UMODPX-15-M People and Global Organisations

A brief (very brief) outline of the situation experienced in your group. The themes you are going to use in your reflection and analysis, what your main argument is and a brief statement about the structure of your summary.

Main Body: Explores your main argument in relation to the three themes.

This section ideally should be structured according to your main argument and broken down into specific argument points which flow from one to the another in a logical way. It is useful to signpost the reader to the relevance of your point to your overall discussion through the course of your discussion. Remember that you are critically reflecting and critically analysing your team experience, so the starting point is your experience.

All points and assertions should be underpinned by theory/academic literature and apply the theory/literature to gain a deeper insight into your simulation group experience. You must clearly cite and reference (using Harvard referencing) sources used.

Demonstrate critical evaluation. This is about taking nothing at face value and questioning everything by asking what, where, way, when, how etc questions. The critical evaluation needs to be woven into your discussion as part of your argument.

Critical evaluation can be demonstrated in many ways, including:

·Considering alternative explanations. Introduce a range of theory/literature to show you recognise different views.

·Recognise limitations of an approach/theory/model etc.

·Considering the theory in relation to your team experience, how useful is it in helping  to explain what happened for example?

·Having an integrating argument which leads the reader through your discussion also  demonstrates critical scholarly skills.  Recommendations: Derived from the analysis and reflections and underpinned by theory/academic literature. These recommendations may ideally relate to your future global team working and/or the future working with your PPD team.

A very brief conclusion which summarises your main points made in your summary.

You need to clearly demonstrate in your Executive Summary:

·A logical line of reasoning (argument) and develop a perspective. Structure your Executive Summary with an introduction where you orientate the reader to what you intend to discuss and state what you intend to argue. Use your overall argument to guide the sequence of your discussion in a logical progression. Have a concluding paragraph where you summarise the main points you have made in your Executive Summary.

·That you have read relevant academic literature and use it to reflect on its relevance to the PPD simulation group situation. Ideas, assertions and assumptions need to be underpinned by theory/academic literature and be correctly cited using Harvard Referencing conventions. You must clearly cite the source of all ideas, assertions and assumptions in your Executive Summary and correctly reference them in your reference list.

·The link between your PPD group experience and the academic literature. The starting point is your PPD group experience. You need to briefly describe the issues/experience etc that you wish to analyse. So for example you may want to use the analysis to show a greater insight into why some members of the group engaged more than others, or how the group initially didn’t work together and what happened in the group to change this, or perhaps your group experience worked well due to the leadership or lack of leadership and you wish to analyse this. The choice of situations you will analyse will depend upon what happened in your group and what your group experience was. The two important aspects to remember is that you are using the theory/literature to analyse and reflect on your group experience so that you gain a much deeper understanding of your PPD simulation group experience. You are not just describing what happened in your group, or describing the theory/literature. Marks will be awarded for critical analysis and critical reflection of your group situation.

·That you understand that situations are not simple and that there can be different or competing explanations. You may here like to consider the situation from different perspectives and/or one of the other group members’ viewpoints for example. This is key to a good critical reflection. So for instance you may wish to consider how you may have responded if you were the leader, or why the leader responded in the way s/he did, were there cultural difference values that were important. Or you may well wish to consider the situation from an actor/bystander perspective, or in a different moment in time (initially perhaps then towards the end of the group simulation experience for example).

·Reflection is a useful process and used in many business situations. It helps you to make sense of and learn from your experiences. Learning to use reflection to develop your understanding of situations is a valuable developmental tool and life skill.