LEADERS AS DECISION MAKERS

General instructions ? All assignments are to be submitted online by the due date.   ? Hardcopy submissions will not be accepted.
Presentation of assignment ? You should include a title page that lists your name, Student ID and the unit number and title. ? Number all pages sequentially. ? Any published material you refer to should be properly referenced and included in a bibliography at the end of your assignment (see Plagiarism notice overleaf).
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Plagiarism Plagiarism is a form of cheating, by representing someone else’s work as your own or using someone else’s work (another student or author) without acknowledging it with a reference.  This is a serious breach of the Academic Regulations and will be dealt with accordingly.  Students found to have plagiarised can be excluded from the program.
Plagiarism occurs whenever you do any of the following things without acknowledging the original source: ? copy information from any source (including the study guide, books, newspapers, the internet), ? use another person’s concepts or ideas, ? summarise or paraphrase another person’s work.
How do I avoid plagiarism?
To ensure you are not plagiarising, you must acknowledge with a reference whenever you: ? use another person’s ideas, opinions or theory ? include any statistics, graphs or images that have been compiled or created by another person or organisation ? paraphrase another’s written or spoken word.
By understanding and using one of the referencing systems detailed in My Resource Centre on e-Communities, you will be able to avoid plagiarism.
There are three main referencing systems: ? the Harvard or author/date system; e.g. ‘Smith (1985) listed five key factors’ ? the Oxford or footnote system, e.g. ‘Smith listed five key factors1? ? the use of end notes in place of footnotes.
For further information on referencing please refer to My Resource Centre on  e-Communities.
Collaborating with other students
When submitting your assignment online, you will be asked whether you have collaborated with any other students in preparing your assignment.  If you have done so, you must inform the marker of your assignment by recording the name(s) of any such student(s) in the box provided.  You must also make a declaration that the work you are submitting is entirely your own.
What are the penalties?
The penalties for plagiarism are: ? deduction of marks, ? a mark of zero for the assignment or the unit, or ? exclusion from the program.
Plagiarism is dealt with on a case-by-case basis and the penalties will reflect the seriousness of the breach.
Please note: claiming that you were not aware of need to reference is no excuse.
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Part 1:  Self-reflective report
Your task
You are to keep a diary in regard to a particular decision in which you have been involved in your workplace and submit a report based on it.
The decision should be reasonably significant—not trivial.  It should be a decision in which you are a leader, though if you are not in a leadership or management position currently, you may choose a decision in which you are participating in a meaningful and substantial way, albeit not as a formal leader.  The decision should not be one with a single straightforward and readily agreed solution or outcome, but rather one that has a level of ambiguity and complexity and may require making trade- offs.  Examples include a decision which requires identifying the best resolution (not a perfect or ideal one) in the circumstances, creates new value for one or more stakeholders or sets a clear direction for the enterprise.
You may choose a decision that has just started to be considered or one that is already underway but some way from completion.  If the decision is already underway, then you should be sure to identify anything you would have done differently had you completed Topics 1–5 before you acted.
If you are unsure of the suitability of your selected decision, discuss it with your Unit Chair before adopting it.
What to include
The report should be a professional and academic reflection and analysis of your own participation in the decision making and not a ‘ casual chat’.  Self-awareness and self-reflection is critical.  Do not focus exclusively on others, though you may certainly consider their behaviours in the context of interacting with your own attitudes, beliefs, emotions and behaviours.  A report that focuses exclusively or heavily on factors external to you, the author, is unlikely to gain a pass mark.
The report should link to conceptual frameworks discussed in Topics 1–5 using the following structure:
? Managerial/leadership balance: the balance of managerial versus leadership context and the approach to handling the decision ? Change and innovation: the relationship of the decision to change and innovation for the organisation, if any ? Framing the opportunity: how the problem or opportunity was framed and any effects of the framing ? Decision model: any structured approach or model used in the decision making ? Deciding how to decide: how you and/or others decided how to decide ? Stakeholder analysis: what stakeholders were considered for which kinds of engagement, when and why ? Sources of information: what sources of information and advice that you used, both formal and informal; which you didn’t use and why ? Tools used: which tools you used for generating alternatives, judging them and making a selection; and how you used them  ? Alternatives judgement criteria: the criteria (qualitative and/or quantitative) that were established to judge alternatives ? Ambiguity and uncertainty: the kinds of ambiguities and uncertainties present and how they were handled

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