PREPARING FOR YOUR COUNTRY RISK ANALYSIS REPORT
You are a partner of a company in Portland, Oregon. Cu
ently, your company is looking to market outside the US. You've na
owed it down to one country and ready to perform a country risk assessment (CRA) for that country.
A CRA as a screening tool that is used by businesses, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), even governments to assess risk of any country based on the political and economic situations and its legal system. The information that is needed (for CRA) depend on the business and the length of investment.
You can use a method called the PESTEL analysis to perform the risk assessment. PESTEL is short for Politics, Economic, Socio-cultural, Technology, Environmental and Legal.
For your term project, you are going to prepare a risk analysis report and not an informational report. You can read the details in the assignments tool, click the link Country Risk Analysis.
I will go over what an analysis report is and what the report should cover and how the report
INFORMATIONAL VERSUS ANALYTICAL REPORT
What are the differences between an informational versus analytical report? Please refer to the table below.[footnoteRef:1] [1: Smith, “Unit 37.”]
VIDEOS
Video: You can also watch this video on what business report is.
Video: How to structure academic writing
YOUR REPORT LAYOUT/STRUCTURE
Your report is going to be distributed internally within your company, it is considered an informal report. A formal report is usually distributed to the public or the media such as annual reports or scholarly articles.[footnoteRef:2] [2: Smith, “Unit 41.”]
Your report should contain three parts: 1) An Introduction (also called Front Matter), 2) Body and 3) Close (also called Back Matter).
Your introduction will cover the purpose of the report, what the report will cover including the criteria (P, E, S, T, E, or L) that you are selecting.
Your “Findings” will have information that are relevant to your analysis. You will need to be selective, through your research you may find information to be interesting but they may not be relevant to your analysis. One example, you find that the Vietnamese government strictly control what can be published in the media and have jailed people who are critical of government. Although this information is interesting; the important question that you should consider, is this information relevant in your risk evaluation? The answer depends on the type of business you have and the purpose of doing business in Vietnam, right.
Once you have determined that the information is relevant; the next question, how will it affect your decision? Here is one example, Let say you are working for a publishing company. The upper management is thinking of opening a
anch in Vietnam, this
anch will hire mostly local reporters and one US expatriate (from the head office). From your research earlier (the media is controlled by the government), what are the potential risks?
The last part of the report will have conclusion and recommendations; there should not be new information on this section meaning this section will contain your summary of your findings (conclusion) follow by your recommendation. Do you recommend that your company expand its business in Vietnam? If so, why or why not?
CITATIONS AND REFERENCES
Throughout the report, you will need to add your citations. What are citations? Please watch this short video on the Chicago-style citation (the BA Style Guide uses the Chicago format)[footnoteRef:3]. The BA Style Guide recommends the Notes-Bibliography format. You can use either one; the important point is providing citations when sources are used in your report. [3: Laurier Li
ary, How to Cite in Chicago Style.]
Bibliography
Smith, Jordan. “Unit 37: Report Objective: Informational and Analytical,” 2019. https:
pressbooks.senecacollege.ca
uscomm/chapte
eport-objective-informational-and-analytical/.
Smith, Jordan. “Unit 40”
Smith, Jordan. “Unit 41”
Laurier Li
ary. How to Cite in Chicago Style. Accessed July 8, 2021. https:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1J3Ky7OvJU&t=56s.
Communication @ Work by Jordan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.