Introduction

This assignment is designed to have you look at a current topical social issue where business is involved in some way, consider  the situation through the eyes of the various stakeholders, and to draw on the content covered in this course to frame your analysis and proposals.

It seeks to have you step back and look at things from the points of view of the different parties involved and consider actions that take these interests into account.

Further, it seeks to develop your skills at preparing a report that could be given to the key parties - as if the key parties were sitting in a room and your group (acting as independent and unbiased consultants) was presenting a way forward to address the issue in question. In this respect, your report is a practical document to be used in a real work setting, grounded in academic rigour.

1. Group Assignment Feedback/marking guide

[CLICK HERE]

2. Group Project Plan

3. Stakeholder worksheet

By the end of week 6 your group is required to submit a completed Stakeholder worksheet for the key stakeholders involved in the issue you are addressing.

Please use the Stakeholder mapping worksheet available from the course Learnonline site (under the materials tab): you will need to slightly modify the worksheet to suit the situation (as it is crafted as an organisational centric worksheet where as this group assignment is an issue centric piece of work)

4. Assignment brief

The basic assignment brief is set out in the Course Outline so make sure you read this brief before working through the following notes – these notes expand on the brief set out in the Course Outline.

Topic:

You need to select a topical matter that is currently receiving media attention that has to do with issues this course addresses. That is, you need to search the current media to locate a topical matter to examine – something that is in play in the media at the current time.

The assignment seeks to have you consider an issue without the benefit of hindsight hence the focus on something that is currently in play, not something that is historic. So keep this in mind – look for something that is going on now, not something from the past.

So begin by looking through the media – local, national and international news services, industry magazines etc, to identify a topical matter of interest and that is relevant to issues this course covers.

The matter can be specific to a particular business, or to an industry sector, but needs to be something relevant to business activity.

The matter can also be something good (genuinely good or having the appearance of good) that is being done or has been done, or something problematic.

When deciding on a topic for the assignment, keep it clear and specific. Avoided turning the topic into something too broad. Remember that the audience for the report is the key parties involved in the matter and to whom your recommendations are being addressed so you will need a topic that is specific and focused.

For example, a topic “fossil fuel use and climate change” would certainly have many aspects that might fit into the issues this course covers but would be too broad for this assignment. Something like “Environmental problems from Shell’s exploitation of oil sands in Alberta” would be more focused and something that could be managed within the scope of the report.

You then need to review this matter using concepts from the course, consider how things are now, where you would like them to be, how change might be achieved, and importantly, what the various parties involved should do. In this sense, the matter needs to be considered within the broader social context in which it exists and your recommendations for change need to include actions various key parties should take – these parties might include a specific business, a business sector, government, NGO's, local communities, and so on.

Importantly when writing the report, do not turn it into a descriptive report. That is, do not simply tell a story of what is going on or what has happened. Focus on what needs to be done and how the needed actions might be progressed. Anyone can tell a story of what is – descriptive is easy. What we are looking for in this assignment is original thought and problem solving.

The areas you need to cover in the report are these:

The subject matter

• A brief summary of what the matter is all about.

This should be very brief – only a few short sentences and maybe a few bullet points. If you want to add a bit more detail, place it in an appendix but make sure the appendix is your own summation of the situation. Do not cut-and-paste media articles - these should be referenced but not included in the report.

You should also comment on the objectives of the report and clearly define who the target audience is - specifically list the parties to whom the report is being presented.

Key issues

• Identification of the key issues relevant to the matter that are important for concepts this course covers.

The key issues should be identified following a thorough analysis of the media topic, using various analysis tools and models from the material from this and other courses. There are a number of frameworks that can be used to conduct this analysis - it’s very important to use material from the course to structure your analysis work.

The key here is to NOT put the detailed analysis in the body of the report – it belongs in appendices. What is needed is the pulling out of the analysis key issues of relevance to the topic you have selected. That is, you need to look at the whole set of data you have collected and identify the messages that come from it.

Key issues can also be positives and negatives – things that are going well and things that are not so good or down-right bad.

So a way to lead into this part of your report might be something like "A detailed analysis of the media topic has been conducted (see Appendices A, B, C and D.. etc) and the key issues identified are as follows:…"

• Consideration of the implications of these key issues – how do these key issues impact on business and/or society and/or and the environment? Why does it matter?
• Present arguments as to why change is needed – what will inspire the key parties involved to act and change the situation for the better (say, improve on the good, or remedy the bad)?

For this point, it's important to consider the implications of the issues you have identified. What flows from them for parties involved in and/or who are impacted on by the topic you are analysing?

Again, these implications can be good or bad, and can involve a number of parties in one way or another (say, local communities, a firm, the environment, government, an industry body, NGO’s, future generations, etc…….).

Importantly, you need to argue a case for change. This is most important as without a convincing argument, nothing will happen. Any change event carries risk, and the parties involved will need to be motivated to take the risk and follow your recommendations (which come later in the report). At this point the parties involved need to be disturbed to the point that they are wanting solutions to the issues you have identified – so your arguments for change need to do that disturbing.

Goals:

• Identify the outcomes/goals that you believe are desirable to achieve for the matter under consideration and present arguments as to why these outcomes are desirable.

Without clear goals, there is little that can be done by way of making recommendation for change. Recommendations need to lead somewhere and it is the goals that give this direction.

So what is needed here are some clear goals that are built around what you believe needs to come about in relation to the specific topic you are addressing in the report. This might include goals focused on remedying problems that have been created or for harms done, and the setting of desirable outcomes for the future.

What these goals are is something you need to consider but remember we are dealing with the a topic within a broader social context, so you need to think of goals from this perspective.

The goals also need to be strategic, actionable, and ideally include time frames. Make sure they are SMART goals (http://topachievement.com/smart.html )

You also need to present a case as to why these goals matter – don’t just list of a few ‘we should do these’ items – think through why the parties involved in the topic you are investigating should pursue them and make a case for your proposals.

Recommendations:

• Make recommendations as to what the various parties involved in the matter should take to address the key issues you have identified and achieve the desired outcomes you have set. Support your recommendations with arguments as to why your proposals are a believable and credible way forward and ones that the parties should feel inspired to act on.

The recommendation section needs to pull the whole report together.

What is important here is to not just make a list of things to do. The recommendations need to specifically address the key issues you identified at the beginning of the report and contribute to the achievement of the goals you have set.

Recommendations similarly need to meet SMART criteria.

You need to show not just the recommendations as in 'I recommend party X do this' but also to show the issues each recommendation will address and the goals it will help achieve. Further, some reasons as to why it will address the issues and achieve the goals are needed – you need to back your claims up and there is plenty of material in the course to help you here. So what we have is something along the lines of "I recommend that party X does this. It will address issue 'A' because…. and will help contribute to goal 'B' because….."

A useful tool some students have used to help with the mapping of issues to goals to recommendations is a simple 3-column diagram showing key issues in the first column, recommendations in the second, and goals in the third. Then arrows are shown linking the parts together (that is, showing which issues each of the recommendations addresses and which goals they contribute to). This table can be helpful as an 'audit' of your own work plus give a concise picture to the report reader, but if you do this, it should be as an added visual not as a substitute for discussing the points the table summarises.