Assessment 3: Consulting Report (40%)

(Due Sunday 19 October 11:55pm)

For this assignment write a 1200-word report for an organization planning to store carbon and reduce its carbon footprint. You will be assigned one company from among the members of the New Zealand Climate Leaders Coalition. Identify the company’s competence in addressing carbon storage and its carbon footprint based on available information (this requires collecting and searching for information, facts, and data) and recommend ways the company could improve its performance.

The style of this report and presentation is to communicate to the Board of the company, describing how to tackle carbon storage, how you rate the company’s performance to date (give specific reasons for your assessment), and what actions and by whom at the company you recommend managing its improving performance. Use the academic report format which includes:

• Letter of Introduction
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Recommendations
• References

You will be graded on your ability to write an academic report, your integration of the literature into your discussion, the feasibility of your recommendations, and your writing skills. Recommendations must be time-bound and specific, based on the information you have gathered. These are written as single sentences in bullet points.

We do not use a marking rubric because we expect you to write with a critical focus at an advanced level.

Please save your file with your FAMILY NAME, Personal Name, ID number and Assignment number. For example, I would save my file as BATHURST Ralph 01245876 Assignment 3.

Assignment Style Guide

Please follow these stylistic guidelines when formatting your assignments.

Layout and Formatting

1. Use double line spacing.
2. Use Times New Roman font, 12pt for body text and 14pt bold for headings.
3. Number all pages at the bottom in the centre.
4. In the header ensure your name and ID number is on each page, beginning the page after the title pages. Remember to type your family name in CAPITALS.
5. Page one of your assignment should be the Honesty Declaration.
6. Assignments submitted without a signed Honesty Declaration attached may not be marked. A copy of the Honesty Declaration can be downloaded from the Stream site, or copy the one at the back of this Paper Guide.
7. Ensure that paragraphs are separated by 24pt spaces before and after each paragraph.
8. All text should be left-aligned. Do not use full justification as this makes text more difficult to read.
9. When using the dash parenthesis, use the en dash – not the hyphen -. (To write an en dash in Word, hold down the alt key and type on the number pad 0150.)
10. When writing page numbers use the en dash. For example 113–126 is correct but 113-126 is not correct. (Note: there are no spaces between the numbers and the en dash.)
11. Use double quotation marks for direct quotes “…” and italics for emphasized words.
12. Use headings sparingly and avoid using them altogether in essays shorter than about 2000 words.
13. Reports will use headings for each major section.
14. Avoid using the / to show alternatives. For example, her/him should be her or him.
15. Do not use ‘we’ or ‘us’ when referring to yourself as the author of the assignment. Using these words assumes reader agreement.
16. Write, where possible, using the active voice.
17. Never use bullets or numbered points in essay assignments.
18. Recommendations in reports are written as bullet points.

Researching and Referencing

1. Your research should include only articles from scholarly sources. Websites and popular articles are not peer reviewed and do not qualify as credible academic sources. If you are unsure about what qualifies as a scholarly source please speak to your course coordinator or a librarian.
2. When citing a scholar or scholars in your writing, please make sure you discuss their work. Do not just cite the scholars’ names without referring to their ideas.
3. The referencing style used in all business courses is APA 7th edition. There is no room for personal interpretations of this style and it must be followed exactly.
4. There is assistance for formatting your references available on the Massey University Library website and on the Stream site. Please refer to either of these for specific guidance.
5. In-text citations require just the author’s family name and no initial for the personal name is shown.
6. When writing the page number for a cited quote, ensure there is a space after the p. For example (Jones, 2007, p. 21) is correct but (Jones, 2007, p.21) is not correct.
7. All quotations should include page numbers.
8. When citing two or more authors separate the last two authors with &. For example (Jones & Smith, 2007). Where you are citing these authors in the body text, however, separate their names with ‘and’ as in Jones and Smith (1997).
9. When writing direct quotations, the sentence full stop goes after the citation, not before it, because the citation is part of the sentence.
10. All article titles and book titles are written in sentence case except the first letter of the title, subtitle, and proper nouns.
11. Make sure you purchase and learn to use the software EndNote as this will assist in writing correct citations and references, and will help in your data management.
12. et al. is short for et alii – ‘et’ is a full word and means ‘and’ while ‘alii’ means ‘others’ but is shortened to al. in which case the al. requires the full stop.
13. As a rough guide here are three examples using the main types of works you will reference.

Journal Article Example

Hatch, M. J. (1993). The dynamics of organizational culture. Academy of Management Review, 18(4), 657–693.

Edited Book Chapter Example

Bourdieu, P. (1989). Flaubert’s point of view. In D. Philippe, P. P. Ferguson & W. Griswold (Eds.), Literature and social practice (pp. 211–220). University of Chicago.

Book Example

Barthes, R. (1983). Empire of signs. Jonathan Cape.

Language Use

1. Make sure you define all your terms and are specific about any location.
2. Do not use acronyms.
3. Countries and groupings of countries should be referred to by their full title (Asia, Europe and America are all ambiguous and should not be used). For example, use the United States of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) for these countries.
4. Never use abbreviations such as e.g., etc. or i.e.
5. Never use contractions like I’m and can’t. These should be written in full such as ‘I am’ and ‘cannot’.
6. Avoid gender-specific language. For example, if you are referring to the work of a manager, refer to ‘him or her’ rather than just ‘him’.
7. Avoid colloquialisms like ‘lots of’.
8. Name all national institutions or corporations in full.
9. When citing an author or authors as evidence for your argument, ensure you engage with that claims of those authors. Just writing a citation does not represent critical thinking.
10. Avoid the use of ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ when referring to you as the author. These words assume reader agreement which is presumptuous. It is better to use ‘I’.

Seeking Feedback

Some students seek my feedback on their assignment before submission. If you seek my assistance, you need to ask me at least two weeks prior to submission. I cannot give you meaningful feedback unless you have time to develop the ideas we discuss. All drafts must have the reference list included so I can see the works you are reading. I do not read emails or look at drafts on weekends.

Academic Honesty and Plagiarism

For all course assignments it is acceptable (and helpful) to discuss the issues with other students. You may freely ask and answer questions that promote learning.

However, it is NOT acceptable to:

• Copy another student’s work, in part or in total, or an official/model answer from either the current class or from a previous class.
• Allow other students to copy your work, in part or in total.
• Copy your own work if it has already been submitted for assessment elsewhere.
• Provide students in future years with copies of your assignments.
• Copy and paste sections from internet sourced documents or pages.
• Post assessment questions and request answers – or copy someone else’s answers – from any online ‘learning’ or ‘homework’ website (these are cheating sites).
• Have another person prepare and/or write your assignment (or parts of your assignment) on your behalf.

In short, if you submit work that you did not author and you claim credit for it, you are breaching academic integrity.

Plagiarism is defined by Massey University as:

Presenting as one’s own work the work of another, including copying or paraphrasing of another’s work without acknowledging it as another person’s work through full and accurate referencing. It applies to material presented through written, spoken, electronic, broadcasting, visual, performance or other medium.

Plagiarism can be avoided by correctly acknowledging the authorship of any material in your assignment that is not your own original work. Go to the Online Writing and Learning Link for guidance on correct referencing.

Plagiarism in an assignment may result in your assignment not being awarded any marks. In serious cases, it can result in even more serious disciplinary action by the University.

Plagiarism includes copying answers that someone else has provided to assignment or test questions, which includes answers posted online. Be aware that if you use such a service the answer you submit is not original, is available to multiple other students, and therefore you and every other student drawing on these answers is breaching academic integrity and risking disciplinary action including receiving a mark of 0.

A link to the Student Guide to Academic Integrity at Massey University is here.

Please make yourself familiar with the Code of Student Conduct available here.