Reference no: EM133475106

Homework: Advanced Accounting- Research Tracker & Bibliographic Report

General Information:

Project Objective: Create an annotated bibliographic report to meet an homework from your supervisor after first creating and using a research tracker. There are two separate deliverables required for this activity.

Why Are We Doing This?: In addition to assessing your performance in this course, this homework will be used to assess the accounting program's achievement of program outcomes for the Information Literacy (INFO) Core Learning Area (CLA), as described in the University's Program Assessment Plan. The INFO CLA is defined as follows: demonstrate an ability to use libraries and other information resources to effectively locate, select, and evaluate needed information. The accounting program outcomes are defined as the ability to research accounting information to solve business problems and improve decision making.

Learning Objective: Demonstrate the ability to use academic and professional databases to research and support recommendations on emerging accounting issues.

Task

Overview: We learn about a variety of topics in ACCT 424 Advanced Accounting, including the very important topic of accounting for business mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In addition to the "debit and credits" of M&A there is a host of activities an accountant would be involved in if they get involved in M&A in practice. One such activity is that of Due Diligence. By performing this activity, you will not only accomplish required learning objectives, you will also develop an understanding of what Due Diligence is, a very important topic to have knowledge about in practice.

The Scenario: Place yourself in the role of a new team member at an organization that's just begun the process of negotiating being acquired by another company. Your team lead has come to you and your co-workers and told you that in a month's time the other company will be starting the process of Due Diligence, and your team is going to need to be involved in those efforts. Well, your company has never been bought out before, so this whole process is new to everyone, including this Due Diligence thing.

Since your team lead knows you successfully completed Advanced Accounting at UMUC, she knows you're the best of the best and as such she assigns you the task of researching Due Diligence within the context of M&A, and wants you to report back to the team with two specific deliverables: a Research Tracker and an Annotated Bibliography.

Part 1: The Research Tracker

A Research Tracker is a straight forward activity that can be thought of as something that simply "tells the story" of your thought process and logic used in finding information on a subject. In our case, that subject is going to be Due Diligence within M&A. Your requirement for the Research Tracker deliverable will be to research the subject of Due Diligence within M&A and create a basic Research Tracker to report on your results. The submitted deliverable should take the form of a chart created in Word or Excel that "tells the story" of your research efforts.

Part 2: An Annotated Bibliography

An Annotated Bibliography is a simple report that gives a summary of key items of interest related to a topic. The purpose of annotations is to provide the reader with a summary and an evaluation of each source. An Annotated Bibliography is not a report on a subject, it is simply a review of literature or websites found relating to a topic.