The purpose of the assignments is to encourage you to think about and apply what you know to real-world organisational situations and settings using the language of academic writers in the OADD field. This is in line with âassessment for learningâ principles and external validation for MA HRM. So students are required to:
Demonstrate an ability to go beyond mere description and exposition and reproduction of textbook facts, models and theories
Show critical awareness and the ability to argue coherently, conceptually, critically and persuasively
Show facility in the use of evidence to support your arguments
Show an ability to use concepts to deepen understanding of organisational situations
Demonstrate sensitivity to how theory can assist and inform management, including HRM practice
For cases, you need to find or construct an organisational situation to analyse. This may be a real organisational issue/ problem/ context from your own experience or from secondary sources like books, academic/ professional journals, corporate documentation, newspapers, internet, film, TV, drama etc. Alternatively, you may elect to construct your own case from your own experience, or carry out a little bit of research on an organisation to which you have access. More guidance on what constitutes a good case for analysis and sources of cases is available on Blackboard (under content: coursework guidance material) and will be discussed in class as the module progresses.
In this section you are required to undertake a case study analysis in the OADD area. As mentioned above, the work will comprise the critical analysis of an organizational situation/ narrative either from your own experience or from secondary sources like books, learned journals, corporate documentation, newspapers, internet, film or TV programme etc.
The purpose of the analysis is to provide you with an opportunity to apply some of the ideas and concepts discussed in the literature and/or in class in making a sophisticated diagnostic analysis of the chosen organisational situation. This means:
(i) Finding your situation. It needs to be of sufficient complexity to allow for an in-depth (but not overlong) analysis. This might be an issue, a narrative, a problem, a relationship, an event or series of connected events.
(ii) Describing your situation. Enough to orientate the reader without giving excessive detail.
(iii) Examining the situation with the aid of suitable concepts, models, paradigms, perspectives or theories from the literature, and showing what insights are gained thereby. Â
(iv) Explaining the past and/or present and/or future course of events using models and concepts from the literature. In other words, showing what has been gained by applying ideas from Social Science. Has it enabled you to go beyond common-sense and the obvious? Are there indications of further directions for investigation, perhaps beyond the scope of your immediate analysis?
(v) Making modest suggestions/recommendations for action. This is more optional than the other elements. Some case studies lend themselves to recommendations (and you may have that mind-set) others are more the dissection of a problem and its conceptualisation.
(vi ) Giving your work a title. What has it all been about? Your title should tell us.
Examples of how earlier students have interpreted the case study brief are available (anonymised) on Blackboard (content: coursework guidance material). We will discuss the available options in session and via Blackboard.