Assessment 2: Case Study
Due date: Week 7
Group/individual: Individual
Word count/Time provided: 2500 words
Weighting: 40%
Unit Learning Outcomes: [ULO1], [ULO2], [ULO3], [ULO4]
Assessment 2 Detail
In this case analysis, you need to identify an issue in business ethics and/or sustainability and demonstrate your understanding of the discipline by evaluating your recommendations. You can choose a case study among 5 case studies in Week 3 folder.
The case studies are provided in the Week 3 folder in the Reading, Slides and other Resources section.
Plagiarised assignments will not be tolerated.
You need to consider a significant business ethics and/or sustainability issue. Do not consider multiple issues as it will degrade the quality of work. You need to consider yourself being a consultant helping with the issue. Your lecturer is looking for creative solutions proposed by groups.
Examples of issues could be:
• Corporate Social Responsibility and stakeholders
• Managing ethical issues
• Ethical decision making
• The role of corporate culture and ethical decision making
• Ethics auditing
• Ethical leadership
Students will need to collect data from actual organisations and/or secondary sources. Valid sources for obtaining such data may include:
• Visits to the case company and interviewing key personnel (if you choose to do this, interview questions should be included in appendices).
• Secondary data from online (it should be reliable and valid online data sources such as data from other research publications, databases and so on. (WIKIPEDIA is not a suitable one)
• Company’s annual/quarterly reports
• Related business strategy management articles and news.
Structure and format of the report (Assessment 2)
Introduction
The introduction should include background to the case study and an introduce the topic you are researching, and its importance followed by the case study objective and then the implications. More specifically- Introduction section shall include what are you doing? Why (importance)? How (short methodology within 2-3 lines)? What are the contributions (to managers, literature)?
Literature review
Review the literature on the topic you are researching. Review of journal articles is preferred. Please make sure that your literature review reflects the understanding of business strategy management concepts for the purpose of applying them and the application of theoretical concepts. More specifically you need to write about the topic of your interest and relevant concepts based on previous studies. You need to mention what previous studies have investigated? What previous studies were not investigated (Research gap)? What could be done? How your study addresses the gaps in the previous studies?
Methods
Here you explain the methodology or sources of data/information and how do you collect. You should also describe the type of data (qualitative or quantitative) and how collected data can be useful. You can collect data from a real-life organisation or using secondary sources. You can also use some database such as Scopus, google scholar, science direct and so on if you collect data from secondary sources. In these databases, you can find lot of published papers with their own data; you can use them but must be cited. Please make sure that your method reflects the development of feasible and effective solutions to address the complex issue(s).
Structure and format the case study findings and analysis
Provide a description of the organisation in the case study (1/2 page). Then critically evaluate the ethics and/or sustainability issue in the light of the literature and discuss the recommendations. Please make sure that your evaluation reflects the theoretical concepts underpinning the discipline of business ethics. Also make that your evaluation reflects the originality of potential solutions. (New techniques, knowledge, applications and management practice). Further, your evaluation shall reflect justification for innovative ideas and processes.
Conclusion
You need to discuss your findings and how the findings can be helpful for the business and what are the risks for implementation. You should also discuss if there any limitation of the study. Conclusion opens with a summary of the report and then considers the consequences of the suggestions. No new material should be introduced in this section.
Appendices (if any) Your appendices may contain, for example, detailed tables of data, details of how you did a calculation, interview records if included, or photographs if of some interest.
References: The project is directed at the collection and analysis of data, if you use material from another source then references it properly. You need to cite 10-15 references from journal, report and so on. A video link for referencing style (Harvard referencing style) is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iueqJ78iAwk
Other important notes:
• Use Font 12 Times new roman with 1.5 spacing, single column, justified and 2.5 cm margin in all four sides for the report body and submit a Microsoft Word file.
• All assignments must include a group cover sheet which is downloadable from APIC website.
• While your experience and views are the essential components of your assignments, the appropriate use of literature is required to provide evidence-based suggestions.
• You should include a list of all references you use in writing your assignments. Note that all assignments will be checked for originality (similarities to existing sources) on Turnitin. You should follow instruction of your lecture for attaching Turnitin report with your assignment.
The criteria to assess your work will take into account:
• Relevance of your answer to the question or task set
• Clarity of expression
• Creativity/innovation
• Citations beyond the given subject material
• Logical planning and sequence
• Appropriate written and presentation of the work.
• The assessment for individual group members may be moderated by students' peer assessment (evaluating the performance of each group member).
In completing this assessment successfully, you will be able to effectively to design and apply the knowledge, tools and techniques required to build better strategies in organisational context.