1. Develop your understanding of the nature of the key organisational perspectives and their related theories;

2. Demonstrate an understanding of the key perspectives and the meta-theoretical assumptions that underpin each;

3. Develop research skills and the ability to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various debates and arguments;

4. Gain skills in the written presentation of an argument, including the ways in which scholars incorporate and acknowledge the ideas of other writers.

Organisational Theory

1. This essay is designed to develop your knowledge of the theoretical perspectives, to build your understanding that each perspective is underpinned by different assumptions that lead to different ways of understanding organisations. Given their ontological and epistemological underpinnings, each perspective has different ways of conceptualising different aspects of organisations. You must demonstrate your understanding of the perspectives and how they relate to an understanding of organisations.

2. It is better to avoid using headings in an essay, but if you must, please keep them to a minimum and ensure that they enhance rather than undermine your argument.

3. This essay question has been designed to encourage you to prepare and present your individual analysis. There is no single ‘right' answer. Markers will be looking for evidence that you have read broadly, including the provided material, and have synthesised the material to develop your own answer/ argument. The markers will also expect you to answer the question in your own words.

4. Do not try to cover every single detail; you only have 2000 words so concentrate on the major points rather than fine details.

5. You can make use of the Web sources, but they need to be reliable sources- Wikipedia is not a reliable source of information. We encourage you to make use of journal articles which can be found via a range of library databases. I suggest you use Expanded Academic ASAP (Gale) database which is located through the Databases section of the library website because it allows you to search a range of journals using keywords. You will find an enormous amount of relevant literature. You can also do author searches which can be helpful to locate recent articles by scholars mentioned in the textbook. We also encourage you to make use of the references and further reading suggested by the textbook at the end of each chapter. ‘Citation Linker' found through the library website is a useful tool to locate some of the journal articles mentioned in the textbook. There is a lot of information out there regarding the topic.

6. Students are NOT allowed to use lecture notes as reference materials.

7. You should look at the assessment sheet found in the course guide. It will give you a feel for the sorts of things we will be assessing.

8. You should also look at the other part of the course guide which outlines the differences between the grades -i.e. what separates a ‘P' from a ‘C'.