Assessment detail

Assessment guidelines

Two written assignments have been set to test your competence in understanding and applying the significant concepts and material presented in this course.  The purpose of the assignments is to enable you to:

• apply critical thinking to evaluate, synthesise and critically review the material presented in the course
• relate the material to a context that is relevant and of interest to you
• support your career development by enhancing your competence in leading organisational change

More specifically, the assessment is aligned with the objectives of the course. These objectives are detailed within the course specifications.  You can access the course specification on the USQ Study Desk.  Each assessment item is based on a range of tasks that attempt to relate the material in both theoretical and practical terms.

To be assured of receiving a passing grade a student must achieve at least 50% of the total weighted marks available for the course.

Assignment assistance for business students

Study Support

This USQ webpage is designed to offer study support to assist you in successfully completing your assignments and may be particularly useful to students who are returning to study.  Always remember, however, to read your assignment instructions very carefully as your course examiner may require specific formats and layouts.

Study Guides and Strategies
This site covers many aspects of learning – study and writing skills, project management assignment, evaluating web sites and more. You can choose to view the contents in any one of 30 languages!

How do I search the Databases?
Try the USQ Library’s Database Guides. You may also find the following link useful to you: <https://usqstudydesk.usq.edu.au/m2/course/view.php?id=3636>.

Use this link to understand how to search and evaluate scholarly information and peer review resources at the libraryhttps://www.usq.edu.au/library/study-support/assignments/finding-information.

How do I avoid plagiarism?
Plagiarism is taken very seriously at universities so make sure you are aware of what constitutes plagiarism. You must familiarise yourself with this information on the following site:https://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/plagiarism

Also, you may find the information from the University of New South Wales useful – ‘The Path to Avoiding Plagiarising’.

Style Guide for all Referencing

Harvard AGPS referencing is required.  Refer to the USQ Library website for details.

Use the Submission Links provided on the StudyDesk to submit your assignments!A Turnitin report will be generated when the assignment is submitted. 

Individual Written Assignment 1 (Part 1 and Part 2)

Guidelines for Assignment 1 (Part 1: Leading Change Survey)

1. Students are required to complete the Leading Change survey (the link is provided on the Study Desk) and generate their individual Leading Change Report. The survey will take roughly 10 – 15 minutes to complete. Clear instructions regarding the Leading Change survey are already provided on the study desk. You are free to do and redo the Leading Change survey as many times as you like.
2. A Leading Change report will be generated for you with one identified Leading Change result based on your answers. You will find that there are a total of three possible leading change styles. We do not intend to limit the leading change styles to only three (but it is a good start!!!).Even you believe you only belong to one Leading Change style; we suggest that you also find out what the other styles are and how they may interact with you (or how you may interact with them). The purpose of this survey is to make you aware that there are different leading change behaviours and how these may be applied for developing leading change strategies in the change management process. Please refer to Hayes (2018) Chapter 9. The role of leadership in change management for further information.
3. To prepare for Part 2 of Assignment 1 (as well as for Assignment 2), please make a note of your leadership style(s) in your Leading Change report(s).

Guidelines for Assignment 1 (Part 2: Case Study)

You should write the case study in such a way that you start your answers from line 1.  That is, there are no need too large introductions that we see in essays.  You should apply the principles you have learned from the lecture material/readings that are specific to the case study.  The case study answers should be written in narrative form (i.e. sentences must be used, avoid bullet points), and should be 2400 words, give or minus a 10% margin only and 1.5 line spaced.  You must include a list of references at the end of the case.  As a postgraduate student, you must be able to demonstrate your research and analytical skills through the assignments. More marks are gained by the quality of research applied in practice and the overall quality of the answer.  Please Note: Overall word count does not include Tables and Figures which you are free to use if required. You should include in your case study:

1. A template for Case Study has been provided on the study desk. It includes: cover sheet with your Name, Student Number, Course Name, Course Examiner, Semester and Date of Submission and the Marking Criteria Sheet;
2. You must use the Template provided in the StudyDesk for your answers to the Case Study. Please save your answers in the Template as a word document (.doc or .docx) and submit it via the link on the StudyDesk. Your assignment will be sent to Turnitin for checking your writing for citation mistakes or inappropriate copying. You will receive a Turnitin report stating your similarity percentage. If your actual percentage is higher than 20% (i.e. the actual content excluding cover sheet, headings and reference list etc.), you should seriously consider revising your assignment;
3. Please quote the relevant texts and readings to support your answers. Answers in the narrative section of your case answer unsupported by readings will be regarded as guesswork and generalisations and will not pass the case assessment;
4. If you feel you need to attach some other interesting report or facts not required in the main body of your case answer, please add this as an appendix. Then in your text close to where you discuss this, you should add in brackets (Please see Appendix 1) – for example.  Please see the Style Guide at the end of this assessment file for how to use references in your case studies.  Task/Questions for the case can be found at the conclusion of the case study.
5. You must use Times New Roman 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing and 2.5cm left and right margins throughout the report.

Case Study

Problem Statement:

You need to consider how you will identify the range of issues and problems in the following problem statement:

Wong Manufacturing Company (WMC) ©

Please Note:  this problem statement is fictional.  Any resemblance to actual names and places is purely coincidental.  The case problem is for the advanced study of MBA and Masters Students studying Leading Organisational Change.

WMC is a 55-year-old company founded by Sofea Wong (with financial assistance and business guidance from her parents) in the early 1960s in Malaysia.  The principal business is in manufacturing and selling wholesale cotton and wool fabric to local retailers and buyers, including designers in Malaysia.  Before setting up her manufacturing business, Sofea had travelled the world and spent about 10 years in Australia studying and working in the Australian textile industry in Sydney and rural New South Wales.  It is from this experience that Sofea developed relationships with cotton and wool growers and saw an opportunity to source high-quality cotton and wool raw materials from Australia and use these to create a high-quality fabric manufacturing business in Malaysia.  Despite taking advantage of Malaysia’s lower cost wages, Sofea had always paid her staff above the local wage regulations which quickly earned her respect from her employees.  She also gained respect and admiration from local retailers and designers.  Sofea had established a highly successful local company based on strong family values that had always been well respected.

Sofea’s employees always enjoyed working for her, and she had created and implemented many employment reward systems that were ahead of her time.  She implemented sick leave, holiday pay, rostered days off and child minding facilities as her workers were from poorer working families.  Tradition and tales about the company were perpetrated over the years to the extent that Sofea became a larger-than-life personality and everyone knew about her early years and beginnings of the company.  Everyone knew how she worked hard and how she treated all staff like family members.  There were many media articles and events that favoured Sofea and her successful business.  The WMC factory in Kuala Lumpur had grown to a workforce of over 1000 workers throughout the 1970s.  However, by the mid-2000s staff numbers had been substantially reduced to about 600 employees.  It was at this time that Sofea was suffering ill-health and was forced to hand over her business to her daughter Hana.

Hana had grown up in this business and knew all aspects of manufacturing.  Both Sofea and Hana made business decisions together, and they employed the same business practices.  Like her mother, Hana had the respect of all employees, suppliers, retailers and designers.  During this time, the common business characteristics were high quality manufactured fabrics using unique fabric processing in the manufacturing of high-quality wool and cotton from rural New South Wales Australia.  All of WMC’s sales were to local industry retailers and local designers with the consistent employee and customer loyalty and with relatively slow but consistent growth.  Since, the mid-2000s WMC has been challenged by increasing low-cost – high polluting suppliers from other countries exporting poor quality and low-cost fabrics and garments in high volumes into Malaysia.  All of this has had an impact on the perception of quality, manufacturing, excessive pollution and reduced safety and employee standards – both in Malaysia and from importing countries.  The high pollution and environmental impacts of all manufacturing were being discussed at the industry level and in the media.

To assist Hana to operate the business she employed her two children: her daughter Mira and son Ryan.  Both siblings had been educated in Malaysia and at Sofea’s insistence – they completed Masters of Business Administration degrees in Australia.  In addition to their formal education, Ryan had also completed a post-graduate degree in fashion design in Sydney.  In more recent times, Mira had been more vocal for change at WMC and Ryan had supported a move to increase the value-added component of the design, customer reach and product depth from essentially large-batch production of cloth to making designer clothing for larger international markets.  This meant forward integration by not only manufacturing the textile cloth but also moving to a new manufacturing stage of making and supplying retail firms with designer garments. To accommodate this change in the manufacture, the siblings decided that a more environmentally efficient production that will reduce energy and water consumption, reduce waste, and implement recycling of products was the key to improving efficiencies at WMC.  Mira and Ryan were very keen to be socially and environmentally responsible and increase awareness through their actions.   Mira had introduced to the Board Members the idea of exporting to China, Japan and Indonesia the large-batch production output while simultaneously supplying designer and retail outlets across the world.  In this discussion, they portrayed their idea of a new and revised manufacturing plant with improved technology that would reduce their environmental ‘footprint’ and promote environmentally sustainable outcomes at WMC.

This conflicted somewhat with the view that cheap imports would hold sway and that customers wanted low-cost products from China and Bangladesh with the Board often pointing to low-cost retailers such as Cotton-On in Australia and JC Penny in the United States of America (USA).  Mira and Ryan were persistent in pointing out the opportunities for WMC to sell directly to customers via the web and to implement business to Business (B2B) relationships with quality seeking buyers and the opportunity to provide products that considered the environment in its production.

Ryan had also highlighted the increasing need for more visibility at Malaysian Fashion Week attracting up to 50,000 clients.  Increasingly, Mira had identified problems with manufacturing safety and control issues and pollution in countries like Bangladesh with major brands such as Benetton in Italy, H&M from Sweden, Nike, JC Penny and Walmart in the USA, David Jones and Myer in Australia seeking alternative suppliers.  According to Mira, WMC could take advantage of their name by building new relationships with retailers and designers since many were looking for long-term relationships of quality suppliers and the reliability that comes with large volume fabric and garment production.  Mira and Ryan also wanted to influence their suppliers to assist them to consider their environmental impact as well.  Basically, Mira and Ryan were trying to drive growth and increase spending (in the short term) to implement environmentally sound production practices, and this has led to disagreement with Board members.  At stake was WMC’s traditional approach to manufacturing positioned around large-batch production in cotton and wool textiles and fabrics to making the designer and retail garments – without consideration of the natural environment!  This promoted many Board members to comment privately that Mira and Ryan were trying to be “too smart too soon” arguing the company would not cope.  Similarly, product and manufacturing change needed to be supported by dramatic staff decreases and management restructuring to streamline cost and efficiency, manage two-way product stretches between the old and new production, improve their environmental impact while tackling competition from other suppliers.

While Hana and Sofea were immensely proud of their children and grandchildren, in a short period of time they had created mayhem in the management ranks prompting local analysts to downgrade the value of company stock and medium to long-term outlook.

Task Required:

Based on less than perfect information supplied about the WMC problem statement, you are required to act as an external change consultant to assist WMC to address the issues and challenges:

1. Pretend that you were Mira/Ryan and use your Leading Change Style that you generated from the Leading Change survey as a guide. Reflect and very briefly describe how your individual leadership style might help to 1) contribute and enhance your general work team, and 2) lead to the successful outcome of a change process at WMC? Answers for this part of the question may be written in first person style (i.e. I or We). You may be required to make realistic and practical assumptions (400 words). You may use and read Hayes (2018) Chapter 9, The role of leadership in change management for further information.
2. Now continue your external change advice to the Board, develop at least further five (5) realistic assumptions that you can add to the issues and problems expressed. These might typically be related to management, change processes, managerial information systems, technology, competitors, Customer’s and so on.  Use at least two (2) sentences to describe each assumption (200 words).
3. Referring to Hayes (2018) Chapter 3 and Worley&Mohrman2014 (Reading 5) analyse how WMC anticipated the need for change. Which typology of change (using Figure 3.4 Types of Organisational Change p.55) might best describe the approach that WMC should adopt and justify your answers?  (600 words).
4. With reference to the indicators of effectiveness (Hayes 2018, Chapter 4), explain how WMC has or has not been effective and put forward your arguments on how this can be improved. (600 words)
5. In reference to and reflect on your learning from Hayes (2018) Chapter 10 and Malhortra&Hinings2015 (Reading 9)justify the importance of enlisting support from key stakeholders. What advice would you give to WMC at this time? (600 words)

Please Note: The above word counts are a guide only. The total word count should strictly adherence to the overall word limit with a 10% margin either way. Use a minimum of 12 references (including the ones listed above) to support your answers. You may also cite the Leading Change survey as one of your references.

Style Guide References

Refer to the Harvard AGPS referencing advice on the StudyDesk in the Assignment section.

Remember to use good quality peer-reviewed journal articles and textbooks in your case study.

Assignment Extension Statement for MGT8033 Students

This statement sets clear expectations regarding assignment extensions and how they will be administered for MGT8033.

Granting of an assignment extension is considered a significant concession. You must have a compassionate and compelling circumstance to seek an extension.

You must approach the Course Examiner by email for an extension at any time up to the assignment deadline.

An assignment submitted after the deadline without an approved extension of time will be penalised. The penalty for late submission is a reduction by 5% of the maximum Mark applicable for the Assignment, for each University Business Day or part Business Day that the Assignment is late. Therefore, for example, for MGT8033 Assignment 1is worth 100 Marks and the consequent penalty will be 5 Marks for each university day, or part day, late. An assignment submitted more than ten University Business Days after the deadline will have a Mark of zero recorded for that Assignment.

If you need to apply for an extension you must do so by emailing the course examiner and include appropriate accompanying documentation – such as medical certificates, death certificate, police reports, employer letter verifying the change of employment demands, inability to provide supporting documentation will result in requests for consideration being denied. All documentation must be provided at the time of the request. Your extension request and all supporting documentation must be submitted electronically via email to the course examiner.

Check this link for full details of compelling and compassionate circumstances and the types of acceptable documentation http://policy.usq.edu.au/documents/131150PL.