Assignment:
Overview
This unit offers a series of seminars and workshops that will provide foundation skills and knowledge in contemporary business issues, and organisational and business practices. You will have the opportunity to develop business skills, gain knowledge of various business contexts, and examine the functions of a diverse range of organisations. You will assess the impact of environmental forces on organisations, examine risks confronting the organisation and discuss the practices adopted to overcome these, including innovation, e-commerce, knowledge management, and globalisation.
The unit will enable you to engage in discussions about the governance options for different types of organisations and discuss the contemporary processes of regionalisation, emerging new world markets, global governance and globalisation. This foundation unit will develop your business skills for potential future business consulting, and your management skills for organisational management roles.
Unit Learning Outcomes
On successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
1. Analyse the range of environmental forces, organisational structures, functions, governance and legal requirements of firms and the impact on businesses
2. Discuss the contemporary issues impacting organisations including risk, innovation, knowledge management, ecommerce and the impact on businesses
3. Investigate the cross cultural and diversity issues affecting the management of people and organisations
4. Examine the impact of regionalisation and globalisation on businesses
5. Recommend solutions to contemporary challenges facing businesses.
Business analysis
Assessment Type
Essay
Task Description
Objective
A business organisation is an individual or group of people that collaborate to achieve certain commercial goals. Some business organisations are formed to earn income for owners. Other business organisations, called nonprofits, are formed for public purposes. This is an individual assessment task in which you will examine critical issues related to business and management contexts. The objective is to gain greater understanding of the contextual factors internal and external to a business that impact on a business organisation and its decision making.
Task
This assignment is a precursor to Assessment Item 2. In Assessment Item 2 you will choose an organisation and a contextual factor from those provided in a list; you must explore the assigned contextual factor in relation to the specific organisation. PLEASE NOTE you do not choose your own organisation; you MUST choose from the list provided. Prior to discussing the specific contextual factor of interest in Assessment Item 2, Assessment Item 1 requires you to discuss the assigned business organisation in relation to the following five topics.
1. Describe the organisational structure of the business.
2. Discuss the external and internal environmental forces that impact the business.
3. Analyse the risks that currently confront the business organisation.
4. Describe the business practices decisions that the business should make to enhance organisational performance.
5. Discuss the most important functions within the business organisation that will assist it to achieve its strategy.
The format of the assessment is an essay of 1500 words (+/-10%).
PLEASE NOTE: Even though Assessment Item 1 is an individual assignment, you should form your group for Assessment Item 2 early as the organisation studied in Assessment Item 1 will be the same as the organisation for Assessment Item 2.
Referencing Style
American Psychological Association (APA)
2 Presentation and written report
Assessment Type
Group Work
Task Description
Objective
This is a group assignment that builds on the business analysis commenced in Assessment Item 1. The assignment provides students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of management and business contextual theories, concepts and models through the analysisof an existing business organisation. The assignment requires you to analyse the current situation and suggest practical and probable solutions to improve organisational performance. The secondary purpose of this assignment is to give you the opportunity to collaboratively apply your research, analysis, critical thinking and oral communication skills, particularly the ability to present a business analysis. You should adopt the perspective of a group of professional consultants providing strategic advice to the CEO, manager, or Board of Directors of the business organisation.
Task
You must be enrolled in a specific campus tutorial group by the beginning of week 4, no changes to tutorial groups will be allowed after groups have been formed. NOT MORE than seven groups of students per tutorial will be formed during classes in Week 4; these groups must be recorded on the unit Moodle site. Groups will be provided with information about a specific contextual factor from Topics 6-11 relevant to an existing business organisation. Your group will choose the organisation and its corresponding contextual factor from the list provided on Moodle. Please choose your contextual factor and corresponding organisation from the list provided based either on the contextual factor of interest to you or the week when you would like to do your in-class presentation. Distance students, please note that your presentation will be done via Zoom with the primary unit coordinator in the week corresponding the chosen topic. Whilst the presentations will be done in class on a weekly basis the report that relates to the presentation is due in Week 12 regardless of which week you presented.
The contextual factors that will be examined in the presentation and report are:
- Governance Options and Issues
- Innovation and Entrepreneurship Issues
- Knowledge Management and eCommerce Issues
- Regional Economic Issues
- Globalisation Issues
- Cross Cultural Management Issues
This is a group task that requires you to do a formal presentation of not more than 5 minutes per student. However, the total presentation time should be not more than 20 minutes. So if there are 5 students in your group, the presentation must still be no more than 20 minutes in length. The presentation should consist of referenced slides that are narrated; every member of the group must present on the nominated day. Both the PowerPoint slides, and a reference list are to be uploaded to Moodle the day of your presentation. Only one member of your group needs to do this.
In addition to the presentation you are to write a report that summaries the main content of the presentation. A minimum of 12-16 academic sources must be used to further research and investigate the business organisation and contextual factor. You are to assess the impact of the contextual factor, identify the critical issues and generate a series of appropriate recommendations that will enhance the performance of the specific business organisation. You only need to submit one report per group on Moodle. Your report should take into account feedback that was given on the presentation.
You are also required to provide peer evaluation and feedback to each of the other groups in your tutorial class. In addition, you must recommend solutions to contemporary challenges facing the business discussed in each presentation that is done by other groups in your tutorial class. This will be done in class from weeks 6-11; therefore you must attend the presentations of every group in your tutorial class. The evaluation, feedback and recommendation provided each week will comprise 6 of the 30 marks for this assessment item; this is one mark per week. You will be provided with a form to complete each week and this will be collected at the end of the tutorial. This is an individual mark and will be added to the final mark for this assessment item.