BE&S assignment 2: Report imagining the next 50 years

1. BE&S assignment 2: Report imagining the next 50 years

2. Outline of sessions • Lecture: Welcome to BE&S assignment 2! • Why are we writing this report & why 50 years?! • How to write your report including the 3 key messages • What should you write about? Examples from last year • Tutorial plans • Why have you picked this industry/company? • How will you get the most out of your reading? • How can you adopt a more critical approach in your writing? • What should you write? Get out your red pens!

3. BE&S assignment 2: Report imagining the next 50 years • Given all the assessments we could have set, WHY this particular report?

4. & why 50 years?

5. Another way of thinking about this… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0027IXxLj-0

6. The basics “Produce a report to help [your chosen] organisation prepare to meet the business ethics &/or sustainability challenges it is likely to encounter over the next 50 years” • 3,000 words (10% allowance) • Report (not essay) • Online hand-in only, no hard copy • Draft submission & final submission links • In case of emergency…

7. HOW to write your report 1 Identify an industry for the purpose of analysis. Using a range of appropriate academic sources, set out the key business ethics &/or sustainability challenges facing your chosen industry. 2 Imagine that you are a business ethics &/or sustainability consultant, who has been contracted by a specific company in your chosen sector. 3 Produce a report to help this organisation prepare to meet the business ethics &/or sustainability challenges it is likely to encounter over the next 50 years. Remember that in addition to looking at your chosen company, your analysis must also take account of the global context & the industry within which it is located, as well as the individual employees/managers/consumers & other stakeholders with whom it engages. 4 All students must include a one-page appendix at the end of the report, which sets out: • Two areas for improvement identified in Assignment 1 & how you have addressed these in this assignment (signpost us to specific examples within your assignment) • How your 2 assignments, taken together, demonstrate that you have engaged with a broad range of ideas & concepts about business ethics & sustainability (i.e. compare & contrast what you have looked at in each assignment). • You can link these 2 elements together or treat them separately, whichever works best for you. For obvious reasons, you should give some thought to this section before you start writing the main body of your assignment.

8. But also…remember our 3 key messages from Term 1 Be yourself Be critical Think of other people

9. Let’s bring the brief & the key messages together…

10. Be yourself 1 Identify an industry for the purpose of analysis. Using a range of appropriate academic sources, set out the key business ethics &/or sustainability challenges facing your chosen industry “Be ambitious – we will reward your efforts to explore complex ideas even if the analysis is not flawless”

11. Start here… Be critical 2 Imagine that you are a business ethics &/or sustainability consultant, who has been contracted by a specific company in your chosen sector. Only when you have a view of what the important issues are do you go here… “Our primary interest is in seeing how you use academic theories & ideas to explore complex business ethics & sustainability challenges. The industry/company is merely a vehicle to enable you to do that. Do not get drawn into lengthy narrative descriptions of what the industry/company has or has not done & avoid relying extensively on nonfinancial & news reports”

12. 3 Produce a report to help this organisation prepare to meet the BE&S challenges it is likely to encounter over the next 50 years. Remember that in addition to looking at your chosen company, your analysis must also take account of the global context& the industry within which it is located, as well as the individual employees/ managers/consumers & other stakeholders with whom it engages Think of other people Macro, meso, micro levels of analysis “The way in which you choose to structure your report forms part of the basis on which you will be evaluated…Remember that we are looking for “creativity” in your work & the way you put your ideas together!”

13. 4 All students must include a one-page appendix at the end of the report, which sets out: • Two areas for improvement identified in Assignment 1 & how you have addressed these in this assignment (signpost us to specific examples within your assignment where you have taken these comments into account in your writing) • How your 2 assignments, taken together, demonstrate that you have engaged with a broad range of ideas & concepts about business ethics & sustainability (i.e. compare & contrast what you have looked at in each assignment).

14. WHAT should you write about? • Checklist of contents • Examples from last year • Opening sections in lecture • Main body etc. in tutorials

15. Checklist of contents Cover page (your own not MMU’s – go crazy!) • Executive summary (main points, not a 2nd intro) • Contents page • Assignment • Introduction & background* • BE&S challenges faced & engagement with them* • Conclusion • Recommendations for future (min. 750 words) • References • Appendix 1 (other supporting material within main body) * Choose your own structure/subheadings here

16. Cover page

17. 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY highlights main findings (10%)

18. Executive summary 164 words

20. For tutorials please bring the following: • The assignment brief • Some brief notes about what you might like to write about in Assignment 2 • i.e. which industry/company do you want to focus on & WHY?

21. Activity 1: Why have you picked this industry/company? • In your groups, have a chat about what you are planning to focus on in your assignment • In particular, explain to everyone WHY you have chosen that industry/company

22. Activity 2: How will you get the most out of your reading? A few tips, followed by an exercise… • Use both academic & “grey” literature • News articles & practitioner sources are great for providing context & examples • However, you should focus on key academic studies on your topic • Use up-to-date material (& “seminal” papers) • Have a system for managing records • Always consider how the different sources you have “fit” together (or don’t!)

23. Each group has a selection of sources from one assignment last year • For each reference, consider: • What kind of source is this? • In what way do you think the student might have used it in their assignment? • How does it fit with the other references on the table? • Put the references in order of “usefulness” • What criteria did you use?

24. Activity 3:How can you adopt a more critical approach in your writing? ✗ • What does it mean to be more critical? writing

25. Critical writing: A few tips • Be clear & coherent! • You should be able to provide a step-by-step breakdown of your argument • Existing academic work should be at the heart of your paper • When using the work of others, think “describe, analyse, evaluate” • Weave the arguments made in articles into your own work • Be reflexive: Examine your own bias • Use illustrations & examples Imagine the writers sat in a room together – what would they be saying to each other?!

26. Activity 4: What should you write? • Before we start reading, what do you think we might look at first? • Using the marking criteria, mark the examples

27. 2. INTRODUCTION & BACKGROUND sets scene; & indicates the areas to be covered, & in what order (10%) • Here you need to set up the assignment (i.e. signpost what’s coming) but also justify WHY you have picked this industry/company (i.e. provide some “colour”) • Note that last year, this section was structured slightly differently, so we have given 2 examples below… Remember we looked at the cover page, executive summary & Table of contents in the lecture

28. Introduction

29. Background …McDonalds operate within the highly competitive fast food industry (Schlosser, 2012), with McDonalds, KFC, Burger King, and Wimpy being the key players (Mintel, 2015). Founded in 1955 (McDonalds, 2016), McDonalds has pioneered the expansion of the American fast food market into overseas markets (Lafontaine and Leibsohn, 2005). It is responsible for 90% of America’s new jobs, with one in eight Americans having worked at the fast food giant at some point in their life (Schlosser, 2012). McDonalds have now been franchising for 61 years (Entrepreneur, 2016) and are the sixth most valuable brand in the world (Forbes, 2016).

30. 3 ANALYSIS of ethical/ sustainability challenges & EVALUATION of organisation’s past/present engagement with these challenges. CONCLUSION synthesising progress to date & what remains to be done. (40%)

31. BE&S challenges & evaluation of engagement with them Furthermore, with industrialisation and rising population rates, land is becoming increasingly scarce and overpopulated. Thus, according to Diamond (2005), heightened strain will be placed upon the environment. In particular, Diamond and the World Risk Report indicate semiarid climates as a major cause for concern of climate change regarding drought (Demonocal et al, 2005; United Nation University, 2014:60). This puts many cocoa-growing countries at high risk, in particular, Ghana and C'oteD'ivoire (IISD, 2012). This is likely to have a huge impact on the cocoa industry - including Cadbury - over the next few decades in relation to price volatility, output and potential industry and capital investment shifting into Malaysia and other Asian countries which are cocoa-growing and not semiarid (ibid; Cadbury, n.d.). The success of Cadbury’s attempt to meet these challenges has, to date, been mixed…

33. 4 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR NEXT 50 YEARS. Draws on assignment to articulate/justify recommendations that will enable organisation to become more ethical/sustainable over next 50 years (25%) Remember you can use 2050 as your date if you prefer

35. 5 APPENDIX clearly sets out how previous areas for improvement have been addressed & compares & contrasts what you have looked at in each assignment. (10%)

36. Appendix

37. 6 STYLE. As an academic paper, the language is appropriate, the English (grammar, syntax, & style) is correct, correct forms of academic referencing are used (Harvard System) & the bibliography is correctly set out. (5%)

38. References ARCADIA Group: From the drawing board to the catwalk: To what extent can fashion retailing ever be sustainable?

39. Q&A