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MGT 201 - O'Neal: Library Databases and Internet Sources

This Guide will help you find material to complete your organizational structure assignment.

Business Databases at TMCC and Internet Sources

A place to start may be a general Internet search. A Website that keeps coming up in corporate culture searches is panmore.com.  This site has some very concise descriptions of corporate cultures for various companies.

  • Amazon's entry states that Amazon's "corporate culture pushes employees to go beyond traditional limits and conventions to develop bright ideas and solutions." This suggests organic structure.
  • General Electric's entry speaks to their "generic strategy" for success, which suggests a generalized strategy to suit a large conglomerate and various divisions.

Search the library databases to find articles and information about your company and its corporate culture and structure:

Search these databases for [company name] AND "corporate culture." Use the advanced search option to force your company to be in the Company/organization-ORG field (in ABI/Inform) or the CO Company Entity field in EBSCO. That tells the database to find articles about the specific company you are searching.

In the results list, select an article and then search the full text in the article using Ctrl+F or Command+F to find your company name.

ABI Search Screen

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EBSCO Advanced Search Screen

Perhaps limit the results to the last ten years to keep the results fresh. I found the 2000 Amazon article and stuff about GE from the 1990s, which is way to old for this assignment.

You will hopefully find helpful material, such as Careers: Workers Get New Tools For Airing Their Gripes about Amazon's culture or Grading GE's Turnaround Plan about General Electric.

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Another option to find information about a company's structure or culture might be in EBSCO, Business Source Elite Company Profiles database:

  1. At the top of the page in Business Source Elite, click the Company Profiles link: 
  2. Type the name of your company in the search box, and scan the results to find it (if the company is in the database). Useful sections include Company Overview, Business Description, and History. Your company will not necessarily be the first result listed: