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The BLAW-301 Research Project Resource Guide
What's On This Page
Your course requires extensive research in which you and your group will need to locate recent legal cases in which business faced problems involving these three issues:
 | Ethics |
| Globalization |
| Technology |
This guide will help you to conduct the research that will enable you to acquire the necessary materials for your group oral and written reports. It is divided into two sections. In Section One you'll find information and ideas on how to identify issues related to the three topics. Before you begin looking for cases, you should have some idea of what issues you'd like to explore. Also, it might be helpful to actually identify a legal proceeding related to the issue. For example, you might find an article from a magazine or newspaper that mentions a company involved in litigation for a specific issue. In Section Two you'll received information and ideas on retrieving specific cases from the Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe database.
Preparing the Annotated Bibliography
VERY IMPORTANT! - the annotated bibliography (and required research) is an INDIVIDUAL assignment. Each student submits his or her own bibliography.
Two documents have been prepared to assist you. The first is prepared by Steven Bell, Director of Gutman Library. It has instructions and provides an example of what the finished annotated bibliography should look like and the information it should provide. There are also two annotated bibliography examples completed by former B421 students. These two examples demonstrate outstanding work. If you examine these sample bibliographies prepared by other students and use them as a model (pay attention to the multiple databases used to prepare the bibliography) then you should have no difficulty compiling your bibliography.
Steven Bell's annotated bibliography instructions and examples
Former B421 student's annotated bibliography - Example One
Former B421 student's annotated bibliography - Example two
Section One
Here are suggestions for getting started with each of the three topics:
Part One - Researching for Topics
All three of the topics are extremely broad. Before trying to find a case about ethics, technology or globalization, students who have previously conducted this research have found it helpful to identify issues around which a legal case might be based. For example, illegally opening private communications, discrimination or harassment in the workplace, using technology inappropriately, intentional misuse of corporate funds, or exploiting laborers in third world countries are all possible examples that might be related to legal actions. The ABI/Inform database can help to identify articles related to these topics, and even help you to get a better sense of the possible ethical, technological, and globalization issues that arise in the business world.
Step One - Use the Topic Guide
Proceed to the ABI/Inform database, part of the ProQuest system. Click on the tab (shown below) that reads Topic Guide. Use the topic guide as a starting point to explore topics that are related to ethical issues in the field of business. When you click on Topic Guide in the previous sentence it will link you to a page that contains instructions on how to use the Topic Guide (shown in part below). GO TO the screenshots that will illustrate how to use the Topic Guide
Step Two - Search Topics Directly
Another way to locate possible topics or cases is to search the ABI/Inform directly using appropriate search terms (which you may get from readings in your text or from articles found via the Topic Guide).
This example will use a topic related to ethics and technology, the issues related to the use of e-mail in the workplace. The ultimate goal will be to use information gathered in ABI/Inform to prepare for a search in Lexis/Nexis, where you will search for actual court cases related to the topic.
In this example, again illustrated with screenshots. GO TO the screenshots page to see an example of using ABI/Inform to identify useful articles.
While this tutorial recommends a search in ProQuest's ABI database, you may also want to search in Lexis/Nexis (general or business news) or WilsonWeb (Business Database) to gather additional or different information.
Step Three - Using Emerald To Locate Additional Information
Emerald is a full-text electronic journal collection. It contains the full text for every article published in Emerald journals. There are over 100 journals in the Emerald collection and most of them focus on business issues. The articles are more scholarly in nature, and tend to have a UK quality to them since Emerald is based in the United Kingdom.
Emerald has an internal search system. You can see an example of how to conduct a search on a topic related to the B421 research on the page that contains screenshots. GO TO the screenshots page to see the search example.
Step Four - Locating Books With WorldCat
You need to find at least two books related to your topic for your initial bibliography. You don't necessarily need to obtain those books - though you can certainly do so with WorldCat. WorldCat is a database that had information about books that are found in libraries throughout the world. It literally contains information on all the books in all the catalogs of most libraries in the United States. Therefore it is a comprehensive resource for locating books.
If you locate a book of interest in WorldCat and you wish to get that book you have a few options.
1. The book may be owned by Philadelphia University. If you
see this icon: 
in any record in WorldCat, that mean the book is owned by the Paul J. Gutman
Library.
2. If you find a book of interest but it appears that
Philadelphia University doesn't own it, you can make an interlibrary loan
request directly with First Search. Just scroll to the top of the search screen
and look for this icon:
which allows you to submit
a request for Gutman Library to obtain the book for you, which takes about 5-7
working days.
3. Once you have the citation (author, title, year, publisher, etc) for any book, you can also place your own interlibrary loan using our EZ-Borrow service. We have a web page with more details about EZ-Borrow.
4. Remember that do request an interlibrary loan request or to use EZ-Borrow you must have a library barcode (usually on you ID card). If you don't have one, it is easy to get - just stop by the library's circulation desk.
5. Searching WorldCat: Now you are ready to actually find some books in WorldCat. GO TO the screenshots page for examples and instructions.
Section Two
Step One - Searching For Legal Cases in Lexis/Nexis Academic Universe
Once you have completed your search for articles you will next want to find some legal cases related to your topic. For this step we'll use Lexis/Nexis, which is our primary database for searching and retrieving legal cases from a variety of courts. You can use Lexis/Nexis to find state, federal, or Supreme Court cases.
This example is also illustrated with screenshots. GO TO the screenshots page to see an example of using Lexis/Nexis to search and retrieve court cases.