Vast majority of Business students in UK are required to take real company and write a report on it. Others choose to write their dissertation on the specific company. If you are one those students – please spend 2 minutes to read this section – it will really help you.

1. Choose big companies such as British Airways, Tesco, Amazon.com, Marks and Spencer, McDonald’s and etc. the reason why it is very important to choose big company is because you will find a lot of information on them and it is very easy for you to write.
2. One of the best ideas in choosing the company is to get the book by Johnson and Scholes (Exploring Corporate Strategy. 6^th edition). Half of this book is dedicated to various case studies and if you will choose one of the companies from those case studies – you will already get an idea of what is the company about, what were the problems and what is the current state. You’ll save yourself a lot of time, believe me.
3. Don’t ever choose the “corner shop” or small company you used to work for. It may seem very attractive at the first sight – however as you go along you will face severe difficulties in findings information.
4. Don’t choose military or governmental organisations – usually they are highly secretive and again, you would not find much of the information on them.
5. In cases when you need to give the name of the company to your tutor – do some information research before you select the company. Sometimes spending 30 minutes doing research will save you a degree.
6. OK, now the company is selected. You should now visit web site such as www.mintel.com or www.keynote.co.uk to get market reports o those companies. Secondly, go to article databases such as Infotrac. Emerald, Proquest and etc to find articles on the company. Vast majority of articles will not be usually academic, but practical. Lastly, do some Google search, BBC news and, of course, visit the company’s web site.
7. When writing a company-based report you would usually be expected to concentrate on practical side rather then on theory. Good solution may be for you to give practical analysis – but refer to the theory on the appendix.
8. Also, please remember, that each company has its history, therefore when, for example, suggesting a new strategy for the company – always firstly analyse previous strategies on that organisation, because it is possible, that whatever you suggest may have already been used by the company.

Examples of 1st class company-based reports