Evaluating an Organizational Initiative

[WLOs: 1, 2, 3] [CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Prior to beginning work on this assignment, review Chapter 13: Introduction to Optimization Modeling and Chapter 14: Optimization Models.

Now is the time to celebrate what you have learned in the course and apply it in practice. Imagine you are a business analyst who is writing an article for Forbes magazine evaluating a recent initiative by a prominent organization of your choice and the data-based decision-making processes they implemented. Your editor has asked you to include the below bullet points in your evaluation.

In your final paper,

• Select an organization.
• Describe the industry and business model.
• Examine a recent initiative that the organization implemented.
• Assess the success of the initiative.
• Describe the organization’s decision support systems and their decision-making process.
• Identify the decision support tools used by the organization to make various structured, semi-structured, and unstructured decisions.
• Outline their processes and tools the organization used following the decision tree model.
• Evaluate how their decision support system contributed to either the success or failure of the initiative.
• Assess how the organization could have approached the initiative differently to realize greater success.

The Evaluating an Organizational Initiative final paper

• Must be five to six double-spaced pages in length (not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA Style (Links to an external site.) as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA Formatting for Microsoft Word (Links to an external site.) resource.
• Must include a separate title page with the following:
  • Title of paper in bold font
    • Space should appear between the title and the rest of the information on the title page.
  • Student’s name
  • Name of institution (The University of Arizona Global Campus)
  • Course name and number
  • Instructor’s name
  • Due date
• Must utilize academic voice. See the Academic Voice (Links to an external site.) resource for additional guidance.
• Must include an introduction and conclusion paragraph. Your introduction paragraph needs to end with a clear thesis statement that indicates the purpose of your paper.
  • For assistance on writing Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) and Writing a Thesis Statement (Links to an external site.), refer to the Writing Center resources.
• Must use at least two scholarly sources in addition to the course text.
  • The Scholarly, Peer-Reviewed, and Other Credible Sources (Links to an external site.) table offers additional guidance on appropriate source types. If you have questions about whether a specific source is appropriate for this assignment, please contact your instructor. Your instructor has the final say about the appropriateness of a specific source.
  • To assist you in completing the research required for this assignment, view Quick and Easy Library Research (Links to an external site.) tutorial, which introduces the University of Arizona Global Campus Library and the research process, and provides some library search tips.
• Must document any information used from sources in APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.) guide.
• Must include a separate references page that is formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. See the APA: Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) resource in the Writing Center for specifications.

Carefully review the Grading Rubric (Links to an external site.) for the criteria that will be used to evaluate your assignment.