Paper Guidelines for MGT Students
Your professor gave you an assignment and you don’t know how to structure the paper?
You want to have your assignment look like a professional or academic paper?
You want to gain effectiveness and use a structure that fits?
 
If you landed here, it means that you don’t know how to reach the right standards... and here is the answer to all of your questions!
 
General Setup
Software: Microsoft Word (any version is fine), LaTex, Apple Pages, RTF
Margins: 1’ up, down, left right
Font: Times New Roman (TNR) 12pt
Line spacing: Double-space
Footnotes (TNR 10 pts) must be kept to a minimum
Paper Title: TNR 12, bold, all capitalized
Section Title: TNR12, bold
Subsection Title: TNR 12, italics
 
Please remember that a good paper facilitates the reader’s understanding. In order to do that, I suggest you to divide the paper into sections and subsections every time there is a change in the topic. I also suggest you to start with the “introduction,” where you present the structure of the paper and explain the methodology used, and end with the section “conclusions,” where your opinions and critics should find room.
 
In-text Citations
Quotes must be between two quotation marks, one at the beginning and one at the end of the quotation: “...”
After the quote, you have to write between brackets the last name(s) of the author(s), the year of publication and the page number where you found that specific sentence:
  1. “rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated” (Simon, 1997, p.84).
You must cite the source of your thinking also when you refer to something that does not belong to you, as in the following examples:
  1. For Thaler and Sunstein (2008) decisions on pension plans...
  2. Recent studies on docility (Knudsen, 2003; Secchi, 2007) show that individual cognition and behavior...
 
References
At the end of the paper, you have to provide a list of sources.  The standard way to do that is the following:
 
Journal articles: Author(s) last name(s), first name initials and year of publication. Article title (capitalized) and title of the journal (italics), volume number (issue number), page numbers:
  1. Harvey, N. and I. Fischer 1997. Taking Advice: Accepting Help, Improving Judgment, and Sharing Responsibility, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 70(2), 117-133.
  2. Secchi, D. 2007. A Theory of Docile Society: The Role of Altruism in Human Behavior, Journal of the Academy of Business and Economics, VII(2), 146-160.
  3. Simon, H.A. 1993. Altruism and Economics, The American Economic Review, 83(2), 156-161.
 
Books: Author(s) last name(s), first name initials and year of publication, title of the book (italics), and publisher (please specify the city):
  1. Gabbay, D.M., P. Thagard and J. Woods (eds.) 2007. Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
  2. Wilson, R.A. 2004. Boundaries of the Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 
Book chapters (articles published in an edited book): Author(s) last name(s), first name initials and year of publication and chapter title (capitalized). Author(s) last name(s) of the book editors, first name initials and year of publication, title of the book (italics), and publisher (please specify the city), page numbers:
  1. Thagard, P. 2007. Introduction to the Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science, in D.M., Gabbay,,P. Thagard and J. Woods (eds.), Philosophy of Psychology and Cognitive Science. Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. ix-xvii.
 
Website references must be kept to a minimum; when you cannot avoid it, please be sure that the source is reliable (e.g. The Economist is reliable while Wikipedia is not).
  1. Editorial 2004. Vioxx: an unequal partnership between safety and efficacy, The Lancet 364(9442), pp.1287-1288, retrieved online at http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(04)17198-5/fulltext?_eventId=login, 12/08/2008, 12:54 PM.