With your passion to make a real difference, you have joined MARD (Make a Real Difference) Limited as an employee. MARD is a commercial organisation that seeks to develop creative and critical approaches and ethical solutions for their clients. MARD’s clients include charities, businesses, government agencies and philanthropists. In 2021, MARD has developed a number of problem areas and country-setting that they wish to market to their clients to seek funds to further the solutions for the problems. The concept manager at MARD has approached all of its employees (you are included!) to develop a problem statement for a problem that each employee feels passionate about and for one that each employee can develop creative solutions/creative processes to develop solutions for. MARD has provided employees with the ‘Problem Areas and Countries’ spreadsheet (you will see a copy of this in the Overall Assignment Details and FAQ canvas page). (Note: All the assignments for BUSS5221 should be written to the clients of MARD , e.g. philanthropists). The focus of your work for this task (Assignment 1) is as follows:
1) Provide a brief overall description of the problem area in a country setting (e.g. what is the status of environmental degradation in the Philippines). Please note that the same problem may manifest itself in very different ways in a particular country and hence it is imperative that you provide a country-specific setting to the problem. You need to include references and facts in this section. (approx 400 words)
2) Provide your problem statement and justify why it is important to address it. Note that a problem statement is different from the overall description of the problem area in a country setting. The problem statement provides an unbiased and concise statement of the problem in one to two sentences. The problem statement provides a link between the current state of the problem and the desired state. You need to include references and facts in this section. (approx 350 words)
3) Outline your creative (note that in BUSS5221, creative is defined as novel and useful) idea to address the problem. Your creative idea can be a mix of creative processes and/or creative solution. You need to show convincing pieces of evidence that your idea is novel and useful . You can include your pieces of evidence in the Appendix (E.g. Appendix A – Evidence that idea is novel; Appendix B – Evidence that idea is useful). The evidence can be in the form of screenshots, web searches etc but it is your responsibility to provide that your idea is novel and useful. These pieces of evidence are not included in your word count. (approx 400 words)
4) End of Document References or Diagrams in the main report/essay. (approx 350 words). References and diagrams are included in the word count. Please ‘Choice of visualisation option’ below.
Structure of report/essay
1.0 Problem Area and Country Setting
2.0 Problem Statement
3.0 Creative Idea
4.0 References (APA-7 Format)
Appendix
Note that both an essay format or a report format is acceptable for this task. An essay usually has an Introduction, Body and Conclusion. Be clear with highlighting the different sections of the essay along the theme of the suggested headings, that is one to two paragraphs for problem area and setting, one to two paragraphs for problem statement etc. If you are using a report format, then use the headings 1.0, 2.0 etc.
Choice of visualisation option
Choose one of these options and indicate this in the footer of your document (do not include any details that identifies you in the footer).
Included in your word count is 1 visualisation. If you wish for any more than 1 visualisation, please allow 100 words per visualisation.
Option 1 – 1500 words (you are allowed 150 words on top of this under business school policies) + 1 form of visualisation.
Option 2 – 1400 words (you are allowed 140 words on top of this under business school policies) + 2 forms of visualisations.
Option 3 – 1300 words (you are allowed 130 words on top of this under business school policies) + 3 forms of visualisations.
Option 4 – 1200 words (you are allowed 120 words on top of this under business school policies) + 4 forms of visualisations.
Word Length
The word length for this assignment is 1500 words. Under the business school policies, you are allowed a buffer of 10% (150 words extra).
Indicate the word length (Word Length =) in the footer of your document (do not include any details that identifies you in the footer).
Remember that the word length includes all referencing. This is the official business school policy. Appendices are not included in the word count.
