MNG81001 | ASSESSMENT 2 PERSUASIVE MEMO | MANAGMENT

Assessment Task

An exciting new approach to teamwork has resulted from advances in information technology, shifting employee expectations and the globalisation of business, namely the virtual team. A virtual team is made up of geographically or organisationally dispersed members who are linked primarily through advanced information and telecommunications technologies.

Your Sydney HQ is developing a new marketing team with team members located in Sydney, New York, Beijing and Mumbai. This will necessitate the establishment of a virtual team spread over four different time zones using both synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (not concurrent) communication. One of the primary advantages of virtual teams is the ability to assemble the most talented group of people to complete a complex project through creativity and innovation.

On a practical level the virtual team can also save employees' time and cut travel expenses. However, virtual teams also present unique challenges. A number of the team have expressed concerns about how it will all work, and whether meetings might be scheduled when one part of the team is about to go to lunch, while the other part is asleep. Other concerns include: language difficulties, time-and-distance challenges, the absence of face-to-face contact, as well as the barriers posed by cultural differences such as work-pacing, communication styles, decision-making, and the perception of deadlines.

To help 'sell' the idea and persuade the team members of the advantages of the virtual team your boss, the Marketing Director, is planning a virtual meeting with all team members. She is aware of the concerns and knows that the issues raised by the staff have the potential to provide rich soil for misunderstandings and conflict. To that end she understands how important this presentation will be in creating a favourable association with virtual teams, as well as a good opportunity to start to build engagement, trust and candour among the team members.

To prepare for the virtual meeting she has asked you to prepare two documents:

• a short report (using the memo format) identifying some of the critical areas that need to be addressed when leading and managing virtual teams; and
• (ii) a PowerPoint slide presentation comprising no more than five slides highlighting three practices for establishing effective virtual teams and solutions for achieving such practices (recommendations or how it's done).

Please note:

Persuasion aims to influence other people’s behaviours and attitudes. Successful persuasion shows readers ‘what’s in it for them’.

Persuasive writing, or the argument, is one of the main types of both corporate writing and academic writing. At work, some of the persuasive documents you might have to write are proposals, offers to clients, and memos suggesting alternative methods or new ways of doing particular tasks.

Persuasive writing has all the features of analytical writing (that is, information plus reorganising the information), with the addition of your own point of view. Most essays at university are persuasive, and there is a persuasive element in at least the discussion and conclusion of a research article.

Please follow these guidelines to complete the assessment:

1. To help reach your own point of view on the facts or ideas:

• read some other points of view on the topic. Who do you feel is the most convincing?
• look for patterns in the data or references. Where is the evidence strongest? ◦
• list several different interpretations. What are the real-life implications of each one? Which ones are likely to be most useful or beneficial? Which ones have some problems?
• discuss the facts and ideas with someone else. Do you agree with their point of view?

2. To develop your argument:

• list the different reasons for your point of view.
• think about the different types and sources of evidence which you can use to support your point of view.
• consider different ways that your point of view is similar to, and different from, the points of view of other researchers.
• look for various ways to break your point of view into parts.

3. To present your argument, make sure:

• your text develops a coherent argument where all the individual claims work together to support your overall point of view.
• your reasoning for each claim is clear to the reader.
• your assumptions are valid.
• you have evidence for every claim you make.
• you use evidence that is convincing and directly relevant.

4. Use three to five secondary sources.

5. Submit Assessment 2 to Turnitin via the Blackboard site no later that the due date: Monday 13th August 2018 9.00am (QLD time).

6. Refer to the Marking Criteria Guide and Marking Rubric located under Assessment Details.

PRIOS/CDT brief (covered in lecture and tutorials) for Assessment 2:

1. Purpose: The purpose of this document is to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication tools and persuade team members of the benefits and advantages of working as a virtual team.

1. Readers: Your boss (the Marketing Director of XYZ Company).

1. Information: Based on secondary sources.

1. Organisation: Direct order approach (start with you most significant criterion, etc.)

1. Style: Formal. Focus on being clear and concise, not flowery or overly-descriptive. Be sure to proofread carefully to ensure that there are no sentence-level errors such as spelling mistakes, wrong word choice, incorrect punctuation, etc.

1. Channel choice: Written document.

1. Document design: Part 1: Memo format. Part 2: Powerpoint slides.

2. Length: Total 900 words for both Part 1 and Part 2. Part A: memo: 750 +/- words; Part B: PowerPoint slides: 150 +/- words. A good target for each PowerPoint slide would be a four to five-word title plus three to four bullet points of no more than ten words each.
3. Submission: PowerPoint slides must be attached to the memo (word document) and only one document submitted.

Assessment Overview

It is strongly advised that the assessment instructions and marking criteria be considered alongside the Assessment Marking Rubric. Other Resources and Discussions will be posted on the Discussion Board.

This is a graded unit and grades are awarded as detailed in the University's Rules Relating to Awards. To achieve a passing grade in the unit all assessment tasks must be submitted and an overall mark of 50% or more must be obtained.

1. Special consideration

All applications for Special Consideration need to be submitted before the due date of the assessment item.

Submission of Special Consideration form, together with all supporting documentation does not guarantee Special Consideration will be granted. NB: Only the Unit Assessor can approve a Special Consideration application.

Requests for special consideration in relation to assessment tasks shall only be considered on the following grounds:

• health (including impacts of religious fasting);
• compassionate circumstances;
• religious observances or celebrations;
• serious unforeseen personal events;
• selection in State, national or international sporting or cultural events;
• rendering genuine and unforeseen emergency service in a professional or voluntary capacity; or
• rendering any service (including undertaking training) in the Defence Reserves.

Computer failure will not be accepted as a reason for missing an assessment deadline: you are strongly advised to backup all of your work, for example on a USB flash drive, to ensure that you are still able to submit to a deadline in the event of a computer related failure.

Section 4 — Grounds for Special Consideration

Section 5 — Types of Special Consideration

Section 6 — Examination and Special Examination Periods

2. Late penalties

Any assignment submitted after the due date will be processed in accordance with the University's Assessment Policy and Procedures. In cases where there are no accepted mitigating circumstances as determined through Special Consideration procedures, the late submission of an assessment task will lead automatically to the imposition of a penalty.

Specifically, this means a deduction of 5% of the available mark from the actual mark achieved by the student, one minute after the due date and time specified by the Unit Assessor. A further deduction of 5% of the available mark from the actual mark will then be imposed for each 24 hour period that the assignment remains overdue. For full details of the For full details of the penalty and how it is applied, please refer to SCU’s Assessment Policy and Procures, available on the unit’s Blackboard site.

A practical example

Assume that you have an assessment that is worth 30 marks and you submit your paper 1.5 days late. After assessing it in the same way that all other papers are assessed, your tutor determine that you should receive 20 marks. As per the Late Submission policy, 1.5 marks should initially be deducted (5% of 30). A further 1.5 marks should also be deducted for the one complete 24 hour period that the assignment was overdue. A total of 3 marks should therefore be deducted, leaving a final mark of 17.

Please note that late assignments are likely to be returned with a significantly reduced amount of feedback.

3. Academic Integrity

Students are reminded of the extremely serious view the University takes with regard to plagiarism and are strongly advised to read the university’s policies on academic integrity and the penalties associated with academic misconduct

Plagiarism means claiming credit for someone else’s intellectual work. If you find any of the following problems in your academic writing, you may be guilty of plagiarising someone else’s work.

• Copying
  • This includes copying materials, ideas or concepts from a book, article, report or other written document, presentation, composition, artwork, design, drawing, circuitry, computer program or software, website, internet, other electronic resource, or another person's assignment, without appropriate acknowledgement.
• Inappropriate paraphrasing skills, resulting in copying the written expression of someone else without acknowledgement
• Distortion of meaning.
• Missing attribution.
• Missing quotation marks.

• Relying too much on other people’s material.
• Inappropriate and inadequate citation and missing reference entry.
• Inadequate citation of images.
• Self-plagiarising.

It is important you understand what constitutes using sources responsibly. If in doubt, please discuss with your tutor.

4. Assignment Resubmission

Assignment resubmission is permitted in the unit MNG81001 Management Communication for those students who have received a fail grade in either assessment item 1, 2 or 3. The resubmit is for one assessment item only and the result will be awarded either a pass (of 50% of the mark for the assessment item) or fail grade.

Further details on resubmission will be made available after the release of Assessment 3 grades.

5. Turnitin

All assessment items (1, 2, 3 and 4) must be lodged through Turnitin accompanied by an ‘Assignment Cover Sheet’.

6. Student Access and Inclusion