Time for requesting changes : Standard 7 days

Paper instructions : NOTE: The guidance offered below is linked to the five generic assessment criteria overleaf.

1. Engagement with Literature Skills

Your work must be informed and supported by scholarly material that is relevant to and focused on the task(s)

set; you should make use of scholarly reviews and primary sources, as appropriate (for example, refereed

research articles and/or original materials appropriate to the discipline). You should provide evidence that

you have accessed a wide range of sources, which may be academic, governmental and industrial; these

sources may include academic journal articles, textbooks, current news articles, organisational documents,

and websites. You should consider the credibility of your sources; academic journals are normally highly

credible sources while websites require careful consideration/selection and should be used sparingly. Any

sources you use should be current and up-to-date, mostly published within the last five years or so, though

seminal/important works in the field may be older. You must provide evidence of your research/own reading

throughout your work, using correctly a suitable referencing system, including in-text citations in the main

body of your work and a reference list at the end of your work.

Guidance specific to this assessment: The goal here is to engage with credible and relevant literature.

You should be able to demonstrate a wide level of reading from sources such as textbooks, academic journals

and academic-based websites.

2. Knowledge and Understanding Skills

At level 7, you should be able to demonstrate a systematic understanding of knowledge, and a critical

awareness of current problems and/or new insights, much of which is at, or informed by, the forefront of your

academic discipline, field of study or area of professional practice, with a comprehensive understanding of

techniques applicable to your own research or advanced scholarship. Your work must demonstrate your

growing mastery of these concepts, principles, current challenges, innovation and insights associated with

the subject area. Knowledge relates to the facts, information and skills you have acquired through your

learning. You demonstrate your understanding by interpreting the meaning of the facts and information

(knowledge). This means that you need to select and include in your work the contemporary concepts,

techniques, models, theories, etc. appropriate to the task(s) set. You should be able to explain the theories,

concepts, etc. meaningfully to show your understanding. Your mark/grade will also depend upon the extent

to which you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding; ideally each should be complete and detailed,

with comprehensive coverage.

Guidance specific to this assessment: You should demonstrate a systematic understanding of key

strategic management concepts and principles, and how these may be applied to your chosen organisation.

3. Cognitive and Intellectual Skills

You should be able to: evaluate critically current research and advanced scholarship in the discipline;

evaluate methodologies and develop critiques of them and, where appropriate, to propose new hypotheses;

deal with complex issues both systematically and creatively to make sound judgements in the absence of

complete data. Your work must contain evidence of logical, analytical thinking, evaluation and synthesis. For

example, to examine and break information down into parts, make inferences, compile, compare and contrast

information. This means not just describing what! But also justifying: Why? How? When? Who? Where? At

what cost? At all times, you must provide justification for your arguments and judgements. Evidence that

you have reflected upon the ideas of experts within the subject area is crucial to you providing a reasoned

and informed debate within your work. Your choice of methodologies to gather data and information must

be rigorously defended. Furthermore, you should provide evidence that you are able to make sound

judgements and convincing arguments using data and concepts. Sound, valid, persuasive conclusions are

necessary and must be derived from the content of your work. Where relevant, alternative solutions and

recommendations may be proposed.

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Guidance specific to this assessment: Here your aim is to pause and reflect on the key issues raised by

your strategic analysis. We do not simply describe. Rather, we dig in and explore current research and

scholarship in the sector-specific context of our organisation.

4. Practical Skills

At level 7, you should be able to demonstrate originality in the application of knowledge, together with a

practical understanding of how established techniques of research and enquiry are used to create and

interpret knowledge in the discipline. This includes acting autonomously in planning and implementing tasks

at a professional or equivalent level, originality in tackling and solving problems, and decision-making in

complex and unpredictable contexts or situations.

You should be able to demonstrate mastery of the leading edge subject-related concepts and ideas as they

relate to real world situations and/or particular contexts. How do they work in practice? You will deploy

models, methods, techniques, and/or theories, in those contexts or circumstances, to assess current

situations, perhaps to formulate plans or plausible, justifiable recommendations to solve problems, or to

propose new models, or to create artefacts, which may be innovative and creative, thereby demonstrating

your understanding of how the boundaries of knowledge are advanced through research and/or application.

This is likely to involve, for instance, the use of real world artefacts, examples and cases, the application of

a model within an organisation and/or benchmarking one theory or organisation against others.

Guidance specific to this assessment: At such a challenging period in history the imaginative and

innovative exploration of practical solutions is a boost to any organisation. What does best practice look like

for your organisation? Who are the cutting-edge thinkers and how can we learn their lessons?

5. Transferable Skills for Life and Professional Practice

Your work must provide evidence of the qualities and transferable skills necessary for postgraduate-level

employment in circumstances requiring sound judgement, personal responsibility and initiative in complex

and unpredictable professional environments. This includes demonstrating: the independent learning ability

for continuing professional development to advance existing skills and acquire new competences of a

professional nature that will enable you to assume significant responsibility within organisations; that you can

initiate and complete tasks, projects and procedures, whether individually and/or collaboratively, to a

professional level; that you can use appropriate media to effectively communicate information, arguments

and analysis in a variety of forms for a variety of audiences; fluency of expression; clarity and effectiveness

in presentation and organisation. Work should be coherent and well-structured in presentation and

organisation.

Guidance specific to this assessment: Your final report must be accurate, exceptionally coherent, very

fluent and presented well. It should be written in a formal style in the third person using Times New Roman

or Arial font 12 with at least 2.5 cm space at each edge, double spaced and page numbers entered. The

report should be in business format, with a clear title page with course and name or ID number, a contents

page, executive summary, introduction, main findings, conclusions, recommendations, references and if

appropriate, appendices.

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Additional Generic Guidelines for Completion of the Assignment

Word limit – 5,000 words allowing for a margin of +/- 10%. Marks will be deducted for

exceeding the word limit and your tutor might stop reading/grading beyond this limit.

Demonstrate a wide level of relevant reading and research from a variety of sources

(minimum of 50 references).

When either quoting directly or taking ideas from something you have read you must

accurately reference using the Harvard Referencing System both in the main body as well

as full details of all references used provided in the reference list. Guidance with regard to

this system is also available in the Student Toolkit on Canvas. You should note that

quotations count against the word limit for MBA and that you are required to use quotation

marks when quoting directly, so that when your script is being assessed by the plagiarism

software, Urkund, it is clear you have acknowledged that the text is a quotation.

No permission is required for quoting a fellow student’s forum post(s) in your assignment.

However, permission would be required if you intend to quote it elsewhere, e.g. outside the

MBA website, in your blog or in any external source e.g. a report or journal paper. In such

cases you would seek permission or quote it anonymously and would omit any text that

might identify the poster such as name, employer name or other obvious identifiers. It is

perhaps more appropriate that you maintain the confidentiality of any contributions that

others make in your MBA ‘learning environment’ so that you can openly benefit from each

other’s insight.

Assignments should be word-processed using Times New Roman or Arial 12-point type

with 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing.

Your student number should be inserted as a header or footer together with the date of

submission. Also ensure that the module code is included in either the header or footer of

work submitted and that the document is saved in Word.

Avoid use of the first person such as ‘I’ and ‘we’ and ensure the assignment is

professionally presented with no spelling or careless grammatical errors.

The assignment should be submitted via the Assignment Submission link on Canvas on the

day of submission. Your tutor will collect your assignment from this system. Once graded

and feedback comments written, your marked assignment will be available for your review

on Canvas