BOURNEMOUTH UNIVERSITY

BUSINESS SCHOOL

UNIT GUIDE : Full Time Students

CONTEMPORARY BUSINESS ISSUES

ACADEMIC YEAR 2009/10

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1. UNIT OVERVIEW

This unit is intended to be multi-disciplinary. That is, it seeks to engage students in all of the three
main broad subject areas of BU’s Business School – finance, law and management. In consequence
students are both expected and required to be willing to learn in subject areas which overlap and
complement their own main areas of specialisation.

The approach to learning taken by this unit is one of “guided research”. It does not follow the
traditional model of a continuous programme of lectures and seminars but instead seeks to provide
support and encouragement for students to learn about business and to develop useful problem
solving skills for themselves. The unit, therefore, seeks to provide support and guidance for a learning
process conducted by students for themselves.

In business, as in many other aspects of life, work is characterised by individuals operating as part of
a team. For this unit students will be assessed individually but expected to work as part of a small and
interdependent group of students. Assessment will be based on this individual contribution to a group
effort.

The unit aims to address “contemporary” issues. This means that the issues to be covered are chosen
to be ones of current relevance. However, you should not expect the unit to necessarily be able to
address current “headline” topics. Like any other form of post-graduate university education students
are expected to adopt an academic approach. This includes knowledge of relevant theory and an
analysis of available evidence. The topics selected are, therefore, not chosen solely for current
relevance but also for having been a “contemporary issue” for a sufficient period of time for an
adequate body of theory and evidence to have been established. Many current “headline” issues are
simply too new for this to be available so please don’t be disappointed if today’s big news is not
covered.

2. UNIT TOPICS FOR 2009/2010

Each of the topics set for the 2009/2010 session has a common structure. That is, it is sub-divided into
three subsidiary topics: (I) the economic rationale (II) the legal implications and (III) management in
practice. The topics and their subsidiary issues are:

Topic 1: Working with Information Technology

• Why IT is good for business and the economy. The role of IT in economic growth and
financial success.
• Legal provision for IT in the world of business.
• Effective management of IT in a business environment.

Topic 2: Competition and Competition Policy

• Why is competition considered good and monopoly bad?: The economic case for
competition.
• What legal measures are used to promote competition and restrict monopoly? Competition
policy and anti-monopoly legislation.
• Management of competition and competitive strategies of firms.
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Topic 3: International Trade Negotiations : the World Trade Organisation

• Why has most of the world committed itself to increased trade liberalisation? The case for
free trade and the WTO.
• Legal challenges and provisions of the WTO.
• Management and strategy for firms operating in an increasingly global business environment.

3. ASSESSMENT AND UNIT REQUIREMENTS

Students will form groups of three after the initial introductory lectures and seminars. In the first
instance there will be an opportunity for students to form their own groups but those that have not
submitted notification by the deadline (precise date to be advised later) will be allocated to groups
and topics. Each group will deal with one of the three topics listed above with each individual group
member taking responsibility for one of the three subsidiary issues. There may be many different
groups dealing with the same topic but each group will deal with only one topic.

Each student will be required to submit two individual pieces of work. The first of these,
approximately 3000 words in length, will be a paper prepared on one of the subsidiary issues listed in
section 2 above, which will account for two thirds of your overall mark. Each group will volunteer
for or, in the event of failing to volunteer by the deadline, be allocated to a topic. Within that group
each of the three individuals would volunteer for or be allocated to one of the subsidiary issues. The
responsible individual will be required to submit a paper on this. This paper must exhibit a clear and
full understanding of the relevant core concepts, as defined by the content of the “core concepts”
lectures and the accompanying material posted on MyBU. More importantly, the paper must also
contain some original research by the student. That is, in addition to covering the core concepts, you
should (a) choose a specific, more detailed aspect on which to focus your own research, (b) explain
your choice of focus and (c) conduct your own research in a way that generates a set of clear
conclusions.

Although the paper will focus on the specific subsidiary issue it will be required to show evidence of
recognition of the links between this issue and the other subsidiary issues. For example, a student
writing a paper on the legal aspects of the WTO would be required to demonstrate knowledge of the
key linkages with both economic and management issues. This would require interaction with other
group members, whose work should be properly attributed in the submitted paper. There will be two
stages to submission. Students are required to submit their individual paper digitally on MyBU
no later than Friday 18 December 2009 (week 22). This is an initial submission and the work
will not be marked at this stage. The purpose of this initial submission is to (a) fix the content of the
paper so that no subsequent changes can be made and (b) to allow the paper to be forwarded to
another student (from another group) for critical review.

PLEASE NOTE: the work will be assessed on the presumption that no prior knowledge of any
subject is necessary. For example, it is not necessary that students submitting a paper on legal or
economic aspects need have any specialist background in either subject. Where students are assigned
to groups they will often be allocated to produce a paper on a subsidiary issue in which they have no
specialist background. This is intentional: the unit seeks to expose students to ideas from other
specialist areas. Your paper should, where appropriate, not be based only upon a literature review.
Where it is relevant original research is strongly encouraged. For example, if a case study or simple
statistical analysis is appropriate to your issue then your mark would normally be substantially better
if you include such analysis of your own.
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Each group will be required to make a group presentation during a pre-arranged session in week 21
(Monday 7 December to Friday 11 December). Each member of the group is expected to contribute
to their group presentation, either in its preparation or its delivery or both. The presentation will not
be formally assessed but it is expected to fulfil two key functions: (a) to help students identify
linkages with the other specialist subsidiary issues within their topic (note: your paper must show
evidence of awareness of these links) and (b) to provide some feed-back before you finalise your
individual paper. Groups are permitted to opt out of making a presentation if and only if all members
of the group submit a written request in writing, confirming that they are sufficiently confident in
their work as to not require further support.

Students will be sent by email the paper of another student for critical review as soon as possible after
the deadline for initial submission. Where possible this will be the paper of a student from another
group and it will normally be a paper written on a different subsidiary issue of the same topic that the
student produced their own paper for. The critical review should be approximately 1500 words in
length and will account for one third of the overall mark. In writing the critical review you should
neither shrink from praising the work of another where such praise is due nor should you hesitate to
criticise where criticism is merited. Your critical review will assessed on the basis of your ability to
identify strengths and weaknesses in the work of others and your ability to express an alternative
point of view. It is intended to assess your understanding of the subject so it is important that your
review uses your knowledge to support or criticise the paper being reviewed. The mark awarded to
the student whose work you are reviewing will be determined first and there is no possibility of praise
or criticism from you influencing this mark. Your review will not be shown to the student whose
work you are reviewing.

Word limits for this unit should be treated as guidelines. Work submitted which is substantially less
than the word limit will almost always be lacking in adequate content and it is this lack of content
rather than any breach of the limits that will be penalised. Likewise work submitted which is
substantially in excess of the word limits will almost certainly include much irrelevant material. It is
the failure to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant that will be penalised rather than the
precise number of words.

The final deadline for submission of both the student’s own paper and their critical review is 29
January 2010. Both should be submitted together in hard copy and, where they are bound or
otherwise covered, within the same cover. They will be treated as a single, composite assignment.
Only one form should accompany them since the two will be treated as a single, combined piece of
work. PLEASE NOTE : the individual paper submitted must be identical to the one submitted
digitally at the end of the autumn term. If any changes are found to have been made a substantial
reduction in the mark awarded would normally be imposed.

Guidelines for assessed work are presented in Appendix 2 to this document. Please read these
carefully.

It is also a requirement of the unit that each student complete the student unit evaluation
questionnaire on MyBU. Until you have completed this you will not be regarded as having
satisfied all the requirements of the unit.
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4. TEACHING

Unlike a traditional type of unit, in which the teaching programme is determined first and the
assessment later, the teaching programme is designed to serve the needs of students’ own scholarship
and research for their assessed paper. Teaching is provided in three main phases – (a) introductory (b)
intermediate and (c) group presentations. The following provides details of the contents of each stage.
Precise times will be notified through MyBU and by email.

4.1 Introductory Stage (Weeks 12 -14)

Lecture week 12 (Wednesday 7 October):

Introduction to the unit - to be presented jointly by all unit tutors. It is intended to provide an overall
explanation of the approach of the unit. This will take about 1 hour 20 minutes, with a further 40
minutes for questions and discussion.

Core Concepts Lectures (weeks 13 and 14):

These will cover methodology and the core concepts that you need to understand and include in your
paper for each of the three questions. There will be three subject lectures of three hours each, one for
each subject area. These will be scheduled as follows:

Law – Wednesday 14 October (week 13)

Management – Wednesday 21 October (week 14)
Economics/Finance – Tuesday 13 October (week 13)*

• this lecture is to be held in a room that is not sufficient to accommodate all students and will
be repeated on Tuesday 20 October for those who cannot be accommodated on the first
occasion.

Students are strongly recommended to attend all three of the core concepts sessions before choosing
the subject area for their individual paper. Please note that you will also be assigned a paper from
another student to review. This would be in a different subject area and you would normally not be
able to choose the subject area. You would be expected to exhibit knowledge of the relevant core
concepts in your review and, therefore, need some understanding of the core concepts in all three
subject areas.

PLEASE NOTE: by the end of week 14 students should have a clear idea of what is involved in
each topic and each subsidiary issue. In consequence those wishing to form a group should notify the
unit leader by email (awebster@bournemouth.ac.uk) of the names of the students and the subsidiary
topics to which each is assigned no later than 6pm on Friday 23 October. Please use your university
email to do this – messages from personal accounts may be blocked by the university’s spam filter.
Those students whose names have not been submitted by this deadline will be notified of their
assigned group, topic and subsidiary issue by email as soon as possible thereafter.

4.2 Intermediate (Weeks 15 - 20)

Students are encouraged to seek support from unit tutors at any time that they need it. In the first
instance this should be through the on-line discussion forum on MyBU where both the questions and
the answers to them can be shared easily with all students. Students can also raise questions with
individual tutors as their work progresses. However, students are asked to leave questions of general
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interest to the discussion forum and requests for further explanation of methodological or theoretical
issues to the surgery sessions.

Each unit tutor will be available for a number of “surgery” sessions. These are intended to provide the
opportunity for students to request further explanation of core issues or methodology. There will be
no set agenda for these sessions since the content will be wholly determined by student requests.
Each tutor will be present for a minimum of a one hour face to face session and a one hour live on-
line session, whether or not notified in advance of interest from students. They will also be available
for further sessions (face to face or on-line or both) if there is sufficient demand from students
notified in advance.

Students are not required to attend surgery sessions if they feel comfortable with the support already
provided. Non-attendance at surgery sessions will be taken to imply that you are satisfied with your
progress and do not need further support at this stage. Please organise your work so that you are in a
position to ask meaningful questions at this stage. You are also free to request that a support session
be arranged at a later stage. However, this may need to be a live on-line session rather than a face to
face one and will only be arranged if a number of students request it. Please do not expect lengthy or
detailed individual tuition if you do not participate in the arranged sessions.

Please try to avoid raising problems on a one-to-one basis with unit tutors. All unit tutors will have
office hours in which they are available to see students and you are just as welcome to make use of
these as any other student. But office hours are open to students from other units and pressure of time
means that they do not offer the best prospect for your question to receive as much attention as it
deserves. It is very rare for a question or a problem raised by one student to be unique. It is much
more common for other students to have similar questions. For this reason it is much more effective
for such questions to be dealt with either through MyBU or through surgery sessions where many
students can benefit from the same advice.

4.3 Group Presentations (Week 21)

Once the membership of groups has been finalised the particular time allocated to your group will be
notified to you by email and posted on MyBU. The timing of the group presentations (one week
before initial submission of your individual paper) is intended to provide feedback on what amounts
to a draft of your paper. Guidelines for the presentation are posted separately on MyBU.

PLEASE NOTE: at this stage there will also be a one hour lecture to provide guidance on writing
your critical review. Most students are familiar with writing papers but find writing a critical review
an unfamiliar experience. It is, therefore, important that you attend this. Written guidance on
preparing a critical review is also provided on MyBU.

5. READING AND OTHER SOURCE MATERIALS

It should be obvious from the nature of this unit that there can be no single recommended text for this
unit. Suggested sources and resources for each topic and each subsidiary issue will be provided on
MyBU. Please make use of these but please do not limit your reading and research to those sources
suggested on MyBU. This unit places considerable emphasis on helping you make use of your own
initiative and this will be reflected in the marking of assessed work.
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APPENDIX 1: UNIT SPECIFICATION

Unit title Contemporary Business Issues

Level M
Credit value 20
ECTS credits 10

PRE-REQUISITES AND CO-REQUISITES

None.

RATIONALE
This unit employs a team approach to learning. Students will be given access to a
broad pool of expertise, and have the opportunity to choose and construct their own
approach to contemporary business issues (deemed to include the disciplines of
management, finance and law).

AIMS
The overall aims of this unit are:

1 to ensure that students studying any particular pathway (law, management

or finance) are aware of how their specialist discipline interacts in a real world
environment with other related disciplines;
2 to ensure students have a broad awareness of current and topical
business issues (the word business in this context encompasses law, finance
and management);
3 to motivate students to learn from self managed and group environments.

INTENDED LEARNING OUTCOMES

Having completed this unit the student is expected to:

1 be able to critically access the specific expertise needed to solve a given

strategic or policy problem, including the identification of relevant state of the art
research;
2 have the ability to critically evaluate the major contexts within which
organizations operate to enable action in the main disciplines (law, finance,
management) relevant to their specialist pathway;
3 have developed sensitivity to contextual diversity, continuous change and
ethical ambiguities, and an understanding of the strategic role of information and
communication systems;
4 demonstrate transferable and key skills, for example being able to
demonstrate critical analytical and evaluative skills to inform professional
practice, together with the ability to communicate recommendations effectively.
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LEARNING AND TEACHING METHODS

In this unit students will be given a briefing and an infrastructure (through the VLA
and designated tutors that form a pool of expertise). Learning then will be mainly
self-managed and in groups, in a combination of interactive workshops, guest
lectures, tutorial support and mentoring.
Students will be expected to undertake independent research and collaborate within
their group to collate their findings, to critique and evaluate contemporary issues and
solutions. They will be expected to engage in debate and communicate
appropriately to persuade others to support their particular solution.

ASSESSMENT
Intended learning outcomes 1-4 will be assessed by coursework (100%).

INDICATIVE CONTENT
Topics that may form the focus for any cohort may include the following:

• Mergers and Acquisitions

• Supply Chain Management
• Electronic Commerce
• International Trade Negotiations
• Managing Innovation and Change
• Technology Transfer
• Regional Economic Integration
• Human Rights
• Any corporate governance or risk management “scandal”
• Managing Change and Innovation.

INDICATIVE KEY LEARNING RESOURCES

Important contemporary strategic and policy issues are flagged up by:

- international organisations such as the OECD, ICC, WTO;

- the business press: Economist, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review;
and
- consultancy firms and think tanks.

Subject specific resources will be made available by the tutorial team supporting
selected issues each year.
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APPENDIX 2: GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSED WORK

 Always address the issue that you have chosen (or been allocated) and not another that
you would have preferred to have discussed. Very few marks are awarded for addressing
a different issue. If, for example, you decide to undertake a case study try to ensure that
you don’t focus on telling us everything you know about Firm X but that you focus on
those aspects of Firm X’s experience that are relevant to the topic.
 Make sure that you plan your paper and critical review to ensure that you provide a clear
logical structure to it.
 Remember that you are trying to demonstrate to the marker how well you understand and
can make use of the relevant topics. This requires careful explanation on your part. Pay
attention to communicating your knowledge and understanding of the subject and do not
just assume that it will be obvious anyway.
 Read widely and, where possible, undertake some of your own research. Good work
always show signs of extensive reading and some research. It is important to demonstrate
both an understanding of core principles (theories) and their application to reality.
 A good bibliography is essential for the marker to provide suitable feedback to you.
Papers without a bibliography will be penalised with a deduction of marks.
 Do not include irrelevant material and do not waffle. Given that your paper is limited to
3000 words any irrelevant material will mean that you are excluding something of
relevance. For the same reason you should avoid an excessively long introduction or an
unnecessary history of firm X or country Y.
 Avoid plagiarism at all costs. Unattributed copying or paraphrasing of the work of
published authors or of other students is a serious offence. Properly attributed quotations
and references to others are, however, important for a good essay. It is particularly
important that you make use of and properly reference the work of other students in your
group.
 Remember that the subject matter is not merely an abstract classroom exercise nor is it
just a journalistic description of the real world. The literature on the subject at least
attempts to address and provide explanations of real behaviour. You work should reflect
this and should analyse rather than describe real issues.
 You should ensure that your work provides a clear set of conclusions based on your
analysis.