7121IBA Leadership Report
- Length – 2000 words including references
- Marked out of 50. Contributes to 50% of final grade of this course
- 40% for report
- 10% for Presentation
Assessment Task
For the purpose of the assessment assume you are a senior manager of an existing company or organization (i.e. NGO). You are required to analyse the company and develop a leadership strategy and change process to improve the sustainability performance of the company. It may be a company for which you currently work or another company that does not have such a strategy. The assessment is in two parts. You will write a report setting out your strategy covering the elements outlined in the task structure and format below. You will be expected to give a short presentation in the workshops – scheduled in the last half of the trimester. The presentation length will be 10 minutes. This will be marked out of 10. This is an individual assessment. The reason for the split of this assessment is that in an organisation, staff are often asked to develop a report and then present the findings of the report to upper management. This assessment adopts this style.
The learning objectives of this report:
- To be able to write a report for industry
- To use leadership theory to implement a sustainability strategy
- To understand the complexity, problems and solutions of leading such a strategy
Suggested Format and Task Overview
Title:
Introduction
- Sensitizing statement about your chosen issue and organisation (not a good idea to use a quote) …But
use references.
- What is the issue or problem you will address as a leader in the organisation. IE what do you want to change.
- Purpose – what is the purpose of the paper you are writing
- Rationale – Why is it important to answer the question – i.e. a justification
- Scope and limitations (you don’t have to solve all the world’s problems just a small issue)
- Maybe have some definitions if you need these.
Main body (subsections below):
- Overview of the organization.
- Analysis of issue and or SDGs your report will address
- Outline of change strategy
- Outline the leadership model.
- Analysis of key leadership actions to enact change in the organization. In other words – How will you lead the change strategy to deliver outcomes based on SDGs.
Conclusion
- Keep it short
- No new ideas
- Restate the purpose of the report
- Summarise important points from each section of the report
- State how have you have identified key leadership actions to enact change
- State why it is important to solve the issue (should relate to the rationale in the introduction)
- Never end with a quote
References
- Use references to limit description of well-established ideas on the topic you are writing about. This can make your writing more succinct and more powerful.
- Use Google scholar articles for your main arguments regarding the issues
- Use the web for finding out information the issues – these may or may not be relevant to quote in the report but you need to use them to gain an understanding.
- Use either APA or Harvard style of referencing.
Submission
A submission point will be added to the Assessment Folder
Additional Notes
- Style: Report style format
- This assignment is designed to let you develop your own critical perspective to develop your own strategy for change. The point of this exercise is to develop critical and practical thinking based on the leadership theory and strategy.
- There are also workshops devoted to drafting both the presentation and the written assessment.
- A plagiarism testing service (Safe Assign) will be posted in L@G in the assessment folder.
- Draft assignments will not be viewed by the lecturer within 5 days of the submission date.
- Consultation can still occur and answers to specific question provided but the lecturers will not be reading and providing feedback on full draft documents that are emailed to the lecturer. Lecturers are happy to look at drafts early in the semester and you are encouraged to submit drafts!