Essay

A typed essay (length: 1000 words). The essay is due on Friday 1st April 12:00
p.m. and needs to be submitted to the Student Support Office and via ULearn.
Work handed in after this time and date will be penalised, as will work exceeding the
word limit. The word count of the essay should be included on the final page.

essay question is listed below.

1. As a manager, would you rather supervise a work group with a high level of
diversity, or one that was composed of members quite similar to one another ?
Justify your answer.Be critical.

The lectures on the relevant topics and associated discussions will help you
considerably in developing your responses. Refer to relevant theory and empirical
research to justify your points. Essays without a substantial number of citations and
references will be penalised. The required minimum number of citations and
references is 5 (at least 3 should be articles from the scientific journals listed on
page 7). The articles listed in this handbook may be used, but you are also encouraged
to identify other articles from any of the journals listed on page 9. Citations and
references should be written in the required style as indicated on pages 19-21.
Citations should be included in the essay text, and references should be listed at the
end of the essay.

Note: Essays should not be written in report style. Use sub-headings sparingly (no
more than 4 per essay) and please do not use bullet points.

ANY LATE WORK WILL BE PENALISED BY 10 % EACH DAY

Please see the criteria by which you essay will be marked overleaf.
 Generic Assessment Criteria

UG Mark Description Characteristics

Range
70-100 Excellent An outstanding performance in which a student, at this level, demonstrates a
superior grasp of the subject matter and an ability to go beyond the given
material in a critical, constructive or innovative manner. The student
demonstrates a high degree of creative and/or logical thinking, a superior
ability to organise, to present, to analyse and to integrate ideas, and a
thorough familiarity with the relevant literature and techniques.
60-69 Good A more than adequate performance in which a student, at this level,
demonstrates a thorough grasp of the subject matter and an ability to
organise, present and examine the material in a critical and constructive
manner. The student demonstrates a good understanding of the relevant
issues and a familiarity with the relevant literature and techniques.
50-59 Satisfactory An adequate performance in which a student, at this level, demonstrates a
generally adequate grasp of the subject matter and a moderate ability to
organise, present and examine the material in a critical and constructive
manner. The student displays an adequate understanding of the relevant
issues and a general familiarity with the relevant literature and techniques.
40-49 Pass A barely adequate performance in which a student, at this level,
demonstrates a familiarity with the subject matter, but whose attempts to
organise, present and examine the material in a critical and constructive
manner are only partially successful. The student displays some
understanding of the relevant issues and some familiarity with the relevant
literature and techniques.
30-39 Marginal Fail A student, at this level, may have deficiencies in some of these identified
areas: fails to demonstrate clear familiarity with the subject matter, relevant
literature and techniques; shows poor or inappropriate presentation /
organisation; relies on very limited and often irrelevant material; provides
weak or non-existent analysis and evaluation.
<30 Fail A student, at this level, may have deficiencies in some of these identified
areas: demonstrates very little knowledge of subject matter; uses muddled or
irrelevant material; presents or organises work poorly with no attempt at
analysis or evaluation. Work may contain significant errors.

Essay-Writing Guidelines

1. Remember to address different sides of the issue. If the essay question asks
you to “discuss” an issue, don’t just provide evidence for one side, but for
different perspectives on the issue. When stating your own opinion on the
issue, weigh up the evidence.

2. Do not make sweeping statements. Think about how you can back up the
statements you are making. Try to support your claims with evidence from the
published literature. Use of personal opinion without the support of empirical
evidence is not appropriate at this level of study.

3. When writing your essay, always ask yourself: “Why?” and “So what?”. In
answering these questions, you will find that you begin to evaluate and
analyse the information that you choose to present.
4. Think about how you can link your ideas, instead of jumping from topic to
topic without warning.

5. Make clear to the reader how the information you present is relevant. In other
words, try to link the points you are making back to the essay question.

6. Do not forget to use journals as source materials. They are important sources
of up-to-date information, and can provide you with good examples.
Remember: You should include at least 5 citations and references (at least 3
should be articles from the scientific journals listed on page 7).

7. Make sure that you are clear about the differences between report and essay
writing.

8. When you have finished writing your essay, read it out loud to yourself. Is it
clear? Does it make sense? The process of reading your essay aloud can
highlight areas that are not clear or that do not make sense.

9. Be wary of using the word “prove”. It is very difficult to prove something. Try
using words like “claims” or “suggests”.
Notes on Citations and Referencing

When you are writing in an academic style, you are expected to cite your sources of
information, and provide full references for these citations at the end of your paper.
Although there is no ‘correct’ way of writing and arranging references, certain
principles and conventions should be adhered to in setting out the basic details. The
SoM uses a method known as the Harvard system. The advantages of this system is:

a) It ensures that the author’s name and the year of publication appear in the text.
b) The alphabetical order makes the reference list easy to consult.
c) Only one entry is necessary for each reference in the text.

Citations

All statements of fact or empirical findings reported in your essay must be supported
by citations inserted in the text. Ask yourself, “Who says so, or how do I know this?”
For instance, if you write, “Organisations with strong cultures are often characterised
by resistance to change and lack of innovation”, make sure to show that you are not
making this up yourself. Cite the author(s) whose study provided the evidence by
following the sentence with parentheses containing the author’s name and the date of
the publication, e.g. (Smith, 1983). Include the page number of the original document
if you are using a direct quote from the author. All of these citations should then be
listed in the References section at the end of your paper.

You must always give a citation whenever you summarise a person’s work. For
example:

Personality psychology focuses on people’s tendencies to behave, think, and

feel in particular ways. It deals with issues such as how people are different
from one another psychologically, and how one can measure such differences.
It also investigates how situations interact with personality characteristics to
influence a person’s behaviour, thoughts, and emotions (Arnold, 2004).

In this example, the author is summarising the ideas of Arnold and so cites Arnold at
the end of the summary.

Alternatively, you may wish to quote an author directly. For example:

“Parents of children with Downs Syndrome usually conspire with doctors to

avoid reference to ‘wellness’” (Silverman, 1987: p143).

In this case, the author has directly quoted another author and so acknowledges the
other author’s work by citing him/her. When you directly quote another author, it is
usual to indicate the date of publication and the page number from which the quote
was obtained.

In addition, you may wish to list a number of authors whose ideas are similar and
which back up the point you are trying to make. For example:
 In fact a substantial body of the literature concerning role theory has focused
upon managerial jobs and behaviour (e.g. Burns, 1957; Dalton, 1959; Bussom
et al., 1981; Kotter, 1982; Fondas, 1987; Martinko and Gardner, 1990).

Here, the author has cited a number of references to back up the point being made.

Any author cited in-text must be included in the References section, unless you state
in the citation that you got the information from a cite in another author's article: e.g.,
(Jones, 1981, cited in Smith, 1983). In this case, only Smith needs to be included in the
References section.

FAILURE TO CITE YOUR SOURCES OF INFORMATION

COULD RESULT IN THE CHARGE OF PLAGIARISM.

References

The References section should be on a separate page at the end of the essay. Use single
spacing and separate each reference with a blank space. List the references
alphabetically by the authors’ surnames.

Do not include any references to materials that have not been cited in the text of
your essay. If you read an article or book but did not end up citing it within your essay,
it should not be listed in your References section.

A book reference should include:

 Author’s name, followed by initials
 Year of publication, in brackets (when there is more than one edition, the year
should refer to the edition from which the reference is taken)
 Title of the work, in italics
 Volume number if the book is in more than one volume
 Place of publication or town of origin
 Publishers’ name

An article reference should include:

 Author’s name, followed by initials
 Year of publication in brackets
 Title of article
 Title of journal in full, in italics
 Volume number
 Issue number, if available, in brackets
 The numbers of the first and last pages on which the article appears

Examples of how to reference:

Journal article
Smith D. K. and Marteau, T. M. (1995) ‘How to Get Higher Grades’, The Journal of
Grading, 4(3), pp133-136.

Book

Sharp, J. A. and Howard, K. (1996) The Management of a Project, 2ed., Aldershot,

Gower.

If you have used a chapter in a book written by someone other than the editor

Jones, D. (1998) ‘My Favourite Chapter’, in Murray, T. (ed), A Book of Readings,

London, McGraw Hill.

Newspaper articles
Cumming, F. (1999) ‘Tax-free savings push’, Sunday Mail, 4 April, p1.
Or, if the author is unknown
‘Tax-free savings push’, Sunday Mail (4 April 1999), p1.

Conference papers

Chan, H. S. (2000) Developing a Hypothesis, Third International Conference on

Learning and Teaching, University of Chicago, Dublin.

World Wide Web page

Voluntary Service Organisation (2000) The Meaning of Work, Voluntary Service

Organisation, www.vso.org.uk/media/report.htm, accessed 23/07/01.