Assessment 1 is an individual essay, which accounts for 50% of the final mark.
Instructions:
Write a literature review on a topic related to International Business. Here are a list of topics to choose from: please choose one only
1. Leadership and international strategy
2. The importance of ethics to business organization
3. Fair trade and globalization
4. CSR and Sustainability in Asia
5. Mergers and acquisitions on corporations
6. The role of trade unions in EuropeThe review should NOT exceed 1500 words (excluding the bibliography) in length, and you should review at least six recent academic papers/ books etc. related to some aspect of the topic. Books should be published by a reputable publisher and papers should be published in scholarly journals.Newspaper or magazine articles, papers that are only available on the internet, or extracts from textbooks do not count.You should also consult the original references rather than reporting other authors reports of them.
In identifying the papers/books, you should make use of the search methods described in the Research Methods for International Business module. The work reviewed should all address a common research topic and should not include unrelated references that just happen to have the same key words in the title.It is permissible to focus the review on one particular aspect of the topic rather than several different themes. Indeed it is probably better to focus the review in this way, rather than trying to cover a too broad area.
Credit will be given for following the principles of a good review in particular: How well the review engages with the whole of the topic. For example, if the topic is Leadership and Motivation in the Workplace then a review that just considers leadership traits would not receive a good mark.The coherence of the review in terms of relating the cited papers etc. to each other instead of simply summarising each one of them separately. Marks will be deducted if the review relies too heavily on one source.The quality of the papers etc. reviewed i.e. have you reviewed the most important papers on the topic?
The completeness of the bibliography and the consistency of the referencing (using the Harvard system).Important points to consider:A literature review is a survey of publications (books, journals) reporting work that has already been done on the topic. It should only include studies that have direct relevance to your research. A literature review should be written like an essay in a discursive style, with an introduction, main discussion grouped in themes and a conclusion. One hypothesis should be proposed in the essay. Remember, you will only need to state an hypothesis/hypotheses NOT test it.