Question:
Your essay is to be structured and written as a business report. It, therefore, must begin with a Management (or Executive) Summary within which you state in stark form (i.e. unsupported by argument) what you are asserting in this report and you must do that in less than two pages.
As already stated above, you begin the main body of the report with some general background on the broad research topic. This introduction should end with a brief paragraph outlining the plan of the rest of the essay.
What follows is the specific issues of each individual component which were considered. As for any good business report these components should be structured into sections and sub-sections and the heading for these should be in the Table of Contents. In these individual components the in-depth discussion of the relevant issues is elaborated based on the existing literature and/or data. You must provide in-text references to your sources.
The last section of the report contains a brief summary followed by a complete list of references that are cited in the text of the essay. Follow a standard referencing method consistently.
The Report which is worth 15 marks. It is here that we assess the academic quality of your work (including referencing) as well as your ability to correctly structure a business report.
. The Management Summary 4 marks
. Report Structure (TOC, Paragraphs, Sections and use of Diagrams) 3 marks
. Academic Quality (incl. Referencing) 8 marks
Suggested limits are as follows:
. Introduction: Management Summary, Ideally one page but no more than two.
. Sections 1: Introduction 400-600 words,
. Section 2: Main body of the essay consisting of each of the individual components limit each component to approximately 1,000 words each,
. Sections 3: Conclusions 100-300 words,
. Summary and Complete List of References (5-15 references).
. Maximum of 10 pages (5,000 words)
Topic:
Lessons from the Motor Vehicle Industry:
General Framework
The Automobile Industry was, for a long time, the world's biggest industry (only overtaken towards the end of the twentieth century by the Information and Communications Technology Industry). It, therefore, should not surprise that the automobile industry has been a rich source of experience.
Discuss the numerous advances in the understanding of management and organisation issues which have come out of the motor vehicle industry.
Individual Components
Each individual should select a key insight from the industry such as those attributed to:
. Henry Ford: "Bringing the work to the worker"
. Alfred P Sloan: Cost Centres
. The 'World Car' Concept
. Mergers such as the Chrysler Mercedes-Benz or Nissan Renault