Tips and
Grading Criteria
Term paper assignments in this and many other courses are argumentative research papers. That is,
you are asked to argue a thesis on
the basis of researchextending
beyond course materials.
Steps:
1. Preliminary
research. The main task at this stage is to find your way around your
topic. You need to find out the basic facts, themes, controversies and
positions, and terms and concepts that are distinctive to the topic. You need
to get a sense of the “lay of the land” before embarking on the required
research in the academic literature. Start by thoroughly examining the relevant
course materials (including materials not yet assigned). You may need to fill
in some knowledge gaps or get a wider sense of the positions in the
controversy. This is what Google searches and Wikipedia are for. Some students make the mistake of not going
beyond this stage. Others make the mistake of skipping this stage and ending up
fruitlessly stumbling around in the scholarly literature.
Some of
this preliminary research will find its way into your finished paper but much
of it should not, even if it is useful as a starting point. For example,
Wikipedia is not a source you should cite for substantive or controversial
claims, but good Wikipedia articles will have extensive citations of and links
to more authoritative sources for you to consult; these sources will in turn
cite others, and so on (see step 4).
2. Initial search of
the scholarly literature. Using step 1 as a starting point (references to
scholarly sources you’ve come across, key words and phrases that can be used in
data base searches), use tools such as disciplinary abstracts indexes and
Google Scholar to find potentially relevant scholarly sources. Keep in mind
that not all articles indexed in these data bases are scholarly articles. Also,
try to find sources that connect up with one another, e.g. by taking different
positions on a common controversy, that debate one another, or that overlap
with respect to some theme or particular issue. Don’t settle on the first few
books and articles you come across that are vaguely related to your topic. Be
prepared to answer the question, why these particular sources?
3. Analysis of
initial search results. Start READING the materials you are finding in step
2. Steps 2 and 3 overlap. Don’t wait until you have finished your “research” to
start reading what you have found. Read early and read carefully. Don’t skim
for factoids you can pluck from the article just so you can cite it and claim
to have based your paper on scholarly research. You should be trying to
understand the authors’ reasoning:
their thesis or perspective, their arguments, their research methods, their
evidence. This is hard work. Many students misunderstand the reasoning in
scholarly articles and chapters assigned as course readings even after these
have been discussed in lectures and tutorials. When you are reading sources
outside of the course readings you are on your own. Expect to have to read some
sources through several times. Pay
attention as well to how professional
scholars write: how they organize material, how they handle conflicting
positions and interpretations, how they cite sources. Students who do well on
their essays don’t use scholarly articles just as sources of facts, but also as
models of how to write research papers.
Take notes
as you read. Make sure you have fully recorded the relevant bibliographical
information so that you can cite your sources fully and accurately. Always make
sure you distinguish between your own words and material copied from your
sources.
4. Further iterations
of research. Using ideas, concepts and references from stages 2 and 3,
expand on the research in stage 2 and fill in gaps. Repeat stage 3. Then
repeat. Don’t think of stages 2, 3 and 4 as separate—I’m separating them here
for convenience of exposition only. Finding new materials, reading them,
thinking about them, getting ideas for your own paper and ideas for more
research is one continuous process. Research takes time. It cannot be left to
the last minute. Get started as soon as possible.
5. Outline an
argument. On the basis of what you have learned about your topic through
stages 1-4, try to develop a well-formed thesis. Already you may have arrived
at a general perspective or opinion on the topic. A thesis, however, is not
just a point of view or an opinion. It is the position that the paper is
organized around defending. It should be nuanced and carefully thought out. For
this assignment, it must also be one that touches on all aspects of the
assigned topic. This doesn’t mean that your thesis statement should mention all
aspects of the assigned topic or simply rephrase the topic question, but it
should be one to which all aspects of the assigned topic are relevant. You then
need to think about the structure of your argument: what are the main premises
(claims) that directly support your thesis, what evidence and/or sub-arguments
will be necessary to support those premises, what objections or counter
arguments will you have to respond to, and how you will you rebut those
objections. A good outline will consist of statements
rather than topics: it is an overview
of what you plan to say, not what you
plan to talk about. A reader should
be able to tell from your outline what your argument is going to be, and where
the gaps may lie. This exercise will also give youa better idea of where the gaps lie, and where more research
might be necessary to supply missing evidence.
6. Draft the paper.
Your paper should be organized around your argument, not around your sources
(mediocre student papers tend to summarize their sources one after another).
Pay attention to logical connections between points. Avoid description of
material in sources unless you are analyzing the reasoning in those sources.
Isolated facts plucked from your sources do little to support your thesis.
Neither is it enough to simply quote or refer to statements in your sources
that agree with your thesis. In order to persuade the reader, you must trace
the line of reasoning by which the author arrives at these statements.
You also need to address contrary
points of view. An interesting thesis is almost always controversial. Readers
will be familiar with rival theses and counter arguments; they will expect you
to explain to them why these rival theses lack merit and why objections to your
thesis are not fatal. Weak papers deal with contrary perspectives and counter
arguments in one of three ways.
1. Some disregard
these inconvenient claims altogether (students who have done insufficient
research may not even be aware of them).
2. Some mention but do not address criticisms and rival positions, as if the purpose of doing
so is to achieve “balance”. These papers
are characterized by a “he said, she said”, “on the one hand … on the other
hand” style of writing. They typically have weak conclusions that amount to
“there are a lot of pros and cons to my position, but on the whole I agree with
it.” Note that this is not the same as concluding strongly in favour of a qualified version of your thesis, while
conceding specific ground to your critics.
3. Finally, some
papers subject rival views to polemical attacks rife with righteous
indignation, insults, dismissive labels, ad
hominem or sarcasm. You may feel strongly about your topic (or think that
your instructors expect you to), but your job in a research paper is to
criticize or refute rival positions, not to denounce them. Imagine that the
reader you are trying to persuade is open minded but skeptical. Assume that we
do not agree with your thesis but that we are open to being swayed by logic and
evidence, and that we will be unmoved (or annoyed) by emotive rhetoric, slogans
or loaded language. Avoid statements of personal opinion (“I feel…”) and
preaching. Aim to persuade (“I will
argue that…”). Your grade will be based
not on whether we are sympathetic to your thesis but by whether we think you
have made a well-crafted, well researched case for it.
7. Revise, revise,
revise! This step actually consists of 2 tasks, although they cannot be
sharply separated. The first task is to fix remaining problems in content,
structure and logic. The second is to polish the writing at the paragraph and
sentence level to eliminate grammatical and stylistic errors, awkward and
unclear writing, careless word choice, and clutter (unnecessary words and
round-about expressions). Each paragraph should address a single distinct
topic. The first sentence of the paragraph should indicate to the reader the
main idea of the paragraph, and the last sentence should make a logical link to
the next paragraph. The writing should flow. A useful strategy in revision is
to lay the draft aside for a few days, and then read it aloud. This will help
you to catch all manner of bad writing. Use spell check but do not rely on it
(it won’t catch wrong words spelled correctly—e.g. their/there, then/than).
Research FAQ
1. May I use
non-scholarly sources?
A: Of course. When we say you must use scholarly sources, we do not mean that you should not also use non-scholarly sources. The
important thing is what you use them for and how you use them. Journalistic
(newspaper, magazine, on-line journalism) sources are indispensable for timely
facts. They are, however, often lacking in context and analysis. Opinion pieces
are very useful for identifying positions and controversies, though they are
unlikely to provide fully developed arguments.
Some high-end magazine and internet journalism will also provide
excellent analysis, but sources may not be fully cited so they are no
substitute for scholarly literature. Government, consultant and NGO reports
constitute “grey literature”—sometimes scholarly in form and content, though
not peer-reviewed. On some topics these sources are very important. Grey
literature from partisan think tanks and NGOs, like opinion pieces, are helpful
in identifying arguments and will, in addition, provide citations to evidence,
statistics, and scholarly articles. Such documents should be used with caution,
however, as they are more likely than scholarly sources to use cherry-picked
data, to deploy misleading analyses, or to misrepresent cited literature. It is
always a good idea (even with peer reviewed literature, but especially with
grey literature produced by partisan or advocacy groups) to check the original
sources whenever possible.
2. How many sources
am I supposed to use?
A:As many as you
need to answer the research question in the space and time limits you have
available. Other things being equal, more sources are better than fewer, but
quality is more important than quantity. By “quality” here I am not referring
to the quality of the individual sources, but of the total selection of sources
you have consulted, in relation to the issue you are addressing. A well
researched paper may have many fewer sources in its bibliography than an
inadequately researched paper. Analyzing in depth a few rich, well selected
sources, all directly addressing a focused issue from a range of aspects and
perspectives or contributing to a single debate, will yield a far better paper
than gathering an incoherent scattering of information and opinion from a large
but haphazard selection of sources tangentially related to some nebulously
defined topic. Different kinds of topics also call for different kinds of
research. A theoretical paper might require you to analyze only a few sources,
but these sources are likely to be difficult, complex and abstract, and you
will have to take the time and effort to fully and critically engage with their
arguments. For another kind of paper you might have the task of piecing
together an account of what went on in some murky series of events. In that
case you might have to consult a large number of sources, gathering a few
concrete facts from each. As a general guideline, a 2000 word research paper
will usually call for about 5-8 major scholarly sources (including assigned
course readings).
3. How recent to my
sources have to be?
A: I depends on what you are using a particular source for.
Obviously, recent sources are needed if you are seeking information on recent
events, or if you want to know the most recent discoveries or understandings
regarding older events. If you are interested in tracing the evolution of an
issue or of thinking about an issue, older sources will be useful. Important
theoretical sources may continue to be relevant for decades. If you are writing
on a topic with a burgeoning current literature, however, readers will wonder
why you are consulting old sources. Whatever the age of your source, you need
to keep the age of the source in mind when you are referring to it. If your 30
year old source refers to “recent” events or developments, don’t you mindlessly report these as “recent”,
quoting or paraphrasing the old source!
Essay Grading
Criteria
Note: your grade
will not be calculated mechanically on the basis of this rubric. Assignments
will be graded holistically, on the basis of the overall impression they make
on the grader. These criteria will, however, provide guidance and a framework
for feedback. Generally, A papers will score 4 on all or most of these
criteria, B papers will score 3’s, C papers 2’s and D papers 1’s.
I. Overall research
1. Meager and
perfunctory; very few sources and/or sources selected haphazardly with little
or no sense of coherent relation to each other or to a well-understood topic;
very outdated sources on topics where currency is relevant and current
materials readily available.
2. Selection of
scholarly and non-scholarly sources showing familiarity with the topic, but
somewhat superficial and unfocused; sources tangential to each other or topic;
gives impression of topic vaguely conceived; a range of views may not be
represented; over-reliance on assigned readings or relevant assigned readings overlooked
3. Good coverage
of a range of kinds of sources and positions; selection gives evidence of
focused, thoughtful research
4. Thorough,
extensive research involving all kinds of sources (scholarly, journalistic,
grey literature, advocacy, etc.) forming a coherent body of literature
II. Scholarly literature—quantity [note: numbers below
refer to outside sources, not including assigned readings]
1. Nothing beyond assigned course readings
2. One outside article/chapter
3. Two or three articles/chapters
4. More than three articles/chapters
[Note: this is a rough guide; adequate quantity of sources depends
on quality of sources, how the sources are used, the focus of the paper, and
how extensive the available literature on the topic is.]
III. Scholarly literature—selection
1. Haphazard,
little impression of selection or focus; sources that are outdated or
irrelevant.
2. At least one
source directly relevant and well-chosen for the topic; lack of balance or
connections between sources suggests it is the result of a single search with
little or no follow-up.
3. Most of the
sources form a coherent set clearly relevant to the topic/angle—shows evidence
of thoughtful research.
4. Well rounded,
covering contending perspectives and range of relevant approaches, but also
well focused; shows evidence of very thoughtful multi-iteration research.
IV. Exposition of content of main source materials
1.
Confusing/confused about main point/thesis of source; merely paraphrases
abstract or quotes/paraphrases random passages.
2. Largely
descriptive and topic-focused (“this article is about/discusses…”) rather than
analytic and argument-focused (“the author argues/claims/finds that…”). Conveys
a generally correct but superficial or vague sense of the main idea. Point-by-point summary of material under
discussion; no attention to the structured relationship among points, their
relative importance (main vs. subordinate/supporting points), or their
different roles in the argument (evidence, objection, response to objection,
etc.).
3. Clearly and
correctly states the main thesis or research finding of the source. Provides some sense of the arguments or
evidence presented and the implications of the main idea for the issue at hand
(e.g., which side of a debate the article supports).
4. Exposition focuses effectively on particular
points for analysis, explained in the context of the argument as a whole and
their relation to the broader debate. Clearly and concisely conveys a
sophisticated grasp of the logic of the article: the intellectual or empirical
problem, question or debate it addresses, the main idea, thesis or finding, and
the arguments and evidence adduced in support of the main claim(s), and the
implications of the main idea for the problem; in the case of an article
reporting an empirical study, a brief but clear and cogent account of the
method(s) used sufficient for the reader to make sense of the findings.
V. Organization
1. Exposition haphazard, confusing, points
taken out of context. Lacking in structure or logical linkage between sections
and between points within sections
2. Paper organized around source materials
(discusses source A, then source B, then source C…) rather than around the
logical structure of the paper’s own argument.
3. Paper organized around its own controlling
idea (thesis). Good exposition of main point(s) and key elements and structure
of the argument in the materials under discussion. Materials contextualized or situated in
relation to one another and the logic of the argument. Exposition of a given
source occurs where it will advance the argument.
4. Organization reflects a fairly complex and
well thought out argument. Exposition of a given source occurs where it will
advance the argument, and exposition is skillfully integrated with argument.
VI. Analysis
1. No analysis,
only superficial or misleading description/ summary of the materials.
2. Underdeveloped analysis: mainly description
of reading plus opinions regarding the general topic of reading, but doesn’t
engage with the complex specifics of the arguments in the materials under
discussion. Some argument, but may be marked by non sequiturs and logical
fallacies.
3. Analysis goes beyond exposition, to
critical engagement with the arguments in the materials under discussion, as
they are related to (support, contradict, are supported by, etc.) arguments and
evidence in other materials.
4. Analysis characterized by insightful,
original and cogent critical engagement with arguments in the materials.
Evidence and arguments from different sources integrated or brought into
dialogue in a sophisticated way.
VII. Writing style
1. Writing style so rough as frequently to obscure sense.
Many grammatical errors.
2. Serviceable
but awkward, rough or careless writing. Some grammatical, spelling and
punctuation errors; frequent diction/word choice and sentence construction
problems. Uses vague or unnecessarily wordy round-about expressions.
3. Competently
written. Some vague or awkward passages and/or minor grammatical or wording
errors.
4. Fluent,
polished writing. Sentences are clear, accurate, uncluttered, economically
organized, and precisely worded. Sentences are logically ordered and linked, so
that the writing flows.
VIII. Bibliographical entries/citations
1. Garbled,
missing key information that would enable the reader to identify and locate the
item.
2. Bibliography
entries allow reader to identify the items to which they refer, but fail to
conform to proper bibliography style (e.g., entries not in alphabetic order by
author surname, information within entry not in proper order, bibliographic
information missing, extraneous bibliographic information –e.g. publisher or
url/computer search file path for scholarly journal—included).
3. Uses proper
academic bibliography style, with some minor inconsistencies or omissions.
4. Correct consistent use of a recognized scholarly style
used in the social sciences.
Note: papers that do not
address the assignment may receive an F. If there is evidence of plagiarism,
the university’s academic dishonesty policy will be invoked.
