Guidelines for Submitting Summative Assessments and Academic Integrity Policy

The Extenuating Circumstances Policy

Where  illness  or  other  verifiable  cause  prevent  timely  submission  of  the  summative assessments, you are required to contact the Unicaf Extenuating Circumstances team in the  first  instance, for  further  information  on how  to  make  an  appropriate request  for  consideration  of  your  circumstances.  It  is important  to  note  that any  request  must  be  made  to  the  mentioned  team  in  advance  of the originally stipulated deadlines, otherwise shall be considered as late and will not be reviewed further unless valid independent evidence exists to support that you could not have reasonably gotten in touch any sooner. 
 
Academic misconduct including plagiarism By submitting your assignments, you acknowledge that you have read and agree with the above statements. Your assignments should be word processed (handwritten assignments are not accepted), using time new roman size 12 font, double spaced, with numbered pages and your student number printed as a footer on every page. The word limits stated for these assignments  excludes  the  reference  list  at  the  end  of  the  assignments  but  includes  all text  in  the  main  body  of  the  assignment  (including  direct  quotations,  in-text  citations, footnotes, tables, diagrams and graphs). Please be aware that exceeding the word count limit will affect the academic judgement of the piece of work and may result in the award 
of  lower  marks.  Appendices  are  not  considered  a  supplement,  and  thus,  will  not  be assessed as part of the content of the assignments. As such, they will not contribute to the grades awarded; however, it may be appropriate to use an Appendices section for the Essay,  which  is  a  useful  reference  for  the  reader.  Please  note  that  appendices  are  not included in the word count. 
 
The  majority  of  references  should  come  from  primary  sources  (e.g.,  journal  articles, conference papers, reports, etc.) although you can also utilise area specific textbooks. In  the  Essay,  you  must  ensure  that  you  use  the  Harvard  style  of  referencing.  Please indicate the word count length at the end of your assignments. 
 
Marking and assessment: Your summative assessment consists of one related element: An Essay (4,500 word-equivalent), due at the end of Week 8. The element will be graded out of 100 and in the overall passing grade is 50%. 
 
Learning Outcomes assessed: 
 
1. Demonstrate a critical understanding of the relevant legal and extra-legal context of corporate governance in the UK and elsewhere. 
2. Demonstrate an ability to research, analyse and evaluate the principal general concepts underpinning corporate governance. 
3. Demonstrate some ability to identify and assess the practical impact of existing and proposed schemes of corporate governance.   
 
Produce  a  4500-word  essay  exploring  a  relevant  issue  in  relation  to  international corporate governance (+/- 10%) (Excluding the list of references) which offers students  the  ability  to  demonstrate  their  developing  knowledge  and  application  of  the 
theories  and  concepts  of international  corporate  governance  law  as  covered  within weeks of their study. You may choose your topic from the list below but it must only be undertaken AFTER you have approved this with your Tutor. 
 
1. The real problem with corporate governance is the dominance of institutional shareholders in publicly quoted companies – they rarely act like owners. Discuss. 
 
2. Critically explain the meaning of ‘corporate governance’ and the theories that underpin the term. 
 
3. Recent corporate governance reforms place too much reliance on independent non-executive directors for achieving good corporate governance. Critically evaluate this statement. 
 
4. The 2017 FRC proposals for reform of the Corporate Governance Code 2016 regarding stakeholder engagement (based on s. 172 of the Companies Act 2006) are well overdue and an important step forward. Discuss. 
 
5. Critically evaluate the duties owed by directors of listed companies. 
 
6. How far do you think that recent Anglo-American corporate governance reforms make the ‘cure worse than the disease’? 
 
7. Critically evaluate the role of the unitary board in UK corporate governance. 
 
8. Having effective audit and information disclosure can solve most corporate governance problems. Discuss. 
 
9. Criminalising corporate governance failures is a step too far. Discuss.    
 
10. Discuss the extent to which you think that institutional shareholders hold the key to better UK corporate governance.  
 
11. How diverse are corporate boards? 
 
12. Consider the extent to which the BOFI (banks and other financial institutions) sector requires specialist corporative governance. 
 
13. What is CSR and how is it interpreted by modern corporate organisations? 
 
You  must  use  VLE  to  upload  an  electronic  copy  of  both  the  formative  and  summative assessments through Turnitin. This allows us to monitor and deal with plagiarism. Please note that this upload of your work should be made by the coursework deadline - failure to  do  this  will  lead  to  your  coursework  being  marked  as  though  it  were  late  or missing. Please  note  that  you  are  responsible  for  making  sure  you  understand  the  process  of uploading before your coursework submission deadlines.