Topic: Boundaryless Career and Project Management

August 10th, 2017

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Topic: Boundaryless Career and Project Management

Order Description

Introduction
The purpose of this coursework is two-fold. Firstly, it is intended to develop your
ability to search the academic literature, read and think critically, and write a short
discursive piece. This will in turn help you with the academic programme at
postgraduate level. Secondly, the coursework requires you to delve deeply into a
contemporary issue confronting human relations in the context of project
management. The coursework is worth 33% of the marks in this 15-credit core unit.
Therefore, you are expected to expend approximately 50 hours worth of personal
effort in delivering this coursework. Please read the instructions found in this
coursework brief carefully.
Detailed Instructions
You are required to produce a critical review of the following theme:

Coursework theme: “Boundaryless Career and Project Management”

Your critical review must be based on a peer-reviewed academic journal article of
your choice. You are required to read extensively around the coursework theme and
identify a particular article that has inspired you to write this critical review.

The review must be word processed, and MUST NOT exceed a single page of A4,
using the Arial font, minimum of 11 point in single line spacing, and margins of a
minimum of 2 cm all around. You are also required to include the list of bibliographic
references cited in your critical review on page 2. Therefore, your submission must
not exceed 2 pages, otherwise you will get zero for this coursework. Also, do not
continue your critical review on to the second page. The second page should
only contain the list of bibliographic references cited, preferably presented using the
Harvard referencing system. The full reference for your chosen peer-reviewed
academic journal article must be included at the top of page 2, in bold, for which
your critical review is based on. Please ensure that your selected article is from the
University of Manchester Library electronic journals collection.

Subject to availability of space in the timetable, it is possible that a coursework
seminar session is organised for you to share lessons learnt from the coursework
with your peers. If this is the case, you will be expected to attend and contribute to
the Coursework Seminar (details to be advised). If a coursework seminar is
organised and you fail to attend, you will not qualify for the coursework marks.

The deadline for submitting this critical review is 2359hrs on Friday 7 November
2014 on the link found in the Home Page of the Blackboard 9 site. Please upload
MACE60006 People and Organisations Coursework Brief 2014-2015 – 2 –
interim drafts before the deadline to avoid missing the deadline as a result of
bottlenecks on the day of submission. New uploads will overwrite previous versions.
Guidance on How to Construct a Critical Review
Your critical review must be related to the above theme, i.e. “Boundaryless Career and
Project Management”.

You must select a peer-reviewed journal paper that focuses on a particular aspect of
boundaryless career, and relate this to the field of project management. There are
many ways of achieving this. However, it is important that you read more than one
peer-reviewed journal article on the theme before making a choice on which
article to focus on for your critical review. It is expected that you must familiarise
yourself with the concept of boundaryless career – what this means, why this is
significant, and what has already been studied on and written about this – before you
can make a judgement as to which article you choose for the purpose of constructing
your critical review. It is suggested that you choose an article that has really inspired
you to think about boundaryless career(s) in the context of project management.

What is a peer-reviewed academic journal? You can find quite a detailed explanation of
what peer review is and what it means to a lay person here:
http://boingboing.net/2011/04/22/meet-science-what-is.html (accessed 9 September
2014). Moreover, you should be able find detailed information about any academic
journal on the homepage of the journal’s website. The peer-review process (if there is
one) is normally explained in the “Instructions for Authors” or equivalent. Periodic
guidance will be provided on a needs basis and during the formal session in Week 4.

The paper selected must be critically reviewed using appropriate sources and logical
argument. Students are advised to focus on appraising the subject matter when
constructing the critical review, and not to state their personal views or opinions and to
avoid writing in the first person. There is generic advice on library and study skills found
on Blackboard 9 (see Learning Resources). Please consult this before beginning your
assignment.

Typically, when writing a critical review of this nature, you are advised to consider the
following questions (not exhaustively):
• What is the chosen peer-reviewed academic journal article about? What is/are
the central argument(s)? What conclusion(s) are the author(s) making?
• How have the author(s) derived their arguments? What methods were used, and
how have the methods influenced the strength of the argument(s)? To what
extent do the methods used convince you of the argument(s) they make?
• How does the chosen article contribute to our collective understanding of the
coursework theme? What are the implications of the argument(s) found in the
chosen article, especially for the theory and practice of project management?
• What are the limitations of the chosen article? Where are the weak points? What
are the implications of these?

Thinking through these questions might help you focus when reading the literature.

Care should be taken when searching the literature and selecting peer-reviewed journal
articles, in that the articles you read must be of sufficient substance. A common flaw is
MACE60006 People and Organisations Coursework Brief 2014-2015 – 3 –
that students select journalistic pieces. Journalistic pieces or “light weight” unreferenced
material will not be accepted. It must be reiterated that students will need to undertake
significant library work in order to select suitable material.
General Points to Note
Late submissions
The School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering (MACE) exercises a
policy on late submissions of coursework. Any coursework received after the
deadline will be treated as follows: any coursework received within a week after the
deadline will automatically be penalised by 50%; thereafter, the submission will
receive no marks. This, however, should not affect your right to seek recourse to the
Personal Mitigating Circumstances procedure.

Marking Criteria
Marks are not given for the quality of presentation. Submissions should be of a good
quality, as would be expected in a professional environment. Submissions containing
typographical errors, weak structure and very poor grammar will receive lower marks
as this reduces understanding. Your coursework will be evaluated as follows:

Assessment criteria Maximum Award
Understanding:
To what extent have you demonstrated understanding of the
coursework theme, especially of cutting-edge thinking?
15
Structure and evidence of research:
To what extent have you organised your critical review in a
coherent, easily comprehensible structure? To what extent
have you comprehensively searched and reviewed the
literature?
20
Referencing, substantiation and justification:
To what extent have you provided adequate supporting
reference materials to demonstrate and explain the points you
are making?
35
Logical argument and synthesis:
To what extent have you made a persuasive argument? To
what extent is this argument well thought-through and put
together?
30
This coursework constitutes a third of the Unit’s assessment. More detailed marking
criteria can be found on pages 5 and 6 of this coursework brief.
Feedback
You will be able to access feedback on your critical review on Blackboard 9. It is
expected that feedback will be made available in Week 12 before you break for the
vacation in December. This will give you ample time to learn from the feedback in
preparation for the examination.
MACE60006 People and Organisations Coursework Brief 2014-2015 – 5 –