MGTS 7603- Strategic HRM Report
Individual Assignment
Associate Professor Remi Ayoko (PhD)
UQBS
• Academic Integrity
• Identification of all the requirements of a successful completion of the major case study analysis.
• Comprehensive understanding of the process needed to complete the major assignment
successfully
• Understanding of the tips needed to complete the major assignment successfully
• Begin the process to complete the assignment successfully
This seminar: Learning objectives
• See the intricate connection between theory and practice SHRM processes through a case method.
• The assignment is designed to enable students to explore the relationship between course concepts, models and
theories and the problems and issues confronted by organizations.
• Helps develop analytical and practical skills in the design, implementation and evaluation of SHRM. Cases
provide a context to experience real-world challenges that are enveloped in complicated processes and uncertainties.
The cases provide experiential learning process for the students
• Altogether, cases help the students to learn the value of:
- responding actively and constructively to the SHRM issues in organizations,
- gaining multiple perspectives on situations by using theory, concepts and research findings,
- recognizing that a situation may involve many problems and that different stakeholders will most likely experience divergent views
and problems
- develop an action orientation and a willingness to take some calculated risks when information is not complete,
- appreciate the complexity of translating proposed solutions into comprehensive and detailed plans for action and
- seeking to understand the consequences and limits of managerial actions.
Aims
Acting with the values of honesty, trust, fairness, respect and
responsibility in learning, teaching and research.
(Universities Australia, 2017)
Academic integrity is:
4
Academic
integrity
Personal
integrity
Professional
integrity= =
High standards of academic integrity protect you, the University and the community:
• You have the pride and confidence that comes with knowing you have developed your knowledge
and learnt new skills
• You understand how new knowledge is created and how to apply that knowledge to your studies
and future career
• You model the practices of integrity we want for society
• The community has faith in the value of a UQ qualification
• Your employer, your clients and your patients know you are knowledgeable and skilled.
Benefits of academic integrity
5
Staff know that cheating occurs and will be looking for:
Types of academic misconduct
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CollusionPlagiarism
FabricationFalsification
Contract cheatingImpersonation
Plagiarism: Copying or paraphrasing someone else's work and presenting it as your own. This includes
using your own work without authorization in a different context.
Collusion: Working with others on a task in which individual answers are required. This is sometimes
called unauthorized collaboration, and it may occur unintentionally or intentionally.
Falsification: Manipulating, changing or omitting research data and presenting the results, which will not
be valid.
Fabrication: Making up research data and presenting them as results.
Impersonation: Pretending to be another person in an assignment or getting someone else to do an
assessment for you. For example, sitting a test or examination on behalf of another student.
Violating Integrity
7
Contract cheating: Commissioning someone else to complete an assessment or task for you,
either paid or unpaid.
A student gets someone else to produce academic work on their behalf and then submits it to an
educational institution as if it were theirs.
It could:
• involve payment or favours, or may not
• be friends or family or an unknown
• be purchased on line through a contract cheating site
• be a legitimate learning site such as discussion, tutoring or file sharing site
• Bb a legitimate non-learning site such as an auction/selling site (Gumtree), a labour market (airtasker) or
a file sharing site where you get credits which you can cash in
• Involve getting someone to sit your live or on-line exam for you.
Emphasise Contract cheating
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Risks of contract cheating
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Rowland, Slade, Wong and Whiting (2018).
Incidences
Jan 2017 – Jan 2019: >1400 cases of academic misconduct
Penalties
Penalties include:
• re-submission of an assessment or automatic failure of a
course (lower-end offences)
• suspension or expulsion (more serious or repeated
misconduct).
UQ takes academic misconduct seriously
10
• Direct copying of paragraphs, sentences, a single sentence or significant parts of a sentence with an end
reference but without quotation marks around the copied text.
• Paraphrasing, summarising or simply rearranging another person's words, ideas, etcwithout changing the
basic structure and/or meaning of the text.
• Offering an idea or interpretation that is not yours without identifying whose idea or interpretation it is.
• A ‘cut and paste' of statements from multiple sources.
• Presenting as independent, work done in collaboration with others.
• Copying or adapting another student's original work into a submitted assessment item.
Plagiarism is not ok!
Plagiarism is not ok!
• See the intricate connection between theory and practice SHRM processes through a case method.
• The assignment is designed to enable students to explore the relationship between course concepts, models and theories and the problems
and issues confronted by organizations.
• Helps develop analytical and practical skills in the design, implementation and evaluation of SHRM. Cases provide a context to
experience real-world challenges that are enveloped in complicated processes and uncertainties. The cases provide experiential learning
process for the students
• Altogether, cases help the students to learn the value of:
- responding actively and constructively to the SHRM issues in organizations,
- gaining multiple perspectives on situations by using theory, concepts and research findings,
- recognizing that a situation may involve many problems and that different stakeholders will most likely experience divergent views and
problems
- develop an action orientation and a willingness to take some calculated risks when information is not complete,
- appreciate the complexity of translating proposed solutions into comprehensive and detailed plans for action and
- seeking to understand the consequences and limits of managerial actions.
Aims
• Apply the course concepts, models and theories to the problems and issues confronted by
a real organisation through the practical analysis of a specific HR policy, function or
strategy within an organisation.
• Apply understanding developed in the course to the practical analysis of a specific SHRM
policy, function or strategy within the context of the overall organisation.
• Assignment assumes that a problem exists within an organisation – This problem requires
identification, solutions, and implementation plan that must be developed; proactive
evaluation and problem solving.
Assumptions
The task is to develop an SHRM report. Your report for the CEO or business unit manager [whichever seems most relevant] of your chosen
organization.
The proposed solution to an existing people management practice issue must match a business unit's strategic objectives [such as innovation,
growth, flexibility, cost] with a narrowly scoped SHRM issue.
Choose one unit or department (or organization) to which your narrowly scoped SHRM report must be contained.
As an individual, you will need to decide on a family business organization where there is a SHRM challenge (e.g., recruitment,
learning and development, work design issues). In deciding on what organization to examine as a case study, you may want to first consult
the media (e.g., business review, daily newspaper articles) or the Australian Stock Exchange List for medium to large Family Business
organizations for live-cases to get a quick impression of what family business organization may be currently experiencing SHRM challenges.
You may also choose a family business that is in your local area.
You may then follow this up with a web search to know more about the organization and face to face interactions with the organizational
members.
OPTIONAL: You may interview relevant organizational member(s) about the major SHRM challenge that you have identified in this
small family business to get an in-depth perspective on the problem. You will NEED to review literature before you conduct your
interview.
Your Key Tasks
1. Based on the content of MGTS7603 learning activities, you will determine the major challenges or
problematic issues (e.g., Design of work, strategic planning, performance management, diversity
management, rewarding people, employee development and career management or any other current
issues in SHRM and as evident in your case.
2. Also determine why is it important to study and resolve the challenge(s). Students MUST use excerpts
from their interview and literature to support their claims. More information have been provided on the
process of analyzing a case during the semester.
3. Also, outline the evidence-based triggers (e.g., historical, contextual and technological) of the SHRM or
people issues and how this family business is currently managing the challenge/problem. In this case,
you may want to conduct some analyses (e.g., SWOT, PESTLE) into the internal and external environments of
the family business. You may also use the Hartel & Fujimoto's (2010) Continuous HRM model (CHRM) to
conduct a situation analysis to clearly identify the contributing factor to the SHRM problem(s).
Your key tasks
4. Then conduct a comprehensive review of literature on the major issues as evident in your case and especially identify the
major schools of thought around these challenges/issues.
5. During your literature review, you must isolate a theory/model or set of theories/models (e.g., a model of strategic
management process, workflow analysis model) that best explain the issues and actions/behaviours of the issues in
your case.
6. You are NOT limited to the theories that will be discussed in the course. If you are in doubt, talk to your course lecturer and
facilitators. Preferably, use one or at most two theories as anchor for your assignment. Please refer to the UQBS Assignment
Writing Guide on the Course blackboard especially for a detailed guidance on how to structure literature review for your report.
The librarian will assist you in locating the relevant databases for your literature review.
7. Then, you will critically examine the SHRM issue(s) in your case and based on the learning issues in this course, you
will determine whether the SHR Manager (or others in similar roles) have managed the SHRM issue(s) successful or
unsuccessfully. To achieve this, you may also draw on the CHRM model to decide on the relevant options and literature review
for more evidence-based approach to resolve the issue(s). Also excerpts from your interview MUST be used to buttress your
discussions and arguments.
8. Also, you will suggest at least two alternative ways (options) in which the SHRM challenges can be managed better or
resolved.
Your key tasks
9. Develop a carefully constructed action plan to implement the proposed recommendations. Give a clear account of
success criteria for each task in the action plan
10. Where appropriate, you should outline the extent to which the solutions depend on the characteristics of the family
business, nature of its strategic objectives, nature of business, organizational environment -national and
international- and or industry.
11. In your discussion, you must evaluate the options and provide reasons for why you think one option may be a
preferred as an appropriate people management strategy. You must justify why you would choose one of these options
over the other - or why you choose both - as appropriate people management strategies.
12. A clear and concise articulation of the connection between SHRM theory/models & practice must be made. Make
sure that the recommendations are both justified and logically linked to your analysis and evaluation. For example, in
your report it must be evident that you are logically connecting theory with your identified SHRM challenge/problem and
especially using relevant literature for your connections.
13. Please note: You must use relevant theory (including a thorough literature review using quality journal articles)
and excerpts from your interview to buttress your arguments throughout the report.
Your Task
1. Produce an action plan detailing how proposed actions will bring about change.
2. Targets that can be used to measure change against actions taken must be clearly
articulated.
3. These are the main points of writing an action plan.
a) 1. What is the key task that you want to implement?
b) 2. What needs to happen to bring about the change?
c) 3. How will you be able to prove that the change has taken place?
d) 4. By when do you want the change or the action to happen?
e) 5. What will you need to make the change happen?
f) 6. What will it cost and where will the money/funding come from?
Action Plans - Structured plan to bring change
j) In a reflective mode, also identify three learning issues that you have taken away as an individual or individual
from the case analysis.
Evaluation: Report rubrics will be enforced. Please see the course blackboard for rubrics.
Your Key tasks
Take a good look at the course profile. The profile provides the details of what is needed to complete the
assignment.
Tips: Read the course profile
• Identify the organisations or unit’s strategic objectives (e.g. To be market leader,
innovation, growth etc.) relevant to your chosen organisation.
• Provide insights into the broader context of the business unit that is relevant to your
statement of the key argument.
• Review the situation analysis (e.g., derived from SWOT) and academic literature
(journal articles) to explain your chosen people SHRM function/practice issue. Clearly link
this issue to the strategic objectives of the business unit.
• Identify and evaluate two possible SHRM practice options that could be applied to
address a narrowly scoped aspect of this issue for a specific department or section in a
business unit (you don’t need to address the whole organisation!)
Tips
SWOT ANALYSIS
Analyse and present evidence, including excerpts from interviews and academic literature and aspects of the
organisational context, to support your recommendation to implement one or both options.
Develop an action plan for the implementation that includes a description of the success criteria for each major task
i.e. how do we know success when we have achieved it?
Include in your action plan an approach to evaluating the success of your solution overall.
Draw on a minimum of twelve (12) peer reviewed articles to support your arguments and recommendations.
10 of them must be from 2020-2025.
Word count: 2,000 (+/-10%)
Tips
If you choose to apply the CHRM framework to this assignment, you will need to present a synthesis
of Steps 1 – 3 in your report. Detailed analyses can be out in your appendix.
Then, fully develop your literature review and draw from your interview to provide a rationale for your two
options and evaluate them and justify why you choose one option rather than the other (or why both
options need to be implemented in the short term).
Your report also draws on Step 4 of the CHRM framework (Recommendations, Action Plan and Success
Criteria).
You will need to consider how you will approach Step 5 (Implementation) and Step 6 (Evaluation) as you
carry out the design of your Action Plan.
Tips
Possible frameworks for analysis
5 min break
MGTS 7603: Case Analysis Assignment
Interview Guide
Tips on interview
Choose a family business and a strategic human resource management (SHRM) issue (performance, training &
development, rewarding employees, diversity and inclusion etc) as presented in the course profile and course
content.
For example,
Identify the major SHRM issue(s) apparent in your case (i.e. organization). Two issues will be enough.
This SHRM issue may be related to issues around diversity and conflict, succession, distribution of rewards,
performance management etc. Also, determine to what extent the SHRM has been managed effectively
(see more examples in the course profile).
Feel free to choose from the topics that we have not yet covered in the lectures –e.g. international SHRM etc.
and see the relevant chapter(s) in the course textbook or talk to your facilitator and or course co-coordinator
Tips: Choose the family business and your topic
Review of Literature:
Read a few articles around your topic in addition to the lecture slides/texts.
Also, based on your literature review, decide on the theory/theories that are
appropriate for your topic e.g., theories of job embeddedness, social exchange and motivation
for employee retention.
Please read the most recent peer-reviewed journal (not magazine) articles. For
your convenience, you may want to select articles from the list of journals I
have provided on the course BB.
Tips: Preparing your interview questions
Ask broad questions around the issues for which you would like to report in your
assignment.
Broad questions will allow the interviewee (CEO, HRM etc.) to tell you a story. From
the story, you will be able to evaluate how effective the interviewee in company
views the SHRM function and how it has been managed. This may form the
core of your report.
Do not ask questions with mono-syllabic answers such as “yes” or “no”.
Tips: Preparing your interview questions
 Example: if I am interested in the employee retention in my chosen
organization, I will be asking the following questions:
1. Please can you please describe the key most recent challenges in your unit, or organization?
2. Most organizations are currently facing challenges related to retention of staff. Please
describe how your organization is coping with this challenge.
3. What do you think are responsible for the challenge?
4. As an employee, please can you tell me some options you might be considering in
resolving/managing this challenge? Which of the options do you prefer and why? Also, what
action plans are in place in your organization to resolve the challenge?
5. How effective was the outcome (or expected outcome) of the management of the challenge
for the staff and for your unit/organization?
Tips: Preparing your interview questions
Aim: You should aim at asking at least 5 but not more than 7 broad questions. Answers to your interview
questions should assist you in determining the triggers, process and management of the SHRM problem in
the organization. It will also help you to determine how effective you think the issue has been managed.
Do it: Once you have done your literature review, you need to draft your interview questions.
Show it: Then, show the draft to your facilitator for refinement.
Tips: Preparing your interview questions
Write up your report using a standard format of report writing:
Title of report
Executive summary (Abstract/or synopsis)-refer to the Assignment Writing Guide and course website for
full details (100 words)
Introduction (200 words)
Literature review (450 words)
Methodology (150 words)
Results (400 words)
Discussion (400 words)
Conclusion (150 words)
Recommendations (150 words)
Supplementary material
References, interview scripts (Appendices)
Standard Report Format
Your submission must be formatted appropriately as a report.
Your report is 2000 words. The font is no smaller than 12 pt (either Arial or Times New Roman).
Paragraphs are 1 ½ spaced with double spacing between paragraphs.
You must identify any documents that you draw on in understanding your case in your reference list that is an attachment
to your report (but not part of the word count).
Unlimited appendices (e.g., documents from organisation, analyses of SWOT, excerpts from interview etc.) may be
attached to the report and are expected as supporting material.
Appendices must be: (1) referenced in the text, and (2) kept in order of the reference section. Be careful that the point you
make in the text by using an appendix is clear and that, in combination, the appendices are clearly presented and logically
consistent.
Assignment Presentation
Clearly indicate the name of the organisation on the cover page of the report, your name and Student
ID. Reports should be submitted online as a PDF by the specified date and time in the Electronic
Course Profile.
• Late assignments: A penalty of 10% of the maximum possible mark will be deducted
per 24 hours from time submission is due for up to 7 days. After 7 days, you will
receive a mark of 0.
Please see the marking rubrics on the course Blackboard
Also be aware of plagiarism and avoid it at all cost.
Submission:
Reflection Diary: 5 mins
1.Describe the activities/cases in today’s seminar.
What have you learnt from them?
2. Describe the topic covered in this seminar. How has
the topic impacted you? Mention what impacted you
most and why?
3.What have you learnt about strategic Human
Resource Management in general and /or yourself
today?
4. How do you think your learnings will make you a
better Strategic Human Resource Manager or a better
person.
• Identification of all the requirements of a successful completion of the major case study analysis.
• Comprehensive understanding of the process needed to complete the major assignment successfully
• Understanding of the tips needed to complete the major assignment successfully
• Begin the process to complete the assignment successfully
Recap
Employee Turnover and Retention
Next seminar

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