As an undergraduate you will be encouraged to read and cite academic journals in your business assignments.
"Why are journals so important?"
Well, your university is an academic institution. As well as providing you with your business education, your tutors and professors also write the books that you learn from. They conduct research into aspects of business and management and quite often seek to have their research presented to other academics or published in respected referees academic journals. Your university may also provide research for specific industries or companies.
Just as you would want to have the latest edition of a textbook on a subject you are studying you also ought to be aware of recent developments and research findings in a particular area you are studying. Your university library service will likely provide you with access to hundreds of journals both hardcopy and online, just for this purpose.
Even if you are not looking at the latest work, familiarizing yourself with groundbreaking or significant research on the topic can help to enhance your understanding.
"But, they are so boring!!!!!"
Well, it depends. Some of the research-focused articles in refereed academic journals can be pretty impenetrable to an undergraduate and hard-going to read. You may want to use these when researching for your dissertation or thesis.
What you may find more helpful for increasing your subject knowledge or to reference in your business assignments are trade journals or professional journals. You should find both the subject matter and the language more accessible but you can have confidence that you are using a reliable source of information.
The Harvard Business Review for example is written by some of the greatest business minds but for the use of managers rather than fellow academics. Start by reading the Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly, Sloan Management Review to broaden your knowledge and vocabulary, then maybe move on to some of the hard stuff!
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