ASSIGNMENT ONE
Worth: 35%
Length: 6 Pages Maximum
Due Date: Week 7-8/Check subject guide for exact time and requirements.
Task: Students are to choose a real organisational case illustrating questionable organisational and management practices that have been critiqued in the public spaces. Examples include companies, such as BP, Toyota, WorldCom, VW; government agencies such as the Wheat Board, Wollongong Council planning approval; non-profits, e.g. Health Union, FIFA, Essendon Football Club. Students can choose a case from their home country as long as it represents questionable management practices and has been under public scrutiny.
Students are then to analyse the reasons for these questionable organisational and management practices including an analysis of the judgements made by leaders/managers of these organisations via organisation theories discussed in class (see list below). How accountable do you see have managers and leaders of the chosen organisation been in their actions and decisions?
Based on their analysis, students are then to develop high-level recommendations to the management/leaders of the chosen organisation how to change these practices. These recommendations need to be written in a form that persuades for the need for changes and they need to be based on one of the alternative/future approaches to organisation theory and practice discussed in class. This section should be seen as part of a dialogue you are trying to open with the organisation and its leadership. Students are strongly advised to avoid simplistic recommendations and ‘quick fix’ solutions, as these are not realistic.
In their analysis, students must draw two different Organisation Theory lenses from different Organisation Theory lenses from the following list of Organisation Theory perspectives discussed in class:
- Agency Theory
- Institutional theory
- Bureaucracy
- Control
- Stakeholder Theory
- Power and Politics
- Ethical & moral dimensions of Organisation Theories
- Approaches on employee co-ownership and commons
- Organisational culture
- Stewardship.
The report must be structured in three parts:
- Executive summary: approx. ½ page.
- Background: approx. ½ page. Briefly describe the chosen organisation and what questionable practices you are discussing. Briefly describe the public scrutiny the organisation has found itself under.
- Issues identified and analysis: approx. 2.5 pages. Provide an analysis on the reasons for these questionable organisation and management practices including an analysis of the judgements made by leaders/managers of these organisations via two Organisation theory perspectives discussed in class. Discuss how these perspectives explain the identified management/organisational issues and the implications from the application of the theory. Here students must illustrate their deepening personal and critical awareness of management and organisational practices and how theoretical lenses in the literature can illuminate these practices.
- High-level recommendations: approx. 1 to 1.5 pages. Develop high-level recommendations to the management/leaders of the chosen organisation how to change these practices based on your analysis in the previous. In doing so, students need to choose one Organisation Theory perspective from the list above to develop and support their recommendations. These recommendations need to be written in a form that persuades for the need for changes. This section should be seen as part of a dialogue you are trying to open with the organisation and its leadership. Students are strongly advised to avoid simplistic recommendations and ‘quick fix’ solutions, as these are not realistic.
- Conclusion: approx. ½ page. Summarise your arguments and insights. Outline questions for the organisation related to its responsibilities and role in society.
Formal requirements for Assessment 1:
- Use 1.5 spacing
- Ensure page numbers are used
- Use 12 point font (Times or Arial)
- Use the Harvard method of referencing.
- Page set up: use the standard margin format in Word.
- Include a reference list at the end of your report (i.e., a listing of all in-text references that you have cited – and not a bibliography).
- Do NOT use bullet points. Use full sentences.
- You must submit your report to Turnitin/UTS Online following the link provided to your specific tutorial. This process will be explained in the tutorials.
| MARKING CRITERIA | Weighting |
| Demonstration of academic and research skills Written expression, including sentence structure, paragraphing, grammar and layout. | 7 |
| Substantive content Accuracy of information/data relevant to the topic. Awareness of the strengths and weaknesses of different reference materials as a basis for argument/evidence. | 10 |
| Persuasive Argument Analysis of the situation + Critical analysis of competing ideas and assessment of implications. | 12 |
| Conclusions and recommendations Ability to construct plausible and coherent conclusion and recommendations. | 6 |
| TOTAL MARKS | 35 |
Tips on writing this report (in addition to the guide on writing persuasive essays available on UTS Online and other online materials on essay writing):
- The focus of the report is on critically discussing organisational and management practices with the help of Organisation Theories.
- You need to do some reading on the Organisation Theory lenses (start with your text book, look up the foot notes, use our lecture materials, find and read other relevant articles). Do not rely solely on your textbook. Higher grades will be achieved by doing original research and incorporating insights and analysis from other high quality academic papers.
- Based on your reading, you then need to critically discuss and assess the organisational and management practices of your selected organisation. The focus is on developing skills to analyse and assess organisational and management practices and develop realistic high-level recommendations, referring to academic articles, and then using the selected organisation to provide illustrations/examples.
