London School of Commerce MODULE TITLE: Management Skills and Entrepreneurship– MSE - PROGRAMME: MBA - Part Time MODULE PERIOD: 28 – 30 April 2017. LECTURER: Anand Walser DATE ASSESSMENT TO BE COMPLETED AND SUBMITTED: 8th June 2017 SUBMISSION METHOD/MODE:Online via turnitin, ASSESSMENT TYPE: Individual Written Report   Assignment Question: In your role a first time entrepreneur, you have to plan your new business start-up in order to secure funding from financial institutions or private investors. You are therefore required to prepare an individual presentation to outline and explain the following: 1. The New Venture Concept, the opportunity gap in the market and why you are confident that this new business is feasible. [ 800 words / 20 marks ] 2. The Requirements for the New Business start-up together with the Management Skills needed to make the business successful. [ 800 words / 20 marks ] 3. Your proposed business model to explain how the new venture will work to achieve positive financial results and by when. [1200 words / 30 marks ] 4. What will be your human resource management strategies.[ 400 words / 10 marks ] 5. How you propose to manage business risks. Which conditions must prevail to avoid failure. [ 400 words / 10 marks ] 6. Determine the sales required to reach the Break Even Point[400 words / 10 marks ] Assessment Requirements: • The submission of your work assessment should be organized and clearly structured in a report format. • Maximum word length allowed is 4000 words, excluding words in charts & tables and in the appendixes section of your assignment. • This assignment is worth 100% of the final assessment of the module. • Student is required to submit a type-written document in Microsoft Word format with Times New Roman font type, size 12 and line spacing 1.5. • Indicate the sources of information and literature review by including all the necessary citations and references adopting the Harvard Referencing System. • Students who have been found to have committed acts of Plagiarism are automatically considered to have failed the entire module. If found to have breached the regulation for the second time, you will be asked to leave the course. • Plagiarism involves taking someone else’s words, thoughts, ideas or essays from online essay banks and trying to pass them off as your own. It is a form of cheating which is taken very seriously. Marking Criteria MARK 29 or less 30 - 39 40 - 49 50 - 59 60 - 69 70 + CONTENT: Has the question been answered? Vague, random, unrelated material Some mention of the issue, but a collection of disparate points Barely answers the question – just reproduces what knows about the topic Some looseness/ digressions Well focused Highly focused TOPIC KNOWLEDGE Is there evidence of having read widely and use of appropriate and up to date material to make a case? No evidence of reading. No use of theory – not even hinted at implicitly. No evidence of reading. An implicit hint at some knowledge of theory, etc. No evidence of reading. Very basic theories mentioned but not developed or well used. Some reading evident, but confined to core texts. Good reading. Good range of theories included. Excellent reading. Well chosen theories. UNDERSTANDING & SYNTHESIS Are ideas summarized rather than being reproduced, and are they inter-related with other ideas? No theory included. Vague assertions/poor explanations. Long winded descriptions of theory. Some long winded sections. Some quotations but stand-alone. Some inter- connections. Good summary of theory. Good use of quotations that flow with narrative. Good inter-connections. Succinct, effective summaries of theory. Excellent choice and threading of quotations into argument. Good counterpoising of a range of perspectives. APPLICATION Does it show appropriate use of theory in a practical situation? No examples No/limited/ inappropriate examples Few examples Uneven examples Good examples Excellent range of examples. ANALYSIS Does it identify the key issues, etc in a given scenario, proposal or argument? Vague assertions about issues. Largely descriptive with no identification and analysis of central issues. Limited insight into issues. Some good observations. Good, detailed analysis. Comprehensive range of issues identified and discussed fully. EVALUATION & CONCLUSION Does it critically assess material? Are there workable and imaginative solutions? No evaluation. Uncritical acceptance of material. Some evaluation but weak. Little insight. Good interpretation. Some but limited sophistication in argument. Good critical assessment. Independent thought displayed. Full critical assessment and substantial individual insight. REFERENCING Thorough and accurate citation and referencing No referencing No referencing Limited/poor referencing Some inconsistencies in referencing Appropriate referencing Appropriate referencing PRESENTATION Logical and coherent structure to argument and effective presentation No structure apparent. Poor presentation. Poor structure. Poor presentation. Acceptable, but uneven structure. Reasonable presentation. Reasonable structure. Good presentation. Good argument. Well presented material. Excellent argument. Very effective presentation format. Report Structure Title Page Table of Contents Abstract Introduction Question 1 Question 2 Question 3 Question 4 Question 5 Conclusions References Appendix Notes on Plagiarism & Harvard Referencing Plagiarism Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This constitutes academic theft and is a serious matter which is penalized in assignment marking. Plagiarism is the submission of an item of assessment containing elements of work produced by another person(s) in such a way that it could be assumed to be the student’s own work. Examples of plagiarism are: • The verbatim copying of another person’s work without acknowledgement • The close paraphrasing of another person’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement • The unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own. • It also includes ‘self-plagiarism' (which occurs where, for example, you submit work that you have presented for assessment on a previous occasion). And the submission of material from 'essay banks' (even if the authors of such material appear to be giving you permission to use it in this way) Copying or close paraphrasing with occasional acknowledgement of the source may also be deemed to be plagiarism is the absence of quotation marks implies that the phraseology is the student’s own. Plagiarised work may belong to another student or be from a published source such as a book, report, journal or material available on the internet. Additional Examples of plagiarism include: • directly copying from written work, physical work, performances, recorded work or images, without saying where this is from; • using information from the internet or electronic media (such as DVDs and CDs) which belongs to someone else, and presenting it as your own; • rewording someone else’s work, without referencing them; and • handing in something for assessment which has been produced by another student or person. It also includes self-plagiarism' (which occurs where, for example, you submit work that you have presented for assessment on a previous occasion). And the submission of material from 'essay banks' (even if the authors of such material appear to be giving you permission to use it in this way) It is important that you do not plagiarise – intentionally or unintentionally – because the work of others and their ideas are their own. There are benefits to producing original ideas in terms of awards, prizes, qualifications, reputation and so on. To use someone else’s work, words, images, ideas or discoveries is a form of theft. Collusion Collusion is similar to plagiarism as it is an attempt to present another’s work as your own. In plagiarism the original owner of the work is not aware you are using it, in collusion two or more people may be involved in trying to produce one piece of work to benefit one individual, or plagiarising another person’s work. Examples of collusion include: • agreeing with others to cheat; • getting someone else to produce part or all of your work; • copying the work of another person (with their permission); • submitting work from essay banks; • paying someone to produce work for you; and • Allowing another student to copy your own work. Harvard Referencing The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as illustrated in the Smith example near the top of this article. • The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author’s surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say: “Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery.” • Two or three authors are cited using “and” or “&”: (Deane, Smith, and Jones, 1991) or (Deane, Smith & Jones, 1991). More than three authors are cited using et al. (Deane et al. 1992). • An unknown date is cited as no date (Deane n.d.). A reference to a reprint is cited with the original publication date in square brackets (Marx [1867] 1967, p. 90). • If an author published two books in 2005, the year of the first (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b. • A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block since the citation is not an actual part of the quotation itself. • Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as “Works cited” or “References”. The difference between a “works cited” or “references” list and a bibliography is that a bibliography may include works not directly cited in the text. • All citations are in the same font as the main text. Examples Examples of book references are: • Smith, J. (2005a). Dutch Citing Practices. The Hague: Holland Research Foundation. • Smith, J. (2005b). Harvard Referencing. London: Jolly Good Publishing. In giving the city of publication, an internationally well-known city (such as London, The Hague, or New York) is referenced as the city alone. If the city is not internationally well known, the country (or state and country if in the U.S.) are given. Examples of journal references are: • Smith, John Maynard. “The origin of altruism,” Nature 393, 1998, pp. 639-40. • Bowcott, Owen. “Street Protest”, The Guardian,October 18, 2005, accessed February 7, 2006.