Expert Answers

Question:

Academic honesty is required. In the main body of your submission you must give credit to authors on whose research and ideas your work is based. Append to your submission a reference list that indicates the books, articles, etc. that you have used, cited or quoted in order to complete this assessment.

1. LO1: Analyse the published literature relating to a management related topic and produce a fully referenced managementreport

2. LO2: Design and deploy a range of primary data collection methods.

3. LO3: Evaluate and interpret qualitative and quantitative data and present the findings to specialist and non-specialist audiences

4. LO4: Evaluate the appropriateness of different approaches to information gathering.

Task 1:

Prepare an evaluative management report that discusses one of the following topics:

1. Strategies for avoiding plagiarism in academic writing

2. Planning and effective time management

3. Brainstorming for academic writing

4. Effective communication

5. Decision making

6. Problem solving in business organizations

7. Effective communication

8. Social media and professional networking

Any selected topic for your report must be justified and agreed with the lecturer. Your report must be accurate and based on a minimum of three published literature directly related to your chosen topic. The literature should be from credible sources, current and cited in accordance with Harvard Referencing Style. To ensure that your report focuses on the selected topic of your choice, it is essential to concentrate on a specific area. For instance, if you decide to write on decision making you may wish to focus specifically on the relevance of decision making in supporting workplace effectiveness.

TASK DESCRIPTION

General Submission Guidance

1. All of your submissions must include a title page that clearly states your names, your student numbers, the module code and title, your lecturer’s name, and your assignment title.

2. All of your submissions should be submitted via a power point.

3. All of your submissions should be clearly written and presented with appropriate choice of font style andsize.

4. All of your submissions should have an appropriate structure, include page numbers, and have a reference list.

NOTE: The guidance offered below is linked to the five generic assessment criteria overleaf.

1. Engagement with Literature Skills

Your work must be informed and supported by scholarly material that is relevant to and focused on the task(s) set. You should provide evidence that you have accessed an appropriate range of sources, which may be academic, governmental and industrial; these sources may include academic journal articles, textbooks, current news articles, organisational documents, and websites. You should consider the credibility of your sources; academic journals are normally highly credible sources while websites require careful consideration/selection and should be used sparingly. Any sources you use should be current and up-to-date, mostly published within the last five years or so, though seminal/impo rtant works in the field may be older. You must provide evidence of your research/own reading throughout your work, using a suitable referencing system, including in-text citations in the main body of your workand a referencelist at the end of your work.

Guidance specific to this assessment:

2. Knowledgeand Understanding Skills

At level 4, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the underlying concepts and principles associated with your area(s) of study. Knowledge relates to the facts, information and skills you have acquired through your learning. You demonstrate your understanding by interpreting the meaning of the facts and information (knowledge). This means that you need to select and include in your work the concepts, techniques, models, theories, etc. appropriate to the task(s) set. You should be able to explain the theories, concepts, etc. to show your understanding. Your mark/grade will also depend upon the extent to which you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding.

Guidance specific to this assessment:

3. Cognitive andIntellectual Skills

You should be able to present, evaluate and interpret qualitative and quantitative data, in order to develop

lines of argument and make sound judgements in accordance with basic theories and concepts of your subject(s) of study. You should be able to evaluate the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems related to your area(s) of study and/or work. Your work must contain evidence of logical, analytical thinking. For example, to examine and break information down into parts, make inferences, compile, compare and contrast information. This means not just describing what! But also justifying: Why? How? When? Who? Where? At what cost? You should provide justification for your arguments and judgements using evidence that you have reflected upon the ideas of others within the subject area and that you are able to make sound judgements and arguments using data and concepts . Where relevant, alternative solutions and recommendations may be proposed.

Guidance specific to this assessment:

4. Practical Skills

At level 4, you should be able to apply the basic underlying concepts and principles to evaluate andinterpret these within the context of your area of study. You should be able to demonstrate how the subject-related concepts and ideas relate to real world situation s and/or a particular context. How do they work in practice? You will deploy models, methods, techniques, and/or theories, in that context, to assess current situations, perhaps to formulate plans or solutions to solve problems, or to create artefacts. This is likely to involve, for instance, the use of real world artefacts, examples and cases, the application of a model within an organisation and/or benchmarking one theory or organisation against others based on stated criteria.

GUIDANCE FOR STUDENTS IN THE COMPLETION OF TASKS 

Guidance specific to this assessment:

5. Transferable Skills for Life and Professional Practice

Your work must provide evidence of the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring the exercise of some personal responsibility. This includes demonstrating: that you can communicate the results of your study/work accurately and reliably, and with structured and coherent arguments; that you can initiate and complete tasks and procedures, whether individually and/or collaboratively; fluency of expression; clarity and effectiveness in presentation and organisation. Work should be coherent and well-structured in presentation and organisation.

Assignment brief:

The objective of this assignment is to produce a report analysing on a significant aviation accident. Emphasis should be given to the identification and analysis of the key deficiencies and weaknesses from a Safety Management System’s perspective.

Details:

Choose one significant aviation accident that occurred in the world, and submit a paper on the accident.

With this assignment, students will reinforce their capabilities, improve their communication skills, critical judgment as well as consolidating their knowledge on key areas in Safety Management Systems.

The report is to provide a brief outline of what occurred and discuss salient gaps and deficiencies identified from a safety management system perspective. If appropriate, the paper should also indicate any resultant changes to aviation regulations and legislation. Please note that this is not intended to be a formal report resulting from the investigation to the accident/incident, but rather a critical paper on the safety deficiencies impacting the different elements of an SMS.

You may choose an accident which involves an organization(s) with or without an implemented SMS at the time of the accident. There are numerous examples of accidents prior to the SMS era that illustrate well the need to have an integrated and systematic approach to safety as a proactive means to minimize risks. On the other hand, recent accidents involving organisations with a fully implemented SMS prove that a safety system per se might not be an effective answer to a risk free scenario, thereby demonstrating the need to use the lessons learnt from bad experiences as a means to improve existing SMS. In summary, and whichever accident you decide to choose, your analysis should be focused on the deficiencies spanning all elements of a standard SMS (existing or not) with an aim to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

The paper should be in your own words as much as possible; where you need to quote from other sources you must properly acknowledge and reference those sources. Furthermore, in your report you will need to:

· Select a significant aviation accident;

· briefly describe the accident;

· identify the key safety issues and risks;

· analyse key  gaps  and  weaknesses  in  the  safety  management system that may have led to the accident occurring;

· determine if  there  has  been  any  resultant  changes  to  aviation legislation, regulations and/or safety practices; and

· from the lessons learnt, explain how an effective SMS could contribute to prevent analogous situations in the future;

· write up a report outlining your analysis and conclusions.

IMPORTANT: The report is to be developed around the following main headings:

 Introduction

The introduction sets the tone for the report. It has two major aims: to introduce the problem in a suitable context; to stimulate the reader’s interest. A short description of the accident based on factual information should be provided in this section.

 Accident information

Review of relevant sources of information contributing to a better understanding of the problem (e.g., official reports, journal papers, books, technical literature, media, etc). Some accidents have been thoroughly analysed and constitute reference case-studies in literature in the aviation safety domain (e.g., books, papers, articles in specialized media), whereas other accidents may benefit from resorting to main references in key areas pertaining to SMS (e.g., Human Factors, organizational issues, etc).

 Analysis and discussion

Presentation and critical analysis of findings should be included in this section. Notwithstanding the use of other references, an effort should be made to present your own argumentation and critical analysis of facts (e.g. comparison with conclusions obtained from other sources). In this section, you should aim to address the following questions in particular: 1) what were the key gaps and weaknesses in the organisation(s) Safety Management System that contributed to the accident’s occurrence. If an SMS was not in place at the date of the accident, the discussion should be centred around which elements of a SMS could be impacted if one was to exist assuming the standard structure recommended by ICAO. 2) the resulting industry recommendations and changes to aviation legislation, regulations and/or safety practices.

 Conclusion and recommendations

A list of safety recommendations should be presented in this section based on the discussion of the circumstances of the accident. An attempt should be made to go beyond the recommendations in the official report issued by the investigation authorities and envisaging improving the effectiveness of the SMS. Key ideas may be presented using bullet point format.

Assessment Criteria:

To provide a comprehensive answer to the assessment brief, you will need to achieve the following, as a minimum:

· Display a comprehensive understanding of the topic;

· Demonstrate a wide review of the literature and include practical examples to support your argumentation and analysis (a minimum of two text books and/or technical literature issued by main aviation stakeholders, 2 journal peer-reviewed papers and 2 articles/reports from authoritative industry stakeholders are expected);

· Demonstrate a critical analysis of the literature and research, including your own argumentation based on the facts and circumstances of the incident/accident.

· Present information in a logical, systematic and integrated manner (i.e., structure/format and written quality of the report);

· Appropriately use of a referencing style (e.g. RMIT Harvard Reference style)

STARS Sdn Bhd owns the following assets as recorded in its fixed asset register for the year ending 31 October.

Additional information:

On 31 December 2013, a second hand van was bought for RM20,000. On the same day, the van was installed with an air-conditioning unit costing RM1,400 and some repairs were made to the van amounting to RM4,000 before it could be used.  Monthly maintenance of the van costs RM500. The annual allowance rate is 20%.

On 1 April 2014, Machine A was sold at RM45,000 and a new Machine B was purchased on hire purchase basis costing RM230,000. The cash price is RM190,000 and the company paid a deposit of RM30,000. The balance will be paid each month commencing from 1 May 2014 for 80 months.

On 30 June 2015, the computer was traded-in for a new computer. The cash paid for the new computer was RM5,500. The trade-in value was RM2,000.

Required:

Compute the capital allowances, balancing charges and balancing allowances (if any) for Star Sdn Bhd for all the relevant years of assessment until the year of assessment 2016.

1. Complete all three parts of this question.

a. Suppose KPM Bank has the following balance sheet (in billions of dollars):

If net profit of this bank is $2 billion, then what is the return on assets (ROA) and the return on equity (ROE)? Demonstrate that ROE = ROA x EM.

b. A bank has $105 billion of assets with average duration of 5 years and $80 billion of liabilities with average duration of 6 years. Conduct a duration analysis for the bank, and show what will happen to the net worth of the bank if interest rates fall by 1%. What action should the bank take to reduce interest rate risk?

c. A bank has $80 billion of fixed-rate liabilities, $25 billion of rate-sensitive liabilities, $10 billion of fixed-rate assets, and $95 billion of rate-sensitive assets. Conduct a gap analysis for the bank, and show what will happen to the bank profits if interest rates fall by 1%. What action should the bank take to reduce interest rate risk

2. Suppose that currency in circulation is $1 trillion, the amount of chequable deposits is $1.2 trillion, excess reserves are $20 billion, and the desired reserve ratio is 10%.

a. Calculate the money supply, the currency deposit ratio, the excess reserve ratio, and the money multiplier.

b. If the central bank conducts an unusually large open market purchase of bonds of $1.4 trillion following a sharp contraction in the economy, what is the impact on the money supply?

c. If the central bank conducts the same policy as in part (b), except chartered banks hold all of these proceeds as excess reserves rather than loan them out, what happens to the amount of excess reserves, the excess reserve ratio, the money supply, and the money multiplier?

d. Following the financial crisis in 2008, the Federal Reserve injected massive amounts of liquidity in the U.S. banking system but very little lending occurred. As a result, the M1 money multiplier was below 1 for most of the time from October 2008 through 2011. How does this relate to your answer to part (c) above?

3. Describe the large value transfer system (LVTS), and list the major reasons for adopting the system. 

Discuss how in the LVTS environment, government deposit shifting is affected by auctions of government balances. 

4. Indicate how each of the following international transactions is entered into the Canadian balance of payments with double-entry bookkeeping. Your records should include a description of the transaction being recorded, which specific account is affected (e.g., export, home financial account asset, etc.), and the accompanying credit/debit entry.

Example: A Canadian airplane manufacturer imports $5 million in parts from a U.S. firm. It uses a Canadian bank account to pay for the parts.

Example Answer:

a. An Italian tourist charges $450 to his Mastercard (issued by an Italian bank) for a hotel room in Jasper, Alberta, Canada.

b. A Chinese catering company purchases $200,000 worth of helium tanks from a Canadian welding firm. The Chinese catering company uses deposits from a bank in China.

c. A French firm forgives a $250,000 loan to a firm located in in the town of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, following a deadly rail accident.

d. Canada donates $10 million in medical and food supplies to Ukraine following a month-long war.

5. Suppose the spot foreign exchange rate of the Canadian dollar is $US 1.53, while its 12-month forward rate is $US 1.58. One-year interest rates are 6% in Canada and 10% in the United States. Are there quick profits to be made from foreign currency arbitrage here? If so, show the sequence of purchases and sales, using $Can. 100,000 as your starting point.

6. Briefly describe each of the following terms:

a. Eurocurrency markets 

b. international debt crises

c. purchasing power parity 

d. currency arbitrage 

e. interest-rate parity condition

7. Suppose that the pension you are managing is expecting an inflow of funds of $1 billion next year and you want to make sure you will earn the current interest rate of 5% when you invest the incoming funds in long-term bonds.

a. How would you use the options market to do this?

b. How would you use the futures market to do this? 

c. What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a futures contract rather than an option contract 

8. Complete all three parts of this question.

a. Why does a lower exercise price mean a call option will have a higher premium and a put option a lower premium?

b. Suppose you buy a put option on a $1 million Canada bond futures contract with an exercise price of 100 and the price of the Canada bond is 110 at expiration.

(i) Is the contract in the money, out of the money, or at the money? 

(ii) What is your profit or loss on the contract if the premium was $50,000

Suppose you buy a call option on a $1 million Canada bond futures contract with an exercise price of 150 for a premium of $20,000. If on expiration the futures contract has a price of 155, what is your profit or loss on the contract?

Applying the pattern for a bad-news message discussed in class, write a letter based on the scenario outlined below.

The bad-news pattern (the indirect pattern) is outlined on page 165 of our textbook.

Your letter should be formatted using full block style.   See pages 142-148 for a sample and detailed description of the format.  

Your letter will be evaluated using the following criteria:

· Effective application of the indirect negative message pattern

· Appropriate tone

· Correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation

Correct full block letter forma

Question 1

â??India is one of the largest markets for gold. Jewelry demand in India between July to September fell 48% year-on-year to 52.8 tonnes from around 101.6 tonnes a year earlier, the [World Gold Council] said in a report. But demand for gold as an investment rose 52% to 33.8 tonnes on-year. [â?¦] The precious metal plays an important role in Indiaâ??s culture â?? itâ??s considered auspicious to buy gold during festive occasions or to give gold jewelry as a gift at weddings. It is also seen as a symbol of affluence and a safe investment. [Somasundaram PR, managing director for India at the World Gold Council] explained that demand for gold between July to September tends to be relatively low, driven by seasonal factors such as monsoons and inauspicious periods. The drop in demand for gold jewelry was also due to many festivals and weddings being canceled or postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 8 million people in India. â??On the other hand, goldâ??s safe haven attributes and an anticipation of price rise paved the way for an increase in investment demand for gold bars and coins,â? he added.â? (www.cnbc.com, accessed on 30 th October 2020) 

Required

Demand for gold arises from both consumption and investment reasons. How does a drop of demand for consumption of gold (as the one experienced in India between July to September 2020) affect the price of gold? You are required to illustrate your answer also through diagrams (i.e., demand and supply curves).

Question 2

â??Aging of the population is a cause of the rising costs of healthcare but a minor one compared with the main driver that much more can be done and that most of what can be done costs more than what used to be possible. This is what economists call â??supply-drive demand.â? You build hospitals, intensive care units, roads, prisons, and medical schools and they promptly fill up. You develop new, highly-expensive treatments, and people want to use them. As a healthcare leader once said to me, â??The main cause of the increase in healthcare costs is the National Institutes of Health.â? (Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal; https://blogs.bmj.com, accessed on 30th October 2020) 

Required

Explain why, according to the â??supply-drive demandâ?? argument, an increase of supply triggers an increase of demand for a good or service. Does this argument always hold across industries and services â?? such as, for example, hospitals, intensive care units, roads, prisons, and medical schools? You are required to illustrate your answer also through diagrams (i.e., demand and supply curves, cost curves).

Question 3

â??The EU antitrust regulators launched on Monday (5 October) another investigation to clamp down on anti-competitive business practices that led to a â??canned vegetable cartelâ?? in the European food market. According to the European Commission, Italian agricultural cooperative Conserve Italia agreed for several consecutive years with other market participants to fix selling prices, share markets and allocate customers â??for the supply of certain types of canned vegetables to retailers and/or food service companies.â? [â?¦] This specific case is linked to a bigger one which brought to light the existence of cartels and restrictive business practices in the canned foodstuff sector all across Europe, dating back to the early years of the 2000s. Last year, the Commission found that French agriculture cooperatives Bonduelle and Groupe CECAB, as well as the Dutch company Coroos, participated for more than 13 years in a canned food cartel in the European Economic Area (EEA). [â?¦] After having admitted their involvement in the cartel, Coroos and CECAB agreed to settle the dispute by paying a fine of more than â?¬31.6 billion, while Bonduelle was pardoned for having revealed the existence of the cartel to the Commission.â? (www.euractiv.com, accessed on 30th October 2020)

Required

What are the conditions that give rise to business cartels like the one of canned vegetables in the EU, and those conditions that can make a cartel break up? 

QUESTION 1

Reflect upon the Diversity and change management practices in your company or in any company of your choice. In your opinion, what are the areas of improvement?

QUESTION 2

Read the short case study.

Case Study: Delivery Disaster (Robbins & Coulter, 2012, page 454)

When two Domino’s Pizza employees filmed a gross prank in the kitchen of the restaurant in Conover, North Carolina, the company suddenly had a major public relations crisis on its hands. The video ended up posted on YouTube and other sites and showed a Domino’s employee preparing “sandwiches for delivery while putting cheese up his nose, nasal mucus on the sandwiches, and violating other health-code standards,” with another employee providing narration. By the next day, over a million disgusted people had viewed the video and discussion about Domino’s had spread throughout Twitter and Google.

As Domino’s quickly realized, social media has the power to take tiny incidents and turn them into marketing crises. A company spokesperson said, “We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea.” When the company first learned about the video, executives decided not to respond aggressively, hoping the controversy would quiet down. What they missed, though, was the “perpetual mushroom effect of viral sensations.” The chief marketing officer of a social media marketing firm said, “If you think it’s not going to spread, that’s when it gets bigger.” And as Domino’s discovered, it did. In just a matter of days, Domino’s reputation was damaged. Customers’ perception of its quality went from positive to negative. One brand expert said, “It’s graphic enough in the video, and it’s created enough of a stir, that it gives people a little pause.”

So what happened to the two employees? Although they told Domino’s executives they never actually delivered the tainted food, they were fired and charged with a felony. And Domino’s posted its own video featuring its top manager addressing the incident on YouTube not long after it occurred.

Question 2.1

Discuss the barriers to communication that you find in your own organisation? Provide at least 4 suggestions as a manager to improve communication within your own organization using any of the communication model?

Question 2.2

You’re a manager of a workplace that has different “generations.” How will you approach engaging and motivating your employees? Do you think Gen Y employees are going to be more difficult to “engage and motivate”? Discuss the above using a relevant motivational theory.

QUESTION 3

Identify someone who you consider as an excellent leader. What type of leadership style(s) does he/she exhibit?  What conflict management tool can a leader use to diffuse conflict(s) in an organization?

A1 Function Room & Setup

a) Provide ONE (1) hotel capacity chart with relevant information.  

b) Recommend the MOST appropriate function room suitable for the following event. Justify each recommendation provided.

i. Food tasting

ii. Bridesmaid hospitality room

iii. Wedding Tea Ceremony

iv. Wedding Dinne

c) Recommend a function setup for the following event. Justify each recommendation provided

v. Food tasting

vi. Bridesmaid hospitality room

vii. Wedding Tea Ceremony

viii. Wedding Dinner

d) Create ONE (1) Banquet Event Order (BEO) for a wedding dinner event with 600 pax in capacity 

A2 Meal Functions

a) Provide TWO (2) sets of menu for selection for the following:

i. Pre-dinner reception for 60 pax

ii. 8-course Chinese Wedding Menu for 560 pax

iii. 8-course family style Halal menu for 30 pax

iv. 8-course Chinese Vegetarian Menu for 10 pax

Assignment

Your final assignment takes the form of an individual report and it is divided into two parts: 

A. Please briefly answer the theoretical questions below:

a. Explain the different types of marketstructures using both graphs and verbal explanation. Provide a specific real-life example of each market.

b. Why monopolies arise? Explain and mention a real monopoly!

c. Explain briefly how the price floor works in a market if the government applies it. Use a specific real-life example to argue for the application of it.

B. With reference to wider research, you must complete a company report, which analyses and evaluates ONE of the 3 following companies:

1) Airbus

2) Samsung

3) Tesla 

You must choose ONE of the companies and follow the below structure for your report:

a. Introduction: write a brief company profile and introduce the company’s mission and vision, strategic goals, basic financial performance in the past 3 years.

b. Pick one of the company’s key products and write about the type of marketstructure it competes in. List the closestsubstitutes of this product and also find out their market shares. Find out why this product is successful or unsuccessful.

c. Draw a conclusion about the success of the company and how you see it competing in the future

v Start out broadly and then summarize the article (1-2 paragraphs).

v Introduce the main theme within animal behaviour that this work falls into (think generally – predator avoidance, social evolution, mating systems, etc.)

v and introduce the knowledge gap(s) that the paper you’re reviewing proposes to fill.

v Use citations (of other peer-reviewed papers) for this general intro.

v (Create a reference list of at least 3 papers at the end of the paper that will not be counted toward your word limit.)

v Highlight the main findings of your paper in the context of the behavioural theme introduced above.

v Briefly mention what you did or didn’t like about the manuscript.

v Indicate large-scale errors in the study (if any) or impressive aspects of the paper.

v What is your scientific opinion of this work?

v This introductory paragraph is the first thing the editor and the authors will read. What do you think?