Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

When management ask for flexible working I always worry. Discuss employers' and employees' attitudes and approaches to flexible working. Use case studies of real firms to put forward a balanced review of the benefits, if any, of more flexible forms of working.

Work must be typed and contain an accurate word count. It helps to use font size 12 and 1.5 line spacing.

Please keep a copy of all work submitted. You may not sit the exam without completing this work. Extensions are given only in exceptional circumstances, and require supporting evidence, e.g. illness requires a doctors certificate. Work received late is subject to a range of penalties (see Student Handbook).

Since your essay accounts for 50% of the total grade on this course, dont rush into writing or submitting it. Use your time carefully.

1.Write the title clearly at the top of your essay. Dont leave it for the markers to figure out what you are writing about.

2.Read widely. Do not rely on lecture notes and workshop materials alone. Doing so will result in a lower grade.

3.Read the essay question/topic several times before you start writing. Students usually end up getting low grades on their essays and exams because they fail to answer the question or directly address the essay topic. You will lose marks if you write irrelevant material.

4.Essay questions often consist of more than one part. Make sure you answer all the parts and dont leave any out.

5.Assignments should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Many assignments either begin or end abruptly (or sometimes both), without any introduction or conclusion. Other assignments have hasty or rushed conclusions, suggesting a lack of pacing and/or editing. Please allow yourself space to develop adequate conclusions.

6.Try to be as analytical as possible. Do not copy and paste material from text books or journal articles. Merely telling us what is written in books or journals is not good enough. Relying exclusively on lecture slides is unacceptable. You must interpret what has been written and explain it in your own words.

7.Look at all sides of the argument. Explore the essay topic from different perspectives. Try to find links between different topics that have been covered in this course. None of the topics stand in isolation. They are all linked to each other in some way.

8.Make sure your arguments are logical and coherent. Wherever possible support your arguments or claims with evidence published in respectable journals and books (not Wikipedia). Simply expressing opinions is useless. Evidence is what counts.

9.Use quotation marks when you are quoting someone elses work verbatim. Keep quotations to the minimum. Explain the literature in your own words. Dont just copy.

10.You must cite all references in the main body of your essay (e.g. Huselid, 1995). Insert the page reference if you are quoting the author. For example, if the quotation comes from p.636, then cite if as follows: (Huselid, 1995: 636). If you are using any material from the lecture slides make sure you cite the appropriate lecturer.

11.You must also provide full references at the end of your essay in a bibliography. Refer to your student handbook for Harvard Style Referencing, but the basic format for books, chapters and journal articles is as follows:

Beardwell, J. and Claydon, T. (2010) Human Resource Management: A Contemporary Approach 6th Edition, FT Prentice Hall.

Allen, M.R. and Wright, P. (2010) Strategic management and HRM, in: P. Boxall, J. Purcell and P. Wright (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management. Oxford University Press.

Huselid, M.A. (1995) The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance, Academy of Management Journal, 38(3): 635-72.

12.Once you have completed your assignment, you must proof read it carefully. Many assignments contain misspellings, incorrect punctuation, ungrammatical sentence constructions, poor paragraphing and so on. At best, this looks shoddy and rushed but at worst it leads to incomprehensible English, for which you will lose marks. Bear in mind that any employer will expect intelligible, not to say correct, English from you, so get in the habit of proofing your own work now.

You must cite a source for everything that is not your own idea. Unattributed quotations are a form of plagiarism, and any form of plagiarism copying material that is not your own without adequate attribution will lead to serious consequences. Please read your Student Handbook for further guidance on plagiarism, or feel free to ask us if you are still unclear.