LB160: Professional Communication Skills for Business Studies

Faculty of Business Studies

LB160: Professional Communication Skills for Business Studies

First Semester 2014-2015

Tutor Marked Assignment (TMA)

Academic Year        2014            -         2015	Semester: FALL
Branch: KUWAIT	Program: Faculty of Business Studies
Course Title: Professional Communication Skills for Business Studies	Course Code: LB160
Student Name:	Student ID:
Section Number:	Tutor Name:

Total Mark:					Awarded Mark:
Mark details
Allocated Marks	Questions		Q1	Q2		Q3	Q4		Q5	Q6	Total
	Weight		10	10
	Marks		10	10							20
Allocated Marks	Criteria	Content			Language			Organization		Total
Marks	Q1
Marks	Q2
	Student’s Total Mark									20

Notes on plagiarism:

A.      According to the Arab Open University   By-laws, “the following acts represent cases of cheating and 

 Plagiarism:

§  Verbatim copying of printed material and submitting them as part of TMAs without proper academic acknowledgement and documentation.

§  Verbatim copying of material from the Internet, including tables and graphics.

§  Copying other students’ notes or reports.

§  Using paid or unpaid material prepared for the student by individuals or firms.

B.     Penalties for plagiarism ranges from failure in the TMA to expulsion from the university.

Declaration: I hereby declare that the submitted TMA is my own work and I have not copied any other person’s work or plagiarized in any other form as specified above.

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Tutor’s Feedback

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·       This TMA contains 2 parts.  You should answer both parts.

·       The value of TMA is 20 points.

·       The mark assigned to each part is 10 points.

PART 1 (10 points)

Purpose: ·        To check the student’s skill in applying SWOT when analyzing a case study (B1S4, pp122). Learning Outcomes  (B1S4, pp.109) ·        To look at how different framing techniques- including a new one called SWOT- can help in problem identification. ·        To practice using these techniques in writing your own problem analysis.

In about 300 – 400 words, write an essay analyzing the below case study using the SWOT framework.

Creating Leaders

In American, business schools have long aimed to provide general business education for a career as a leader or manager in the form of the Masters in Business Administration (MBA). The first Master of Business program was established at the Tuck Business School in the early twentieth century. Today, there are over seven thousand MBA colleges and universities offering the program as part of their curriculum. In both the U.S. and most parts of Europe, an MBA degree from a leading educational institution holds great value and opportunity to those seeking higher education. A Master of Business Administration program from a leading college or university offers a wide range of benefits including business knowledge, leadership abilities, and networking. Overall, MBA graduates obtain higher positions in business and management, especially for those who already hold executive and managerial positions. For most people, a huge pay raise is enough incentive to get an MBA degree. MBA candidates can expect to earn at least 50 percent more than they earned before obtaining the degree.

However, the MBA has few of the characteristics of traditional professional training. For example, it involves no promise to follow professional standards, as seen with qualifications in law, medicine, auditing and accountancy. There is also no commitment to taking shorter follow-up courses as part of the professional’s continuing education. Worse, argues Mr Khurana, who is currently writing a book on the evolution of management as a profession, some of the theories taught in business schools conflict with a sense of professionalism. For example, if managers are ‘agents’, shareholders are ‘principals’ and organizations simply process contracts, the implication is that a manger has an obligation to fulfill a contract, as does a consultant or an investment banker, but owes no loyalty to a larger body, which is one of the characteristics of a professional.

A further criticism of MBA courses is that they may be more useful at training people to advise large complex corporations than to run them. Certainly, many companies seem critical of the courses that business schools teach. When INSEAD, a top-ranking business school near Paris, asked the companies whose managers it educates what they wanted, it found the answer was increased hands-on experience, less analysis and fewer case studies.

So schools are redesigning their courses. The Sloan school at MIT is offering MBA students a three-day workshop on ‘visioning’ and role-playing, and a selection of compulsory leadership courses, including one on leading in an entrepreneurial firm. There is a course on self-assessment, and the option to work for an organization, create change, and be coached on how they are doing.

Such changes may help business schools to retain clients, especially for executive education, which has been one of their most profitable sidelines. But companies often want to teach their up-and-coming leaders themselves. Many now have programmes loosely modeled on GE’s in-house academy, Crotonville, founded by Ralph Cordiner, who ran the company in the 1950s. Chief executives such as Jorma Ollila at Nokia and JT Battenberg of Delphi, a large car parts company, personally teach on such courses.

Noel Tichy, a guru at the University of Michigan, cleverly runs a course to teach business leaders to run their own courses. He points out that most business school staff are researchers with little real-world experience. “Leadership is a clinical art, and people need experience,” he argues. “You don’t train a physician by getting a researcher to perform open-heart surgery”.

Whether people can learn to be leaders from traditional business school courses is questionable. Most people probably learn largely on the job, by watching and by making mistakes, as they have always done.

Taken from:

1.  Trappe, T. & Tullis, G. (2005). Intelligent Business. England: Longman.

2. http://www.mbaprogramsguide.com/

Answer Notes:  Students may begin by creating a grid to identify the SWOT components as Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats and a mind map to construct the analysis text. Students are required to identify 6 strengths, 3 weaknesses, 1 opportunity, and 2 threats. Then to write an analytical text for the case study, you may refer to Text 4.3 in the Resource Book 1 as an example.  

Answer Guide:

B1S4, Act. 4.10- 4.11, pp. 123; RB1 Extract 4.3(use as an example of analysis writing), pp. 56-57.

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PART II (10 points)

“Innovation has become a critical factor for commercial success. Businesses can innovate in a number of different ways:

1.     by launching products with new features,

2.     by providing improvements to existing services,

3.     by introducing more effective business practices

4.     and by finding new markets and sources of supply.

Launching an innovation involves a degree of risk but, if successful, an entrepreneur can produce better returns as margins will be high especially when competitors’ products become obsolete as a result” Trappe & Tullis, 2005, p. 127)

Choose a brand that is considered innovative and in a well-written essay of around 500 words explain two ways in which this brand has been innovative and introduced novelty to its existing field.

At least 2 outside resources are to be used. The resources are to be submitted to the tutor. The criteria on pp. 50-53 of B2S2 should be observed while locating source material.

Purpose:  To write a well-structured essay.

Learning Outcomes: (B2S3 pp.69, B2S2 pp.41, & B2S4 pp.98):

·        to analyse an essay title to be clear about its requirement

·        to develop an argument that is relevant to the essay title

·        to select and manage essay source material

·        to paraphrase and use business studies language

·        Review features of essay writing.

Comments: The student needs to select a specific brand that has been innovative and clarify two reasons of why this brand is considered innovative. Paraphrasing, summarizing, and citing the sources used are essential since using the words of others or including their work without acknowledgment is considered plagiarism. The Harvard referencing system, as presented on pp. 167-171 of B2S6, should be respected regarding the in-text referencing as well as the reference list.

Answer Notes: Your essay should include the features of essay writing as described by the checklist on pp.183-184