Posted: June 2nd, 2015

Topic: Human Resource Management

Assignment Three: Team Research Report

This assignment is to be conducted in Teams of 2 to 3 students only.

Write a report with a specific research focus i.e., explore how you would potentially undertake research on your chosen topic. For this assignment, you must focus on:

Mindfulness

Your assignment must focus on performance – whether job performance, engaging in Organizational Citizenship Behaviours, team performance, organizational performance – any and all aspects are fine. It can be one part of a multi-outcome focus, such as job performance and attendance behaviours (for example).

Finally, your assignment must include a section where each members writes their own section on team work (specifically virtual team work if that is your particular experience, i.e., from extramural students!). This section relates specifically to your own team work experience from the assignment, although it needs to include some academic literature and references. This section should be approximately one page (500 words) in length for each team member!

You are expected to write a report with a focus on discussing the literature, critically identifying areas of research that are needed (through highlighting gaps in the literature and/or providing a critical analysis of the literature e.g., its focus) and then outlining how you might conduct such research. The focus is on the literature, its gaps, and then how you might conduct the research and undertake such research that might address your identified gap/s and what is needed to be researched. Note: you do NOT have to undertake any research! Just plan it and use appropriate literature to back up your approach/es.

Ideally, you could divide the assignment as follows between team members:

1. Introduction(Me)
2. Literature review(me)
3. Critical analysis and identify gaps in the research
4. Methodology: detail the plans to undertake research that meets the needs identified above
5. Conclusion
6. Each member then adds their own section on their team work experience.

Each team member submits only the team work experience section (#6 above). One team member submits the whole assignment (with all parts) including their own team work experience section (at the end). Please ensure this person includes all team members’ names on it.

One way to lay out this Research Report is:

1. Introduction: outlining the overall aim of your paper and what you aim to address.
2. Body of the literature: where appropriate theories/issues/factors are defined and associated findings – relating to organisational behaviour – are addressed. What are the major gaps and issues in the literature? You can definitely bring in other associated theories from the course or the broader Organisational Behaviour literature to argue your case. For example, organizational justice literature (week 6) might be the focus but you could argue why this is limited because it does not typically explore the theory beyond the West (for an example). Thus, you could bring in cultural differences literature (to highlight the gap).
3. Highlight how you would undertake a study to determine or address these deficiencies. You can suggest methodological approaches and provide details about how this proposed study would begin to unearth and ‘fill’ the gaps you have identified. For example, via surveys, daily-diary studies (to test daily fluctuations), partner data, in-depth qualitative interviews; focus groups on family units, studies in different cultures etc.
4. Conclusion: sum up your paper and what you are arguing needs to be done.
5. References. A range of good quality academic sources (references).
6. Team work experience section. This is your own personal experience and insights but make sure it is built on the literature on teams and particularly virtual teams if applicable…and yes, also team performance!!J
Note: the main focus of this assignment should be the literature and the gaps (2/3s of the paper) but the methods section is important and accounts for (1/3 of the paper). Be creative and show you have not only identified the gaps in the literature, but also that your methodology will indeed answer some of these gaps. .

Learning Outcome/s Being Assessed

1. Analyse the behaviour of individuals and groups in organisations in terms of the key factors that influence organisational behaviour and performance.
2. Assess the potential effects of organisational-level factors on organisational behaviour and performance.
3. Critically evaluate the potential effects of important developments in the external environment on organisational behaviour and performance.