Industry and Ethics Analysis (Individual report)

2018 Semester 2 Brief.

Analysis of contemporary issues, opportunities, trends, challenges or innovation in the ICT industry.

Analysis of contemporary issues, opportunities, trends, challenges or innovation within an ICT Company compatible with the student’s 5-year plan career aspirations. This will include considerations such as organisation/management structure, mission statement, company objectives, the market, ethics and business practices, ability to deliver on their business objectives through their people and processes, SWOT, dependencies, major projects, risks, issues and strategic forecasts. The Report will support exploration of business opportunities with the ICT Company. This work will assist the students in creating a plan (in Assignment 4) that will outline where they would like to be in five years.

Note that depth of analysis of organizational ethics and ethical consideration of engagement is an important component of this work. You will be assessed on the following:

1. Relevance of the selected topic and submission to the Assignment specification
2. Depth of analysis of topic related to ICT industry. This relates to depth and breadth of analyses of companies.

iii.  Quality of writing and clarity of content’s structure

1. Appropriate citation of sources
2. Depth of analysis of organizational ethics and ethical consideration of engagement.

Scenario.

Team, this Assignment is an individual work and has been set up as a parallel to your individual Assignment 3 e-portfolio, to assist you with analysis of a company, perhaps one where you might like to be within five years.

In this context, you are to choose a company (Company-1) within an ICT industry of your choice. The ICT industry will be relevant to your future interests within the ICT profession. Company-1 may be national or international and need not necessarily be Australian.

The scenario is that you have either been contracted as a Consultant or Employee of Company-2.

Company-2 Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is about to visit Company-1. She will visit Company-1 shortly after you hand in your report, in order to investigate the possibility of developing a business relationship. Moreover, she will rely only upon your report as her preparation for visiting Company-1. In this context, you need to both analyse Company-1 and provide a report to Company-2 CEO so she if fully prepared and informed when she visits Company-1. No surprises!

This also means you will need to briefly define the nature of Company-2 that you are working for, to establish the context for possible collaboration or involvement with Company-1. (i.e. what Company-2 does and anything else you need to define in order to investigate the viability of doing business with Company-1).

The deliverable will be a document in which you will analyse contemporary issues, opportunities, trends, challenges or innovation within the ICT Industry associated with Company-1. This may include considerations such as organisation/management structure, mission statement, company objectives, the market, ethics and business practices, ability to deliver on their business objectives through their people and processes, SWOT, dependencies, major projects, risks and issues and your strategic forecasts.  Remember, although you are reviewing Company-1 in detail, the CEO of Company-2 will want to know the benefits (or disbenefits or drawbacks) for Company-2 in working with Company-1. For example, if you choose IBM as Company-1, it will not suffice to simply talk about all the great things IBM can do and why it is a great company. Rather, you need to analyse and review your findings in order to provide your CEO with recommendations as to which areas she should target so as to give benefit to her Company-2. It is also possible that your findings might indicate it is unwise for her to seek a relationship with Company-1.

Of particular interest to The CEO of Company-2 are the Ethical practices and conduct of Company-1 and its employees. You will need to include an analysis of how the company addresses ethics and sustainability. You may consider this in the context of market research on a competitor or as research pre-investment in that company.

This document will take the form of a 3000-word (+/-10%) 12-font single-spacing Document Report including 1-page Executive Summary of your chosen company or corporation, inclusive of Citations (Harvard Style). An additional 2 pages may be included as appendices, should you choose to include diagrams, charts, figures or tables, all of which should be captioned with appropriate references. Note it is up to you whether the 3000+/-10% word-limit includes or excludes the Executive Summary. I am estimating the Executive Summary will be about 1 page for completeness.

This deliverable is not templated. That is, I will not prescribe the format of the Report, other than it is a Report with an Executive Summary of your findings. Rather, I will leave that to your discretion.

 Marking Criteria

NOTE. I will concentrate on the Executive summary, referring to the rest of Report for consistency, verification and more detail, as needed. (see next 2 pages).

Hint. You must be a critical thinker, state your assumptions and justify your assertions and statements of “fact”. Note that Wikipedia is not acceptable as a primary reference.

This table exemplifies my approach to several of the marking criteria