Welcome! This Research Guide is for MBA students enrolled in BUS 5000.
Business Research @ CSULA
As a student, business research involves three broad tasks:
When researching the literature for management you are typically looking for peer reviewed or scholarly articles about processes, trends, or theories and their relation to the way companies are lead, organized, and managed as well as the business practices they employ in order to be successful. There are several databases for this type of research. Studies can be quantitative research or ones that involved data gathering and interpretation or they can be purely theoretical expositions on ideas or concepts related to management of an enterprise. These same databases also include popular articles (magazines and newspapers) as well as industry press like newsletters that explore business problems in a more practical way and can be useful for understanding a specific company or its industry. The best databases for searching the scholarly and popular literature of business are ABI Inform Global and Business Source Premier.
Researching industries and companies requires the use of many specialized databases. There are several of these including Mergent, Factiva, IBIS World, Marketline, and ValueLine. They are listed on this page as well as under the specific tabs that can guide you in these two tasks.
The resources below are useful for searching the business literature (peer reviewed articles, magazines, trade publications).
The databases below are used to find information about companies.
The databases listed below are used to find information about industries.
Use the following databases to gather data and statistics on a geographic area or product.
Great E-book that can fill in the gaps or refresh your knowledge regarding most business concepts. Excellent chapter on business analysis and valuation of companies as well as good information regarding all functional areas (marketing, strategy, accounting, financce, cis etc.)
