Assessment 2: Blog (25%)
Due: Weeks 5–6 inclusive
Length: 2 x 200 word blog posts and a minimum of at least one comment per week.
Rationale:
On a daily basis, tourism and hospitality managers are required to be dynamic and influential yet empathetic and participative. They must champion innovation and creativity whilst monitoring stability, structure and control. An underlying commonality is the need to make decisions, both tactically and strategically, that influence the outcomes for many stakeholders. These decisions are sometimes instinctive and at other times calculated and well considered. They are all however, based on a collaboration of experience, research and sharing ideas.
Your task:
Gather academic and non-academic material which reflect your response to 'The Topic':
Management is the pursuit of flexibility
You will post a summary during each week over two weeks and actively engage in discussion and debate within a community of Management Team Learners or MTLs (refer to Stepping Stone 1 of your Study Guide for more information on MTLs) on the relevance and importance of your material to the topic.
To be an active MTL, our expectation is that you will (in addition to your original summary post) access, contribute and engage in discussion at least once per week. It is anticipated that you will use the online environment (i.e. your online group folder a.k.a. Blog space) to share thoughts, points of interest and relevant links, literature and other materials.
Instructions:
Find at least 2 items (one Academic journal article and one Industry article) that are relevant to the topic, ‘Management is the pursuit of flexibility’.
Prepare a blog entry for each item that you have chosen (maximum 200 words per entry): Blog entry should be structured in three sections:
• include a brief critical review of your chosen material
• outline how your material relates to the ‘The Topic’ and the themes outlined in Quinn et al. (2015)
• show links to your own managerial/work/personal experiences.
Post your first blog entry during Week 5
Discuss and debate within your community of ‘management team learners’ by engaging with these articles and the issues raised through them.
Post your second blog during Week 6 and discuss and debate within your community of ‘management team learners’ by engaging with these articles and the issues raised through them.
Marking criteria
• evidence of synthesising the literature/textbook
• evidence of idea generation and constructive comments which extend the discussion.
• identification of practical evidence and discussion
• evidence of engaging in analytical/critical discussion and debate with MTLs.Assessment 3: Blog (35%)
Due: Weeks 8–10 inclusive
Length: 2 x 200 word blogs and a minimum of at least one comment per week (Weeks 8 & 9). One final 200 words blog (Week 10) on a different topic.
Rationale
Continuing from your first Blogging experience, this second community Blog extends your knowledge of a master manager by thinking, analysing and discussing ideas and exploring the concepts of competing and paradoxical master manager characteristics.
Once again you will gather academic and other material to reflect your views on management, as well as generating an online debate about management, managerial styles and your own response to the CVF survey and resulting ‘spiderweb’.
Your task
Gather academic and other materials which reflect your views on 'The Topic':
Understanding the internal environment is a necessary attribute of a modern tourism and hospitality manager
As we did for your first Blog assessment, you will post a summary during each week over two weeks and then actively engage in discussion and debate with a community of MTLs on the relevance and importance of your material.
The third week (Week 10) will see a topic/question posted by the Unit Assessor which will provide MTLs with a themed blog interaction.
A focus of this second blog is for MTLs to link your research and ideas back to some of the discussions in the first blog (Assessment 2). Although conversation and interaction are important outcomes, the linking of ideas and informed debate will result in a more informed awareness of the competencies of a Master Manager, and will allow you to actively engage with the concept of the CVF from the Qunn et al (2015) text.
Remember, to be an active ‘management team learner’ within your community, our expectation is that you will (in addition to your original summary post) access, contribute and engage in discussion at least once per week.
Instructions
Find at least four items (use academic, industry and multimedia items) that are relevant to the topic
Understanding the internal environment is a necessary attribute of a modern tourism and hospitality manager.
Prepare two blog entries based on at least 2 items/papers each (maximum 200 words per entry).
Blog entry should:
• include a brief critical review of your chosen material
• outline how your material relates to the 'The Topic' and the themes outlined in Quinn et al. (2015) including the notion of paradox and competing values
• show links to your own managerial/work/personal experiences.
Access your Community Blog space on the MKT01907-2018-1 Blackboard site.
Post your first blog entry during Week 8.
Discuss and debate within your community of ‘management team learners’ by engaging with these articles and the issues raised through them.
Post your second blog during Week 9 remembering to discuss and debate within your community.
This is the same task as Assignment 2, but on a different Topic.
Themed Blog Interaction
At the start of Week 10, a final discussion blog topic/question will be provided by the Unit Assessor.
It is expected that MTLs will come together to discuss this final topic and draw upon knowledge acquired and ideas shared throughout the community blogging process. Given that it will be an open dialogue (meaning all MTLs of your community will be contributing to the one conversation at varying times and with varying regularity), you are encouraged to engage early and often to avoid being left behind in the conversation.
Marking criteria
• evidence of synthesising the literature/textbook
• evidence of idea generation and constructive comments which extend the discussion
• identification of practical evidence and discussion
• evidence of engaging in analytical/critical discussion and debate with MTLs.