What guidelines exist for volume of evidence in an undergraduate business assignment?
Context: my Bachelors degree was in Management and Electrical Engineering (double major).  Though it was several decades ago, I think I understand your field and setting.  My current PhD field is Computational Social Science and it includes some Organization Science.

I agree with your general intuitions, and the 80/20 ratio seems reasonable but I would definitely not be presenting that as a rule or even as a guideline. Instead, I would say that the nature of the paper and the arguments should dictate the use of evidence and citations.

Papers that analyze foundational ideas might only have one or two citations -- the original seminal papers.  But there might be so many ideas in those papers that the student should devote considerable space to examining them.

In contrast, papers that summarize or survey a sub-field will have a very high number of citations and quotes from the research literature.  The students task is to present the survey as a cohesive whole (if it is one) and to show how the various lines of research tie together or diverge.

Rather than focus on citations, I think its better to focus students on the principles of argumentation -- with analogies to legal arguments and formal debates.  Too often students will believe that their points are "obvious" and "common sense", or maybe "best practice", and thus requires no justification or support from evidence.  Disabuse them of those notions through Socratic questioning: "How do you know that?  Why do you believe that?  How would you persuade someone who holds the opposite view?" and so on.

Once their argument has a structure, they can begin assembling evidence to support it and defend it from criticisms. That evidence might come from published research or other sources.  But they shouldn't include any citations where they do not need support.  They also need to consider the credibility and relevance of the evidence.  No matter how authoritative a citation might be, it shouldn't be included if it is not highly relevant to the student's argument.

Here's a test that students can apply after they have written their paper, in a final edit pass:


For each citation or piece of evidence, ask:

Would my argument be weakened if I removed this?
Can I replace this with stronger evidence?

For each point in the argument or assertion, ask:

Is this adequately supported with evidence or citations from the literature?
Is the evidence and support both credible and relevant?

Have I, as author, fulfilled my role in this paper, given the nature and goals of the assignment?


Hope this helps!