HOLMES INSTITUTE

FACULTY OF

HIGHER EDUCATION

Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines
Trimester	T1 2022
Unit Code	HC1062
Unit Title	Decision Making and problem-solving
Assessment Type	Group Assessment: Group size 4 students only
Assessment Title	Report: Research Paper
Purpose of the assessment (with ULO Mapping)	Students are required to research on a real-life business and identify key management problems within that business. Students will be able to evaluate and justify theoretical and practical knowledge of researching of a business context. Students will be able to a business environment and provide solutions to these issues using their knowledge of research technology and practical techniques in a business environment. Students will be able to apply research skills analysing academic literature and integrating ideas for use in life-long learning. Students will be able to understand the research profession. Students will be able to communicate using effective oral and written communication tools, act in a professional manner. Students will be able to review and describe the major privacy, legal, ethical and societal issues with respect to managing research.
Weight	30% of the total marks
Total Marks	30
Word limit	2500 words
Due Date	Week 10 [Note: Appendix part of assessment due in week 8]
Submission Guidelines	All work must be submitted on Blackboard by the due date along with a completed Assignment Cover Page. The assignment must be in MS Word format, no spacing, 12-pt Arial font and 2 cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section headings and page numbers. Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately at the end in a reference list using Harvard referencing style.

Assignment 2 Specifications

Purpose:

In a group of 3 to 4 students, prepare a persuasive report showing how the management problem/decision should be managed. This assignment aims at ensuring that students have familiarised themselves with a general framework of at least one management related topic. Students will be required to apply relevant theoretical concepts with the use of practical examples in most cases in a written research paper.

Details:

Written report – worth 30% of your final grade and must be submitted Week 10 at 11:59pm.

Identify a multinational company.

Identify a management problem. (Note: not a market research nature).

Specify research questions which address the management problem/decision.

Design a research program.

Carry out the research.

Sourcing from ONLY secondary data.

Analyse the findings.

Identify alternatives and make recommendations to improve the performance of the organisation.

Your report is to be written as a business report. It must include;

Executive summary

Table of contents

Section headings

Paragraphing

Page numbers

Reference list at the end of the report

Holmes Adapted Harvard Referencing

Holmes has now implemented a Holmes adapted Harvard approach to referencing:

Reference sources in assignments are limited to sources which provide full text access to the source’s content for lecturers and markers.

Your Reference list is to be located on a separate page at the end of the essay and titled: References.

It should include the details of all the in-text citations, arranged alphabetically A-Z by author surname. In addition, it MUST include a hyperlink to the full text of the cited reference source.

For example;

Hawking, P., McCarthy, B. and Stein, A. 2004. Second Wave ERP Education, Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall, http://jise.org/Volume15/n3/JISEv15n3p327.pdf

All assignments will require additional in-text reference details which will consist of the surname of the author/authors or name of the authoring body, year of publication, page number of content, paragraph where the content can be found.

For example;

“The company decided to implement an enterprise wide data warehouse business intelligence strategy

(Hawking et al, 2004, p3(4)).”

Adherence to Referencing Guidelines is Mandatory

If students do not follow the above guidelines:

Students who submit assignments which do not comply with the guidelines will incur penalties.

Students whose citations are fake will be reported for academic misconduct.

HC1062 Decision making and problem solving

Marking Rubric – Written Report

	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Satisfactory	Unsatisfactory
Executive Summary (4 marks)	Clear evidence of a summary which summaries the entire report (4 marks)	Clear evidence of a summary which summarises the entire report (3 marks)	Some evidence of a summary which summarises the entire report (2marks)	Limited evidence of a summary of the entire report ( 1 mark)	No executive summary included (0 marks)
Discussion on	Demonstration of	Demonstration of	Demonstration of	Demonstration of	Demonstration of
allocated	Outstanding	very good	good knowledge of	satisfactory	little or no
general	knowledge of the	knowledge of the	the chosen topic and	knowledge of the	knowledge of
framework	chosen topic and	chosen topic and	has included minimal	chosen topic and	the chosen topic and
(8 marks)	has included	has included some	research beyond	has included no	discussion has little
	significant research	research beyond	areas covered within	research beyond	or no relevance to
	which are beyond	areas covered within	the lecture notes. (6	areas covered	the topic chosen (<4
	areas covered within	the lecture notes. (7	marks)	within the lecture	marks)
	the lecture notes. (8 marks)	marks)		notes. (4 marks)
Application of theory on Individual component discussion (8 marks)	Your interpretation of theory is accurate and insightful and has included significant research which goes beyond areas covered within the lecture notes. Identification of the author has been identified. (8 marks)	Your interpretation of theory is accurate and has some insight and included some research which goes beyond areas covered within the lecture notes. Identification of the author has been identified. (7 marks)	Your interpretation of theory somewhat accurate and has included minimal research which is beyond areas covered within the lecture notes. Identification of the author has been identified (6mrks)	interpretation of theory is very general and has included no research which is beyond areas covered within the lecture notes. Identification of the author has been identified. (4 marks)	Your interpretation of theory is missing or not relevant to the topic. No identification of the author had been given (<4 marks)
Overall presentation and quality of report (6 marks)	Report is exceptionally structured with clarity, use of paragraphs and subheadings. (6 mrks)	Report is well structured with clarity, use of paragraphs and subheadings. (5mrks)	Report is somewhat structured with clarity, use of paragraphs and subheadings. (4mrks)	Report is structured with some clarity, and use of some paragraphs and subheadings. (3 marks)	Poorly presented. Report is not structured with any clarity, and does not use of paragraphs and subheadings. (<3marks)

HC1062 Decision making and problem solving

Referencing

(4 marks)

Clear systematic referencing using Adapted Harvard referencing for all sources. At least

6 relevant references were used from good sources. All intext referencing done correctly and relevant. (4marks)

Clear systematic referencing using Harvard style for all sources. At least

5 relevant references were used from good sources. All intext referencing done correctly and relevant. (3 marks)

Clear systematic referencing using Harvard style for all sources. At least 4 relevant references were used from good sources. Most intext referencing done correctly and relevant. (2 marks)

Limited attempt at formatting references. References largely unrelated to the topic area. At least 3 references were provided. Most intext referencing done correctly and relevant. (1mark)

Poorly presented, no apparent structure. No use of Harvard referencing style. References were unrelated to the topic area. Only 0 r 1 relevant reference given

(<1 marks)

Decision Making and problem-solving

Marking Rubric – Written Report