The Impact and Effectiveness of Leadership and Management in Organisations

Written Assignment

The Written Assignment represents 60% of the overall course grade.

Instructions

The Written Assignment essay should be completed at the conclusion of the course, once all
sessions have been completed. Please check the course details for the exact submission
date.
The goal of the essay is to demonstrate how you are thinking about putting course concepts,
models, tools and practices in your own context to demonstrate the course learning
outcomes:

• Apply models that describe organisations, and approaches to Leadership and
  Management
• Plan for people management issues as they relate to performance in an
  Organisations
• Anticipate consequences of a range of management decisions and approaches
• Create a personal leadership development plan by reflecting on your own leadership
  journey
• Demonstrate the ability to express a personal management strategy and rationale

The essay should contain approximately 3,000 words.
The title is “The Impact and Effectiveness of Leadership and Management in My
Organisation”.

How You Will Be Assessed

Additional Guidance

Applying models, describing plans and anticipating issues can only be done in a specific
context. For this essay, you must choose to write about your current organisation, or one you
worked for in the past.
There is also an element of reflection in the essay. You can take various valid approaches
here. One of them is to write a separate section that covers the reflective and personal plan
part (column 4 of the rubric). Another approach is to cover all areas in parallel through your
narrative. Either way, keep the four columns of the rubric in mind when writing, and ensure
you are covering them. You can include references to your Activity Log where required, and
this is a strategy that may help find balance in addressing all areas.

A suggested lay-out of the essay:

1. Introduction. This should include a brief background to the organisation and may
address structure, culture, size etc.
2. Leadership and organisational performance: describe and analyse the prevailing
management and leadership style in the chosen organisation and include reference to
theories and or models to support their assertions.
3. Issues and consequences relating to Leadership and Management approaches.
Following on from the section on leadership styles you can address the key issues and
consequences related to the chosen leadership and management style and its impact
on the organisation citing examples and or theories/models to support their assertions.
4. Possible Solutions/ Recommendations
5. Conclusion
6. References/ Bibliography

Any quotes from external sources should be properly referenced. Choose a referencing style
and use it consistently. Poor referencing may affect your grade, and lack of referencing
makes the integrity of your entire assessment questionable. We recommend that you use the Harvard Referencing Style, which is well documented in the UCD Library pages:
https://libguides.ucd.ie/harvardstyle.