[WLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5] [CLOs: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Prepare: Prior to beginning work on this assignment, please review this Sample Final Paper GEN499  Download Sample Final Paper GEN499for additional guidance on the expectations of this assignment.

The topic of your essay needs to be a global societal problem from the following list:

• Climate change
• Pollution
• Religious conflict and violence
• Rise of artificial intelligence
• Lack of education
• Unemployment and lack of economic opportunity
• Government accountability and corruption
• Food and water security
• International drug trafficking
• Poverty and income inequality

Reflect: Based on the topic that you have chosen, you will need to use critical thinking skills to thoroughly understand how this topic can be a global societal problem and determine some logical solutions to the problem.

Write: This Final Paper, an argumentative essay, will present research relating the critical thinker to the modern, globalized world. In this assignment, you need to address the items below in separate sections with new headings for each.

In your paper,

• Identify the global societal problem within the introductory paragraph.
  • Conclude with a thesis statement that states your proposed solutions to the problem. (For guidance on how to construct a good introduction paragraph, please review the Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) from the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center (Links to an external site.).)
• Describe background information on how that problem developed or came into existence.
  • Show why this is a societal problem.
  • Provide perspectives from multiple disciplines or populations so that you fully represent what different parts of society have to say about this issue.
• Construct an argument supporting your proposed solutions, considering multiple disciplines or populations so that your solution shows that multiple parts of society will benefit from this solution.
  • Provide evidence from multiple scholarly sources as evidence that your proposed solution is viable.
• Interpret statistical data from at least three peer-reviewed scholarly sources within your argument.
  • Discuss the validity, reliability, and any biases.
  • Identify the strengths and weaknesses of these sources, pointing out limitations of current research and attempting to indicate areas for future research. (You may even use visual representations such as graphs or charts to explain statistics from sources.)
• Evaluate the ethical outcomes that result from your solution.
  • Provide at least one positive ethical outcome as well as at least one negative ethical outcome that could result from your solution.
  • Explain at least two ethical issues related to each of those outcomes. (It is important to consider all of society.)
• Develop a conclusion for the last paragraphs of the essay, starting with rephrasing your thesis statement and then presenting the major points of the topic and how they support your argument. (For guidance on how to write a good conclusion paragraph, please review the Introductions & Conclusions (Links to an external site.) from the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center (Links to an external site.).)

The Global Societal Problem, Argument, and Solution Paper

• Must be 1,750 to 2,250 words in length (approximately between seven and nine pages; not including title and references pages) and formatted according to APA style, as outlined in the University of Arizona Global Campus Writing Center’s APA Style (Links to an external site.) resource.

Prepare: Prior to beginning work on this discussion forum, read the articles Teaching Writing Skills That Enhance Student Success in Future Employment (Links to an external site.) ; An Inner Barrier to Career Development: Preconditions of the Impostor Phenomenon and Consequences for Career Development (Links to an external site.); and 9 Questions That’ll Help You Find Your Dream Career (Links to an external site.); watch the video Business, Management & Administration (Links to an external site.); and review the General Education Curriculum found in General Academic Information and Policies (Links to an external site.) in the University of Arizona Global Campus Catalog. This catalog addresses the core competencies that the general education courses must cover: Ethical Reasoning, Written Communication, Oral and Interpersonal Communication, Information Literacy, Critical Thinking, and Quantitative Reasoning. 

Reflect: Think about the core competencies as previously mentioned, and ponder your time taking general education courses. Reflect on the specific courses not associated with your college major and determine the level of new information you have acquired that relates to the core competencies. You must also think about a potential job you might apply to once you graduate and determine what skills you developed through general education courses that make you qualified for a specific job.

Write: For this discussion, you will address the following prompts:

• Review a job description through a job website (e.g., Career Builder (Links to an external site.), Monster (Links to an external site.), etc.) in your desired career field. Please provide the job title and the link to the job description.
• Identify at least five skills you have obtained through your general education courses that will make you successful at this job.
• Demonstrate with at least two examples how your newly acquired knowledge and skills have shaped both your personal and professional development.
• Describe your plans for putting your education to use within your community.

Select a topic from your reading assignments due week one and three to research further. In your assignments, research the history, relevancy, strengths, weaknesses, and current trends of the chosen topic.  Then, select a company that employs and/or identifies with the chosen topic, or which could stand to improve productivity by implementing the chosen topic.

Lastly, discuss the outcomes of the chosen topic with respect to that particular company, or the expected outcomes if the company employed those techniques. Make sure to include your own thoughts and reasoning in the discussion, as well as your references from no less than four sources. The normal length of this paper should be approximately 2-3 pages. The papers should be written in APA format.

Textbook: Organizational Theory, Design, and Change; by Gareth R. Jones

Carrie Mae Weems

An excerpt from an interview with Carrie Mae Weems by Dawoud Bey, published in Bomb 108 (Summer 2009), 60-67.

Dawoud Bey: There are some things that I want to ask you that are more specific to your work. Things I haven’t actually asked you but have thought about for some time. One has to do with an aspect of your work in which you are, conceptually, both in front of and behind the camera. You’re the subject and you’re the photographer. Certainly the earlier Kitchen Table series introduced that idea quite forcefully. More recently there’s a recurring figure that has been appearing in your work; what I would call a silent witness to history. This woman, although we can’t always see her face, seems to be a kind of omnipotent presence, signaling perhaps that what she bears witness to is more highly charged than what we might think. She seems like a witness who, through witnessing, almost carries the weight of each place. This woman—this avatar—who is she? What’s her function in relation to places and the narratives you’re constructing?

Carrie Mae Weems: I call her my muse—but it’s safe to say that she’s more than one thing. She’s an alter-ego. My alter-ego, yes. But she has a very real function in my work life. I was in the Folklore program at UC Berkeley for three years, working with Alan Dundes on the strategy of participant/observer. I attempt to create in the work the simultaneous feeling of being in it and of it. I try to use the tension created between these different positions—I am both subject and object; performer and director. I only recently realized that I’ve been acting/performing/observing in this way for years—the work told me.

The muse made her first appearance in Kitchen Table; this woman can stand in for me and for you; she can stand in for the audience, she leads you into history. She’s a witness and a guide. She changes slightly, depending on location. For instance, she operates differently in Cuba and Louisiana than in Rome. She’s shown me a great deal about the world and about myself, and I’m grateful to her. Carrying a tremendous burden, she is a black woman leading me through the trauma of history. I think it’s very important that as a black woman she’s engaged with the world around her; she’s engaged with history, she’s engaged with looking, with being. She’s a guide into circumstances seldom seen.

Much of my current work centers on power and architecture. For instance, I find myself traveling in Seville, Rome, and Berlin. It’s been implied that I have no place in Europe. I find the idea that I’m “out of place” shocking. There’s a dynamic relationship between these places: the power of the state, the emotional manipulation of citizens through architectural means, the trauma of the war, genocide, the erasure of Jews, the slave coast, and the slave cabins. Here [in Rome] I can see an Egyptian obelisk in every major square, one riding on the back of Bernini’s sculpture. The world met on the Mediterranean, not on the Mississippi—these things are linked in my mind. From here, Africa is just one giant step away. Spain is closer than Savannah, Rome closer than Rhode Island. Mark Antony lost his power languishing in the arms of Cleopatra; Mussolini established Italian colonies in Egypt; the Moors and Africans controlled the waters of Spain, leaving their mark in the Alhambra. Money was minted here, not in Maine. See what I mean? I’m not here to eat the pasta. I’m trying in my humble way connect the dots, to confront history. Democracy and colonial expansion are rooted here. So I refuse the imposed limits. My girl, my muse, dares to show up as a guide, an engaged persona pointing toward the history of power. She’s the unintended consequence of the Western imagination.

It’s essential that I do this work and it’s essential that I do it with my body.

Address the following questions in your notebook:

1. In the first paragraph, Dawoud Bey acknowledged the dual roles of Carrie Mae Weems in her “Kitchen Table” series. Weems was not only the photographer but also what else?

2. What did Carrie Mae Weems study for three years at UC Berkeley?

3. Carrie Mae Weems was living in Rome when she participated in this interview. In the last paragraph, she said, “I’m not here to eat the pasta. I’m trying in my humble way connect the dots, to . . .” do what?

*   *   *

                                  Assessment Brief

Module Name:

Please read this assessment brief in its entirety before starting work on the Assessment Task.

The Assessment Task

The assessment task is to write a 2000-word literature review on the following topic –  

“The relationship between leadership and organisational performance” 

Students could narrow down the scope of the literature review on to specific aspects of leadership such as types, styles, etc and its inter-relationships with specific facets of organisational performance such as financial performance, innovation performance, sustainability and responsibility, and so on. Another way to narrow down the scope of the review is to focus on a particular industry and evaluate the relationship between leadership and organisational performance in that industry.  

The literature review must critically evaluate and synthesise the current state of knowledge on the given topic. Therefore, it is recommended that only articles published in the last 5 to 7 years be reviewed for this assessment as it will provide an overview of the contemporary debates on the topic. It is also recommended to use articles published in the top-ranked academic and practitioner journals given in Table 1.  

Visit the links below for detailed information on literature review and critical writing –  

• https://skillshub.northampton.ac.uk/literature-reviews/ 
• https://skillshub.northampton.ac.uk/critical-thinking/  

Mandatory requirements  

1. A 100-word abstract must be presented. The abstract is excluded from the word count.  
2. All citations and references must be in the Harvard referencing format (https://skillshub.northampton.ac.uk/referencing/). References are excluded from the word count.  
3. The assessment must be submitted in Microsoft Word format.  

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this assessment, you will be able to:

1. Critique debates on contemporary issues in business that influence leadership, strategic decision making, and responsible management. 
2. Contextualise, synthesise, and critically evaluate the inter-disciplinary literature in business and management 
3. Develop and support an argument using evidence, analysis, and critical reflection based on academic and practitioner literature. 
4. Communicate management concepts and arguments effectively to specialist and non- specialist audiences. 

Your grade will depend on the extent to which you meet these learning outcomes in the way relevant for this assessment. Please see the grading rubric on NILE for further details of the criteria against which you will be assessed.

Assessment Support

Specific support sessions for this assessment will be provided by the module team and notified through NILE. You can also access individual support and guidance for your assessments from Library and Learning Services.  Visit the Skills Hub to access this support and to discover the online support also available for assessments and academic skills.

Academic Integrity and Misconduct

Unless this is a group assessment,the work you produce must be your own, with work taken from any other source properly referenced and attributed. For the avoidance of doubt this means that it is an infringement of academic integrity and, therefore, academic misconduct to ask someone else to carry out all or some of the work for you, whether paid or unpaid, or to use the work of another student whether current or previously submitted.

For further guidance on what constitutes plagiarism, contract cheating or collusion, or any other infringement of academic integrity, please read the University’s Academic Integrity and Misconduct Policy.  Also useful resources to help with understanding academic integrity are available from UNPAC .

N.B. The penalties for academic misconduct are severe and can include failing the assessment, failing the module and expulsion from the university.

Assessment Submission

To submit your work, please go to the ‘Submit your work’ area on the NILE site and use the relevant submission point to upload your report. The deadline for this is 11.59pm (UK local time) on the date of submission. Please note that essays and text based reports should be submitted as word documents and not PDFs or Mac files.

Written work submitted to TURNITIN will be subject to anti-plagiarism detection software.  Turnitin checks student work for possible textual matches against internet available resources and its own proprietary database. Work

When you upload your work correctly to TURNITIN you will receive a receipt which is your record and proof of submission.  If your assessment is not submitted to TURNITIN, rather than a receipt, you will see a green banner at the top of the screen that denotes successful submission.

N.B Work emailed directly to your tutor will not be marked.

Late submission of work

For first sits, if an item of assessment is submitted late and an extension has not been granted, the following will apply:

• Within one week of the original deadline – work will be marked and returned with full feedback, and awarded a maximum bare pass grade.
• More than one week from original deadline – grade achievable LG (L indicating late).

For resits there are no allowances for work submitted late and it will be treated as a non-submission.

Please see the Assessment and Feedback Policy for full information on the processes related to assessment, grading and feedback, including anonymous grading.  You will also find the generic grading criteria for achievement at  University Grading Criteria.  Also explained there are the meanings of the various G grades at the bottom of the grading scale including LG mentioned above.

Extensions

The University of Northampton’s general policy with regard to extensions is to be supportive of students who have genuine difficulties, but not against pressures of work that could have reasonably been anticipated.

For full details please refer to the Extensions Policy.  Extensions are only available for first sits – they are not available for resits.

Mitigating Circumstances

For guidance on Mitigating circumstances please go to Mitigating Circumstances where you will find detailed guidance on the policy as well as guidance and the form for making an application.

Please note, however, that an application to defer an assessment on the grounds of mitigating circumstances should normally be made in advance of the submission deadline or examination date.

Feedback and Grades

These can be accessed through clicking on the Feedback and Grades tab on NILE. Feedback will be provided by a rubric with summary comments.