Oil & Gas Management

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Oil & Gas Management
Assignment: SWOT Analysis of Oil Companies
Your Assignment
You are a researcher for an industry journal, which is planning to run a feature on the different management styles and cultures between International Oil Companies [IOCs] and National Oil Companies [NOCs], and whether these can be linked to the company’s past success and thus possibly be a guide to their future potential.
You have been asked to prepare a professional report on one IOC and one NOC as to their present status and future potential; the potential readership are would-be investors, and thus your report should guide this audience to decide to heavily invest or not in the companies.
Your work should provide a balanced, analytical view of whether the two companies would make suitable investment vehicles, based on their management style and culture and their organisational structure – there should be no attempt to recommend one company over the other. This is NOT a selling exercise.
The Report should be much more than a simple description of their structure and operations. You must provide a critical evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses, together with the opportunities and threats that exist in their markets. Therefore a good starting point for your Report will be a SWOT analysis of each of your chosen companies.
Having read the above background, and conducted some preliminary research and reading, your Assignment Brief is to write a 2,300-word report on one IOC and one NOC, chosen from the table below. To complete an effective and detailed Report, you will need to research the chosen companies in considerable depth. Coherent analysis supported with reasoned evidence will be required.
Internet research and background reading will inform a large part of your writing, but what is required, and thus will form the basis of assessment and marking, is your own views, conclusions and analysis by interpreting the data against textbook theory, together with your own ideas, thoughts and personal research on the Internet.
Choices: Choose ONE company from each category only
International Oil Company National Oil Company
ExxonMobil Saudi Aramco
BP CNPC
Shell PDVSA
Chevron NNPC
Total Petronas
My Rules:
• The Assignment should be written in the third person, in the style of a Report.
• The Assignment should not contain an Abstract, or an Executive Summary, or a restatement of this Assignment Brief. There is no need for a Table of Contents in a short Report.
Learning outcomes to be examined in this assessment • Demonstrate an understanding of the interrelationship of the factors affecting management performance in different sectors of the worldwide oil and gas industry
• Discuss the financial, commercial and contractual activities used in the management of the worldwide oil and gas industry
Note: do not focus to much on the financial activities of the company, but focus more on management style and management culture.
• Critically analyse the historical and current policies and options related to the global oil and gas industry
Assessment Criteria Explanatory comments on the assessment criteria Maximum marks for each section
Content, style, relevance, originality Structure, objectives, meeting the deliverables, time and resource constraints 50%
Format, referencing, bibliography Rigorously, using the Harvard method 10%
Constructive critical analysis, introduction, conclusion Accuracy, full articulation of ideas developed. Offering well-argued solutions and/or alternatives 40%


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Diversity at work

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iversity at work
The ageing of the population in developed nations means that, to maintain current economic growth, organisations will need to employ more non-traditional workers than ever before. As a result, the workforce of the future is going to more diverse. From an organisational perspective, the challenge is to create an environment where all workers, regardless of their demographic characteristics, work together effectively to achieve their maximum potential. Given this, the implementation of effective diversity management programmes is an important goal for organisations.
This assignment is intended to increase your understanding of these issues and requires you to develop recommendations for a hypothetical organisation about how they can improve their diversity management. In particular, you are required to analyse this organisation in terms of the diversity management paradigms described in chapter ten of the text. Based on this, you are then required to make your recommendations (more detailed information about the assignment requirements and how to fulfil them is provided below).
Case study
Aldway is an Australian company that runs a large chain of over 100 shopping centres. It employs over 150 people in its head office and over 3,000 people nationwide. In a response to the forecast changes in the composition of the labour market, high level management have recognised the need to adapt to a more diverse workforce.
Six years ago, an examination of the company’s employment statistics revealed that women made up around 35 per cent of the company’s workforce. Also, both individuals with disabilities and with an indigenous background were vastly underrepresented in the organisation (compared to their proportions in the population). To address this, management at head office has made explicit policy encouraging managers to be active in hiring a more diverse workforce. This policy set a general goal to increase the numbers of women, indigenous individuals and individuals with a disability within the organisation to be more inline with their proportions in the population. Organisational employees responsible for hiring have been briefed regarding the importance of a diverse workforce and they have received some training from external consultants about effective interview techniques for individuals from non-traditional backgrounds. In addition to training, other measures taken include the placement of job advertisements in locations where they are more likely to be viewed by ‘minority’ individuals. To this point, management has not implemented any additional mechanisms to increase diversity. They decided that, once employed, employees from non-traditional backgrounds should not receive additional training or support because they did not want to ‘single out’ these employees. The rationale for this was to allow them to feel part of the organisation’s culture in the same way other new employees do.
A recent investigation of the company’s employment statistics was conducted to see if the initiatives of management were successful. Data suggested that the organisation had been at least partly successful in its goals. It revealed that women now make up around 45 per cent of the workforce, although this was only true for lower levels and was not true at a management level where women were still underrepresented relative to men. Minorities, such as indigenous people and individuals with disabilities, had a slightly increased presence at lower levels. The small magnitude of these employees increased presence was found to be due to higher staff turnover within these groups. That is, although individuals with a disability and individuals with an indigenous background were being hired more often than in the past, they tended to leave the organisation more quickly than employees from the ‘dominant group’.
Assignment Reading
Mor Barak, M. E. (2014). Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace, 3rd ed. CA: Sage Publications (chapters 10, 11 & 12).
French, E. (2005). The importance of strategic change in achieving equity in diversity. Strategic Change, 14, 35-44. (Available via CloudDeakin in the assessment module).
Wehman, P. (2003). Workplace inclusion: Persons with disabilities and coworkers working together. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 18, 131-141. (Available via CloudDeakin in the assessment module).
The reading from the text provides the main background for your discussion. The two journal articles have been included to help you come up with recommendations to improve Aldway’s diversity management. Therefore, it is not important that you consider comprehensively all of the content from these articles in your paper. Instead, you should focus only on the main things in each article relevant to this topic. For example, the table listed in the appendix of French (2005) may be useful. In addition, you may want to discuss the findings of French regarding gender-blind versus gender-conscious diversity management policy.
Assignment Requirements
To address the assignment topic effectively, you will need to cover the issues described below. First, you need to analyse the current policy and environment of Aldway. To do this you need to:
– Briefly explain the various rationales for increasing diversity and identify the rationale for workplace diversity that Aldway seems to be emphasising. In doing this you should very briefly note some of the benefits associated with effective diversity management discussed in the assignment reading.
– Briefly describe the two diversity management paradigms described in chapter ten of the text and classify Aldway in terms of these. It is important to note that these categories are not absolute and you may want to argue that Aldway fits generally into one category despite showing some features typical of other categories.
– Identify common barriers to the inclusion of workers from diverse backgrounds and discuss the extent to which Aldway has addressed these barriers. In particular, you may want to note some things that Aldway has done well in addition to identifying areas where Aldway could improve their diversity management (i.e., note and explain the problems Aldway is having regarding diversity). In doing this, you should draw on material in the readings and specifically focus on material discussed in chapter twelve of the text.
Second, on the basis of your analysis, you will then need to provide some recommendations to the organisation about how they can improve their diversity management. In particular, it is important that you:
– Develop an approach to managing diversity within this organisation. This approach should suggest strategies that create a more inclusive environment within the organisation for non-traditional workers. In particular, I want you to focus on issues relevant to gender, disability and indigenous background. Your recommendations should cover different aspects of employees’ experiences within the organisation (e.g., inclusion in formal and informal communication, promotion, orientation, working conditions, etc.).
To summarise the assignment requirements: This task requires you to use various frameworks covered in the readings (e.g., diversity management paradigms, rationales for increasing diversity) to analyse the current state of Aldway’s diversity management. The outcome of this analysis should be an overview of the current practices including limitations. You will then make recommendations, based on the reading materials as appropriate, about how these limitations can be addressed and how diversity management could be improved.
Some general tips for your assignment:
– Always justify your arguments.
– Define key terms.
– You do not need to discuss aspects of the workplace inclusion model beyond level one. That is, your concern in this assignment is to address managing diversity within the organisation. Although there are important aspects additional to this, as described in chapters 13-15, you should not cover this in your assignment.
Assignment Structure
The assignment is to be written as an essay and therefore, like essays you have written in the past, it will be comprised of an introductory section (a few paragraphs long) that: (i) ‘sets the scene’ (i.e., provides a very brief rationale for your topic – note why diversity management is becoming increasingly important); (ii) defines key terms, and; (iii) most importantly, establishes the aim of your paper. You are not required to provide an abstract for this assignment.

 
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SWOT Analysis of Two Oil Companies. One International Oil Companies [IOCs] and One National Oil Companies [NOCs]

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Assignment: SWOT Analysis of Two Oil Companies. One International Oil Companies [IOCs] and One National Oil Companies [NOCs]
Your Assignment
You are a researcher for an industry journal, which is planning to run a feature on the different management styles and cultures between International Oil Companies [IOCs] and National Oil Companies [NOCs], and whether these can be linked to the company’s past success and thus possibly be a guide to their future potential.
You have been asked to prepare a professional report on one IOC and one NOC as to their present status and future potential; the potential readership are would-be investors, and thus your report should guide this audience to decide to heavily invest or not in the companies.
Your work should provide a balanced, analytical view of whether the two companies would make suitable investment vehicles, based on their management style and culture and their organisational structure – there should be no attempt to recommend one company over the other. This is NOT a selling exercise.
The Report should be much more than a simple description of their structure and operations. You must provide a critical evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses, together with the opportunities and threats that exist in their markets. Therefore a good starting point for your Report will be a SWOT analysis of each of your chosen companies.
Having read the above background, and conducted some preliminary research and reading, your Assignment Brief is to write a 2,300-word report on one IOC and one NOC, chosen from the table below. To complete an effective and detailed Report, you will need to research the chosen companies in considerable depth. Coherent analysis supported with reasoned evidence will be required.
Internet research and background reading will inform a large part of your writing, but what is required, and thus will form the basis of assessment and marking, is your own views, conclusions and analysis by interpreting the data against textbook theory, together with your own ideas, thoughts and personal research on the Internet.
Choices: Choose ONE company from each category only
International Oil Company
ExxonMobil
BP
Shell
Chevron
Total
National Oil Company
Saudi Aramco
PDVSA
NNPC
Petronas
Rules:
• The Assignment should be written in the third person, in the style of a Report.
• The Assignment should not contain an Abstract, or an Executive Summary, or a restatement of this Assignment Brief. There is no need for a Table of Contents in a short Report.
• There should be a Title Page showing your Name and Student ID; pages must be numbered.
• The following rules are set and mandatory – any work submitted that does not comply, may be subjected to a penalty.
• The main body of the Assignment should cover around 6 or 7 pages of A4 paper, using Times New Roman, font size 12, with 1.5 line spacing;

 
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Sustainable Management Futures

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Sustainable Management Futures
Assignment Instructions
You are required to choose 2 from 4 scenarios provided to you, and write a 1500 word essay style response to each question relating to the issues contained in each of them [3000 words in total].
Each scenario is worth 50% of the overall mark.
The assessment is designed to evaluate your knowledge and skills in the subjects covered in the module. In the assessment, you need to spot key words that will guide you as to what is expected in the question. As such the questions will invite the following types of response:
Definitions:  These will ask you to show that you have learned some concepts, by setting out their precise meanings. Such questions need to be complemented by some further analysis. Keywords for these types of questions are: describe, identify, define, name, examine, distinguish between, compare, provide examples, summarise.
Evaluate:  This is designed to test your reasoning of cause and effect. You need to offer structured and coherent explanations. Keywords are: Interpret, explain, discuss, what conditions influence, what are the consequences, what are the implications of.
Judgement: This requires that you make a judgement, perhaps of a policy or of a course of action. Keywords: evaluate, critically examine, assess, do you agree that.
Advice:  Some questions might ask your advice in particular situations. Your advice needs to be based on policy, good practice, principles and evidence of actions that can be effective. Keywords: Design, create, recommend, advice.
Critique:  Many questions will include the word “critically”, this means that you expect to look at least two points of view, offering a critique of each view and your judgement. Key words: critically analyse, critically consider.
The following marking criteria indicates how each scenario will be assessed:
Mark    Learning Outcome
Introduction – A clear outline of the issue, and what is going to be covered in the assignment.    15    LO 1-4
Theory and Application – Clear explanation of the theoretical or conceptual ideas that are going to use to address the question set. Outlining the academic debates associated with the theoretical or conceptual framework and providing a clear rationale for adopting the chosen ideas.
Students should demonstrate an awareness of the key points from the relevant theory and their significance in establishing the importance of the issue the have chosen.
60    LO 1-4
Conclusion – The conclusion should be concise and accurately reflect the content of the assignment. A good conclusion will reflect on the strength of the essay’s central argument.    15    LO 1-4
Presentation – Evidence of good range and appropriate references used.    10    LO 1-4
TOTAL MARKS    100%
Word Length and Count in Assignments
Extract from Academic Regulations 6th Edition July 2013, page 62.
(L) Exceeding Word Limits
6.61 A written assignment must not exceed the maximum word limit set for that assignment. Students are required to enter an accurate word count on the Assignment Cover Sheet.
6.62 When a written assignment is marked, the excessive use of words beyond the stated word limit is reflected in the academic judgement of the piece of work which results in a lower mark being awarded for the piece of work.  The MDF for a module which is graded on a pass/fail basis must specify whether submission of a written assignment exceeding the word limit results in failure in the module.
6.63 In determining the text to be included within the maximum word limit, the following items are excluded:
• abstracts;
• indented quotations (of more than 50 words);
• tables;
• figures;
• diagrams;
• footnotes/endnotes used for reference purposes and kept within reasonable limits;
• list of references and/or bibliography;
• appendice
Sustainable Management Futures Scenarios May 2014
Scenario 1
Some years ago, a large German chemical firm, BASF, decided to follow the lead of many other European firms and build a factory in the United States. BASF needed land; lots of it (1,800 acres), and inexpensive labour pool, almost 5 million gallons of fresh water every day, a surrounding area free of import taxes, and a nearby railway and ocean port. The spot the company finally picked seemed perfect, an area near the coast of South Carolina called Beaufort. It purchased 1,800 acres.
South Carolina and Beaufort County were pleased with BASF’s decision. The surrounding area, from which the company would pick its workers, was an economically depressed area and the per capita income stood well below the national average. Jobs of any kind were desperately needed. Even the  Governor of South Carolina and his staff were eager for BASF to build in South Carolina, and although BASF had not yet finalized its exact production plans the state Pollution Central Authority saw no problems with meeting the State pollution laws. BASF itself said that although it would dump chemical by-products into the local Collection River, it planned not to lower the river’s quality.
But trouble started immediately. To see why, one needs to know that Beaufort County is the home of the internationally famous resort area called “Hilton Head”. Hilton Head attracts thousands of vacationers every year – most of them with plenty of money – and its developers were worried that the scenic splendour of the area might be marred by the air and water pollution. Especially concerned about water pollution, resort developers charged that the proposed chemical plant would pollute the Collection River. They argued that BASF plants in Germany had polluted the Rhine and, in Belgium, the pollution control was allocated only one million dollars.
The citizens of Beaufort County, in contrast to the Hilton Head Developers, welcomed BASF. They presented the company with a petition bearing over 7,000 signatures endorsing the new plant. As one local business commented, “I would say 80 percent of the people in Beaufort County are in favour of BASF. Those who aren’t rich”.
The manager of BASF’s US operations was clearly confronted by an economic and moral dilemma. He knew that preventing massive pollution was virtually impossible and, in any case, outrageously expensive, the eagerness of South Carolina officials for new industry suggested that pollution standards might be “relaxed” for BASF. If it decided to go ahead and build, was the company to push for the maximum pollution control it could get away with under the law? Such a policy might maximize corporate profits and the financial interests of the shareholders, while at the same time it would lower the aesthetic quality of the environment. It might make jobs available to Beaufort County while ignoring the resort industry and the enjoyment of vacationers. Moreover, the long-term effects of dumping chemicals were hard to predict, but past experiences did not give manager a feeling of optimism. Pollution seemed to be not only a business issue, but a moral one.
Task
Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of deontology and discourse ethics (Fisher, Lovell, and Valero-Silva, Chapter 3). Use these approaches to evaluate how they could be used by the manager in making a decision as to whether BASF should go ahead with building the factory at Beaufort Country Park.
(1500 words)
Scenario 2
You work for a large finance organisation that operates in the global markets. In order to survive they have decided to increase business by extending their services to those who are not in a position to pay back loans, ‘sub-prime clients’ also known as ‘bad risks’. Nevertheless they are being offered them because your organisation has seen an opportunity to charge higher interest rates for loans taken out by these clients because they are seen as bad risks (7.5% APR as opposed to 1.5% that is normally charged by your organisation) but who are afraid of going to loan sharks who will charge 50% APR.
You have been asked to be a financial advisor to those seeking high interest loans when they contact your organisation to set up a loan – they do this via a call centre and the loans can be set up with a ‘no questions asked’ 5 minute interview
Your organisation has told you it is strict company policy not to tell clients taking out these loans that if they default it will be sold onto a debt collection company who will pursue them for any outstanding amounts at 25% APR.
Your organisation has also told you not to offer extended re-payment periods and if clients ask about this you should tell them ‘we will cross this bridge when we come to it – repaying £X amount per month should be no problem even on your limited and fixed income – lots of people do’.
If a client asks why they are being charged a higher interest rate you are to reply that your organisation says they are justified in charging 7.5% APR because they see it as ‘doing a social good’ by lending to those who need money but cannot get it at cheaper interest rates, and also keeping them from the clutches of loan sharks – you are in fact here to help – doing them a favour’.
A client contacts you who has taken out such a loan and is now finding it difficult to make re-payments. They tell you they are threatening to go to a loan shark because of the difficulties they now find themselves in.
You have to follow company procedure when dealing with clients by not allowing them to default on loans or make arrangements to make repayments over a longer period of time in order to spread their outstanding debt because if you do not you will be sacked. You must not tell them about the debt collection company either if they want to default.
Task
Using TWO of the ethical categories in Fisher, Lovell, and Valero-Silva (2013:196-201) apply and evaluate to what extent these are appropriate for dealing with the issues described in the Scenario 2.
(1500 words)
Scenario 3
Read the extract by Erika Watson taken from the “The Guardian” (18 March 2012) “Quotas aren’t the best way to get more women into boardrooms”
A gender-equality policy that focuses on women at the top is unsustainable when most women’s prospects are shrinking. The European justice commissioner is proposing mandatory quotas for women in boardrooms if voluntary measures fail. Few people disagree these days with the need for more women at the top of business and banking. Three-quarters of people across Europe say they are in favour of laws to ensure gender balanced boards. And perhaps buoyed by those findings, the European justice commissioner, Viviane Redding, is proposing mandatory quotas if a voluntary approach doesn’t speed up. In the UK this is set against a context of women losing jobs at a higher rate than men, and over 2 million low- to middle-income families facing tax credit cuts in this week’s budget. Strange times indeed: when affirmative action is on the cards for those at the top, while equality is reined back for everyone else.
Nevertheless, there are very good reasons for introducing boardroom gender quotas. There are stacks of research that confirm that gender diversity on boards results in better corporate performance on every measure, including finance. And there’s widespread agreement too that male-dominated cultures in the top echelons of banking and business created ghettos of groupthink and excessive risk taking. Those narrow cultures were at the heart of what went wrong in the global financial crisis. The Swedish prime minister recently said: “A male atmosphere creates more risk and a greater risk of corruption.”
Quotas have gradually increased female representation on boards in Norway from 9% in 2003 to over 40% today. And similar approaches are now being rolled out in other European countries, including Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain. The issue is being seriously debated in Germany. Legislation varies, but there’s a broadly common model of gradually increasing targets, from 20% up to 40%. Corporate Britain, fairly united against quotas, has heaved a sigh of relief this week. Voluntary efforts in the last year have resulted in a new record high for female representation on the boards of the UK’s 100 largest listed companies.  The proportion has gone up from 12.5% last year to 15.6% this year.  Experts say that at that level of momentum, we could reach 30% in four years. We’ll see. If the increase is not maintained, then, as David Cameron said recently, the case for quotas may be unavoidable.
But while corporate Britain has pulled out the stops to get female non-executive directors on to its boards, the proportion of women executive directors (female employees who sit on the board) has crawled along from just 5.5% to 6.6%. Promotion prospects come at just the time women start to have families. With expensive childcare, and few meaningful family-friendly workplaces, few of those talented women last long enough to make it to the top. If quotas are to work in the UK, we may need to borrow Norway’s childcare system as well. As it is, childcare tax credits are being cut for around 500,000 families in a few weeks. And quotas won’t work if they reflect and reinforce the growing chasm between top and bottom earners in the UK today. The pay gap between the highest and lowest earners has reached an all-time high. In the last year the pay of the lowest earners stood still or dropped, while the pay of directors and chief executives increased by 15%. It may be impossible to justify a gender-equality policy that focuses on women at the top at the same time as the position and prospects of most working women are shrinking. If we’re to change the culture on corporate boards, quotas may be the worst option we have, except for all the others. But even then, they need to go hand-in-hand with policies that support equal opportunities at work, at all levels.
Task
Using the findings and recommendations of the Lord Davies Report argue the case for affirmative action to introduce more women into the boardroom. Propose an action plan for business to follow in order to encourage women to break through the glass ceiling.
(1500 words
Scenario 4
Read the following extract from Business Ethics and Values by Fisher, Lovell, and Valero-Silva (2013:414):
Societies and countries may differ in their business ethics and values. Any differences may be internal to societies or countries or between them. Different countries may have, in high ethics established within their religion, philosophical traditions an literature, different ideals about the conduct of business and organisational life. Cultural tradition in one place might see business growth and profitability as an end in itself; in other place economic ends might be seen as subordinate to other goals. Within a country or society there may be competing sets of values concerning business and management. Within Muslim countries, for example, there may be differences between modernizers, who want to work to the values of global business, and traditionalists, who may wish to apply Islamic values to business practices. Even if countries and societies share the same values they may vary in the degree with which they practise the. While two countries might, at a formal level, regard bribery as immoral, one country might conduct its business in line with this standard but the second country might not. There may be differences with a country and society between the values embodies in its high traditions and those values adopted in everyday life.
Task
Using the business and managerial values in different countries and societies outlined in Fisher, Lovell, and Valero-Silva (2013:417- 428) evaluate using appropriate examples, how the ethics and values in different countries can be reconciled when doing business with each

 
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