This page will outline some of the best places to find academic and professional resources to help you in creating an effective management proposal that aligns to your client's needs. The inclusion of research in your consultancy project is needed to understand what has already been done in business, and in knowing this, you are able to identify potentially innovative and creative solutions to your client's needs.
This page also outlines which AI tools are great for conducting research and provides some top tips when using AI for research.
So where should you start searching for good quality information? The library subscribes to the following databases, which have a business and management subject focus:
This link opens in a new windowBusiness Source Complete (sometimes known as Ebsco) is a key resource for all business and management students, it is also useful for anyone interested in finance, accounting or marketing. In this resource you will find many journal articles and trade magazines including Harvard Business Review and The Economist. You can also find company profiles, industry reports and country reports.
Help Pages on Business Source Complete
Emerald contains journal articles, ebooks and case studies covering management and accounting topics. It includes case studies on emerging markets and journal articles which are not available in Business Source Complete.
Help pages for Emerald
Explore the world's companies through expert analysis such as SWOT analyses, financial statements, case studies and articles from academic journals, trade magazines, news outlets and more.
A collection of audio-visual lectures and case studies by leading experts from commerce, industry and academia, in Business and Management.
The library also subscribes to 'bibliographic databases'. A bit like Google Scholar, these databases are designed to show you what has been published on your research area. But unlike Google Scholar, these databases only search in the best known journals and publications in academia, so the information found is high quality.
These databases are not designed to provide you with full text access (that's not their job!), but if you do find something you want to read and the "Find it at Royal Holloway" button does not work, then please request an inter-library loan. This is a free-to-use service and has a very quick turn around time.
A broad interdisciplinary indexing database, with a wide coverage of many subjects.
An index of journal articles and book reviews across a range of subjects, with coverage from 1970.
When using library databases, such as Business Source Complete or ABI Inform, there are some things you should know to make searching quicker and more effective.
Library resources do not work well with natural language, so typing in your consultancy project title into the search bar will not be the best way to find relevant resources. Instead you need to identify key areas you are going to be focussing on in your consultancy report and search for those instead. In the boxes below, there are some tips and a video about how to search using library resources.
Most databases are not intelligent, they will just search for exactly what you type in. Truncation and wildcard symbols enable you to overcome this limitation. These search techniques find information on similar words by replacing part of the word with a symbol usually a * or ?.
In truncation the end of the word is replaced. For example theat* will find results including the words theatre, theater, theatric, theatrical and so on.
In wildcard searching, single letters from inside the word are replaced with a symbol. For example wom?n will retrieve the terms woman and women.
Please note! Different databases use different symbols for truncation and wildcard searching, so use the online help option to check what is used.
> Use to: combine your search words and include synonyms
Also known as Boolean operators, search operators allow you to join terms together, widen a search or exclude terms from your search results. This means you can be more precise in locating your information. Not all databases support Boolean searching.
Please note! Check the online help screens for details of the search operators recognized by the database you are searching; some use symbols instead of words, e.g. + or &.
> Use to: make your search more specific
Phrase searching is a technique that narrows your search down by searching for an exact phrase or sentence. It is particularly useful when searching for a title or a quotation. Usually speech marks are used to connect the words together. For example “Power transition theory” will find results which contain that phrase. Some search tools may use (brackets) or 'single quote marks' rather than speech marks so check the online help.
Focusing a search by date, language or document type
There are many ways to focus your search and all databases offer different ways of doing this. Check the help facilities if the options are not immediately obvious. Some of the ways of limiting your search are as follows:
Date of publication
Language
Place of publication
Publication type
Age groups
Type of material e.g. chapters in books, review articles, book reviews
“Cited reference” / “cited by” / “times cited” search
When you find a useful article or book, looking at its bibliography will give you information about other, older, books and articles on your research topic. Some databases also allow you to search for literature which has cited the article or book you have found. This can give you useful leads on more recent research on the same topic. There is no standard name for this type of search; depending on which database you are searching it may be referred to as“Cited reference” or “cited by” or “times cited”.
There are so many generative AI tools out there (and more and more pop up every day!) To maximise the power of AI in researching your assignment, it is best to choose the right tool for the job. Below are some suggested AI research tools that have been designed to help in the research process.
Whilst ChatGPT, Claude and other AI chatbots are great for idea development, they are not good for finding academic information. ChatGPT, for example, has been known to 'hallucinate' sources when asked to find the user references for an assignment. In other words, it has been known to make references up. It is recommended that with using an AI tool that you evaluate and fact-check the sources it suggests.
Your library Teaching and Engagement Librarian, Leanne Workman, can help you do this, as well as help you use generative AI effectively when it is allowed in your assignments, like for this module.
Prompts are specific instructions or queries used to interact with AI tools and the effective use of prompts can make a real difference in the detail, specificity and relevance of the AI's output. In short, the better, the more specific the prompt, the better results you will get!
And do you know what? There are tools at there to help you hone your prompts! Here are just a couple:
