Leadership and decision making: organisational analysis

Word Count 

2000 words (+/- 10%)

Learning Outcomes 

 CLO1: Critically evaluate the leadership and decision making theories and models in various organisational situations.

CLO3: Integrate and apply leadership and decision making theories and models in the contemporary workplace situations.

CLO4: Identify and analyse the social and ethical responsibilities related to the leadership and decision making.

CLO5: Use critical self-reflection and feedback of others as a transformative learning experience to identify and act on opportunities for leadership development.

Rubric/Marking Criteria 

Marking rubric is posted on Course Canvas.

Assessment Criteria:

1. Ability to provide a well-researched background of the organisation and to clearly identify the relevant issue;
2. Ability to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of one (or two) leadership theory, with ideas and assertions substantiated through use of high-quality reference material and key academic perspectives/views;
3. Ability to provide a comprehensive critical analysis of the role of decision-making, with ideas and assertions substantiated through use of high-quality reference material and key academic perspectives/views;
4. Ability to propose appropriate (and practicable) recommendations;
5. Ability to appropriately reference sources of information (number and quality of references), using the Harvard style referencing (in-text and list of references) – see http://www.lib.rmit.edu.au/easy-cite/ (Links to an external site.)

Format: 
This assignment should have the following format:

1.       Title page

2.       Executive summary

3.       Table of Contents

4.       Introduction

5.       Background: Organisational analysis (description of the organisation, and identification of one (1) leadership and decision-making issue within the chosen organisation)

6.       Analyses of one (or two) contemporary leadership theory proposed to solve identified organisational issues: (a) components of the theory; (b) applicability and effectiveness of the theory to solve the organisational issue.

7.       Analysis of the role of decision-making as a critical aspect of effective leadership for the chosen organisation.

8.       Recommendations

9.       Conclusions

10.      References

11.      Appendices (if any).

You are advised to use relevant headings and subheadings in this report.

You are required to cite at least 10 relevant, recent references in support of your arguments.

Papers must have in-text referencing and a reference list in the RMIT Harvard referencing style. Papers that have no in-text referencing and/or no reference list will lose 10 marks of the 40 available marks. See Course Canvas for more details.

Task 

This final assessment task will allow you to apply your knowledge of general leadership and decision-making theories and concepts covered in our Course.

Overview:

You are required to choose a contemporary organisation (small, medium or large) with which you are familiar, and then provide an analysis of a key issue or problem within the chosen organisation that would require the application of one (or two) leadership and decision-making theory learned in the course. Your familiarity with the chosen organisation could be through your networks, having worked for the organisation, or through reading about the organisation in the media. You will then produce a report for the Chief Executive Officer of that organisation to help implement leadership and decision-making interventions for the chosen organisation.

First, you will provide a background of a key issue or problem. The issue will depend on the type of the organisation you choose to analyse and may include but not limited to issues or problems such as unethical behaviour, low employee morale, frequent workplaces accidents, negative attitude to work, problems in team, and poor performance. Bearing in mind that you will be familiar with the chosen organisation, you will be expected to clearly describe the key issue. 

Second, you will choose one (or maximum of two) contemporary leadership theory that you will apply to solve the issue raised in the chosen organisation. You will analyse the chosen leadership theory in relation to their components, operation and their effectiveness. Citing relevant references, you will provide an argument relating to why applying the contemporary leadership theory will solve the issue and improve the performance of the organisation (either at the individual level, team level or organisational level).

Third, as part of your analysis, you will also explain why decision-making is a critical aspect of leadership for the chosen organisation. You will specifically discuss how leaders for this organisation can enhance performance (either at the individual, team or organisational levels) by applying  one decision-making style or model learned from this course in order to attain optimal amount of participation in decision making for this organisation.

Finally, based on your analysis, you will provide practical recommendations (maximum of three recommendations) for enhancing future performance (at either the individual, team or organisational levels) for the chosen organisation. Based on material covered in this course, you will provide a justification for each recommendation in the report. 

Important Note:

You are requested to provide background information of the organisation via the Course Canvas (~200 words) that will be the focus of your analysis. 

Relevant references must be provided. Students will demonstrate additional research beyond the course material and textbook by using recent references (minimum of ten recent references).

For this assessment, the word count includes the body of the report. The Executive Summary, Table of Contents, References and Appendices are not included in the word count. Your analysis should refer to the theories covered in this Course.   

Submission Instructions

You are required to submit your Assignment 3 through the online submission in Canvas by the due date. Refer to Canvas Assignment 3 link for specific details.

1. The soft copy of your assignment (including a reference list and appendices) must be submitted online to Canvas of this course by 11.59 pm on the due date.
2. Double check and make sure that the documents you are submitting are correct before hitting the submit button.
3. Your assignment will be submitted for a Turnitin check for academic integrity purpose.
4. Multiple submissions to the Canvas are allowed. However, only the latest submission will be assessed.
5. You need to note that the Canvas system might not be able to process your submission in the case of large volume of submissions at the same time (for example: if many students submit their assignments just right before the due time). Therefore, you need to allow yourself enough time to submit the soft copy.