Information about HRM Skills Portfolio

The HRM Skills Portfolio consists of two parts:

Part 1: complete an Annotated Bibliography consisting of 2 peer reviewed academic journal articles that are relevant to the Group Report [building a safety climate or culture in an organisation].

Part 2: a reflection on your experiences working in a team.

The HRM Skills Portfolio - Part 1

In total the annotated bibliography should be around 400 words in length (200 words per article), and must be completed using the annotated bibliography template [I have provided an example of an AB for another topic to show what the submission should look like].

When citing the article, please use the Academy of Management referencing style.

What is an Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of citations, accompanied by a brief descriptive and evaluative paragraph (the annotation).
Creating an annotated bibliography calls for the application of a variety of skills: critical thinking & analysis, information literacy and library research, and concise & succinct writing.

The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance, accuracy, and quality of the sources cited. So, how do annotations differ from abstracts or executive summaries? Abstracts are the purely descriptive summaries often found at the beginning of scholarly journal articles or in periodical indexes, whereas Annotations are analytical and represent your critique or evaluation of the author's views and research findings.

How to Approach the Annotated Bibliography

1. First, locate a source that you think might be relevant to the Group Report topic [building a safety climate or culture in an organisation]. You might find this information by searching in the Library's electronic databases, or using Google Scholar.

We hope that you will identify and use articles that have been published in high quality academic journals. This will signal the quality of the research that has been done. In Australia, the Deans of Business Schools release a ranking of academic journals every three years. Business journals are ranked A* (the highest quality) to C (the lowest quality). Click this link to download the Australian Business Dean's Council Journal Ranking for HRM.

2. Identify which information in the article is most useful/important

3. Using the Library's referencing guide, write the bibliographic details into the Annotated Bibliography template

4. Write a concise annotation that summarises the key information you identified

To get you started we've provided you with an example of the process describe above and an annotated bibliography entry using a key article from the scholarly literature on safety climate.

Clarke, S. (1999) ‘Perceptions of organizational safety: Implications for the development of safety culture'. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 20(2): 185.

If you open the above link, you will see that I have highlighted relevant sections of the article. When I read the article, I am looking for three things - first, what the research found; second, information that might lead me to other studies that may be relevant to the Group report; and third, information that I have to include in the Annotated Bibliography.

So, having read the article, I can now fill out the Annotated Bibliography template (click on Annotated Bibliography template to download the example).

For information on the topic of the Group Report, please refer to the Student Learning Guide or the Group Report page in the LMS

The HRM Skills Portfolio - Part 2

The second element of the HRM Skills Portfolio requires you to write a 600-word piece reflecting on your experiences of working in teams (either in your working life, at University, your sporting interactions or your experiences in volunteering).

In your reflection, consider:

? In your experience, what were the characteristics of effective teamwork?

? In your experience, what were the characteristics of ineffective teamwork?

? What steps could you take to ensure that your team operates effectively in completing the MGT2HRM Group Report?

Brookfield (1987) suggests:

‘A great deal of your time at university will be spent thinking; thinking about what people have said, what you have read, what you yourself are thinking and how your thinking has changed. It is generally believed that the thinking process involves two aspects: reflective thinking and critical thinking. They are not separate processes; rather, they are closely connected'.

So, we are asking you to write a reflection for a number of reasons:

? to make connections between what you know, what you're learning; theory and practice; what you're doing and why you do it.

? to examine your learning processes

? to clarify what you are learning

? to reflect on mistakes and successes

? to become an active and aware learner

? to become a reflective practitioner once you graduate and begin your professional life

So rather than falling into the same old teamwork problems you have experienced in the past, we are asking you to think about what works, what doesn't work, and think about how you can apply this to your University group work assessments.
Tips on reflective writing

As it concerns your thoughts, reflective writing is mostly subjective. Therefore in addition to being reflective and logical, you can be personal, hypothetical, critical and creative. You can comment based on your experience, rather than limiting yourself to academic evidence:

? Reflective writing is an activity that includes description (what, when, who) and analysis (how, why, what if). It is an explorative tool often resulting in more questions than answers.

? A reflective task may allow you to use different modes of writing and language: descriptive (outlining what something is or how something was done); explanatory (explaining why or how it is like that); expressive (I think, I feel, I believe)

? Use full sentences and complete paragraphs

? You can usually use personal pronouns like 'I', 'my' or 'we'

? Keep colloquial language to a minimum (eg, kid, bloke, stuff)

Other tips include:

? Think of an interaction, event or episode you experienced that can be connected to the topic

? Describe what happened

? What was your role?

? What feelings and perceptions surrounded the experience?

? How would you explain the situation to someone else?

? What might this experience mean in the context of your course?

? What other perspectives, theories or concepts could be applied to the situation?