Question with guidelines below.
Assessment Writing Guidelines (3,000-word count) Official EEI Cover Sheet Must be fully completed with ‘actual’ signature (NO typed in signature allowed) You can download this from EEI Moodle and ensure that the form is COMPLETELY filled-up. Table of contents This is mandatory to highlight each series of structured headings in the assessment. Page numbering is a requirement and listing must be accurately reflected. In Word, you can create a TOC based on a portion of the text in a paragraph without including the whole paragraph. Go to https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/285059/how-to-create-a-table-of-contents-by-marking-text-in-word for guidance. It is imperative that the TOC and LOF/T are accurately illustrated. List of figures and/ or tables where appropriate 1.0 Introduction Choose a ‘real’ case study and provide: 15% An introduction is like a guidebook to your whole assignment. It gives background information into your topic area and outlines all the ideas you are going to present. Please try to ensure that you take multiple sources of information to build your introduction and should NOT be based on the company’s website alone. See what other perspectives of information that may illustrate the establishment of the company is like. References needed for this section should be at least 5 – 6 sources of information. 1.1 Background of an international company 1.2 Company objectives (vision/ mission) 1.3 Current business performance 2.0 Body of discussion 2.1 HR strategies 25% The body section expands and develops the material in a logical and coherent manner, reflecting the structure outlined in the Introduction. For this section, you would need to: Discuss what were the most significant findings or factors involved in the topic? Use academic references to build your body of discussion and then relate it to the case study of your choice, i.e. one of the building blocks in HR strategies is built upon the organizational culture (relate to some academic work primarily HR) and then depict how your chosen case’s scenario is like. References needed for this section should be at least 12 - 15 sources of information. 2.2 Employee development 2.3 Employment relations & grievance handling 2.4 Training (Use of diagrams/ models, tables and charts) 5% 3.0 Conclusion 3.1 Conclusive thoughts on case study’s practice 30% The conclusion summarises the major inferences that can be drawn from the information presented in the report. It answers the questions raised by the original research problem or stated purpose of the report and states the conclusions reached. This section also may include: Deliberate the application of the report by comparing the case with other organizations in a table format to illustrate the differences in practice Provide an objective opinion, evaluation or judgement of the evidence resulting from and justified by the material which appears in the report. Relate ‘what it all means’ in terms of the significance of the findings reported and their impact. References needed for this section should be at least 5 – 8 sources of information. 3.2 Critical analysis in comparison with another case 3.3 Recommendations for future applications/ strategies (Use of diagrams/ models, tables and charts) 5% References List of references should be between fifteen (15) twenty-five (25) sources of information and must adhere to the Harvard referencing format 20% Sample reference list: Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2008). Childhood education and care (No. 4402.0). Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au Beckett, S. T. (2008). The science of chocolate (2nd ed.). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Royal Society of Chemistry. Branch, S., Ramsay, S., & Barker, M. (2008). The bullied boss: A conceptual exploration of upwards bullying. In A. Glendon, B. M. Thompson & B. Myors (Eds.), Advances in organisational psychology (pp. 93-112). Retrieved from http://www.informit.com.au/humanities.html Appendices If appropriate Total 100% https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/285059/how-to-create-a-table-of-contents-by-marking-text-in-word Table of contents 1.0 Introduction 1.1 Background of the international company The Google story begins in 1995 at Stanford University. Larry Page was considering Stanford for grad school and Sergey Brin, a student there, was assigned to show him around. By some accounts, they disagreed about nearly everything during that first meeting, but by the following year they struck a partnership. Working from their dorm rooms, they built a search engine that used links to determine the importance of individual pages on the World Wide Web. They called this search engine Backrub. Soon after, Backrub was renamed Google (phew). The name was a play on the mathematical expression for the number 1 followed by 100 zeros and aptly reflected Larry and Sergey's mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” 1.2 Company objectives (vision/ mission) “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Since the beginning, our goal has been to develop services that significantly improve the lives of as many people as possible. Not just for some. For everyone. (extracted from Google, 2018). Today, Google dominates 75% of the U.S. online search market. Every month millions of unique users perform billions of searches. Google is constantly updating its algorithm to meet ever evolving user needs as well as snuff out black hat SEO. Over the past five years we have seen the most significant Google algorithm changes. The changes are aimed to improve search results so the best, most relevant content gets the exposure it deserves (town square interactive, 2018). 1.3 Current business performance Google-parent company Alphabet topped Wall Street targets with 23% revenue growth in Q1, but the better-than-expected performance was not enough to dispel worries about rising expenses and the most significant risks of a regulatory clampdown the company has faced in years. Shares of Alphabet initially jumped by more than 4 per cent in after-hours trading but quickly reversed course and fell back to around the price that the stock closed at during regular trading. 2.0 Body of discussion 2.1 HR strategies As the world is becoming more competitive and unstable than ever before, manufacturing-based industries are seeking to gain competitive advantage at all cost and are turning to more innovative sources through HRM practices (Sparrow, Schuler, & Jackson, 1994). HRM practices have been defined in several aspects. Schuler and Jackson (1987) defined HRM practices as a system that attracts, develops, motivates, and retains employees to ensure the effective implementation and the survival of the organization and its members. Besides, HRM practices is also conceptualized as a set of internally consistent policies and practices designed and implemented to ensure that a firm’s human capital contribute to the achievement of its business objectives (Delery & Doty, 1996). Likewise, Minbaeva (2005) viewed HRM practices a set of practices used by organization to manage human resources through facilitating the development of competencies that are firm specific, produce complex social relation and generate organization knowledge to sustain competitive advantage. Against this backdrop, we concluded that HRM practices relate to specific practices, formal policies, and philosophies that are designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain employees who ensure the effective functioning and survival of the organization. F A C T S T H E O R Y Among the main approaches to develop HRM: ―universal‖ or ―best practice‖ approach (Huselid, 1995); strategic HRM practices approach (Delery & Doty, 1996); contingency approach (Dyer, 1985; Schuler, 1989); and configuration approach (Wright & McMahan, 1992), previous studies revealed that HRM practices, which were related to organizational innovation, mainly focused on ―universal‖ or ―best practice‖ approach. A review of the literature demonstrates five common practices that have been consistently associated with innovation, encompassing performance appraisal, career management, reward system, training, and recruitment (Gupta & Singhal, 1993; Jiménez-Jiménez & Sanz-Valle, 2005; Kydd & Oppenheim, 1990; Laursen & Foss, 2003; Shipton, Fay, West, Patterson & Birdi, 2005). “Google is organized around the ability to attract and leverage the talent of exceptional technologists and business people. They have been fortunate to recruit many creative, principled and hard-working stars” (Nightingale (2008:1). With Google’s growth into new markets in Europe Jeff Levert was appointed the vertical markets director for Europe, and has since moved to Europe, in order to put into place a vertical management structure similar to the United States (US). The move to the European market is of “high importance to Google as part of its growth strategy. In addition, looking for heads of the vertical market departments in all the European territories and, it has already promoted the accounts manager to head retail sales, and has also recruited the former Teletextholidays.com manager to the travel sector. Google has already expanded into more than 12 offices across Europe. Google has also expanded into China on the 2/3/2010” (Wauters: 2010:12). The company is known for its unique culture and Human Resource policies and is acknowledged as an innovator and best employer (Nightingale (2008:1). Google’s people programmes are geared up to the demands, to meet the requirements of the company’s rapid expansion throughout the world, Fortune magazine (2013), has named Google as the best 100 companies to work for. Google’s ability to leverage itself from competitors offers attractive packages, which serves as a pull factor for Google. “Some of its benefits include: flexible working hours, allowing employees to wear casual dress every day, permitting employees to bring their dogs to work every day, on-site physician visits, on site dental care, health benefits, free massage and yoga, employee stock options, free drinks and snacks inside the campus, free meals including breakfast, lunch and dinner. Google also provides its employees with three weeks’ vacation during their first year of employment, free recreation including video gaming, football, volleyball and pool tables, valet parking for its employee’s and onsite carwashes. The other attractive programmes that Google employees benefit from are maternity and parental leave, employee referral bonus programmes, onsite childcare centers, fuel efficiency and onsite dry cleaning. Apart from their innovative benefits, Google has implemented more activities concerning the employee ‘s health, family and environment which is totally different from other related companies” (Nightingale (2008:6). The stock options serve as a tool and