Assessment details
Assignments will be assessed in terms
of academic standards and content, and must follow the conventions listed below
in addition to any other criteria specified for each assessment piece.
·
Page numbers in correct sequential
order
·
Word processed
·
Spacing-one and a half spacing
·
12 pt size text with alignment
justified
·
Quotes- may not exceed a maximum of
10% of the word content of the report
·
Referencing – in the APA style or Chicago style
The following assessments are
interrelated. Please carefully read the requirements before starting.
What are the technical and generic
skills and competencies of the contemporary Human Resource Management
professional? A review of academic, practitioner and potential employer
perspectives.
The role of Human Resources
Management and the Human Resources practitioner has long been discussed within
the walls of academia and in the practical work environment. Over time, the HR
practitioner has taken on new roles and responsibilities in order to meet
increasing expectations around the value-add of the HR function and its
legitimacy within the workplace. In order to take on new and adaptable roles,
those looking at working in HR need specific skills and competencies. Some of
these skills are the technical professional skills of Human Resources practice,
and some of these skills are more generic management and business skills.
The goal of these assessments is to
identify the technical and generic skills and competencies needed to be a
contemporary HR practitioner from three different perspectives – the academic
literature, the practitioner (industry-based) literature and the potential
employer.
Assessment 1: Annotated Bibliography and Professional
Literature Synthesis (Approx. 2500 words)
Part a) Annotated Bibliography
Articles in scholarly journals are
subject to peer-review, meaning that submissions are read and reviewed by
experts in the field, both prior to and after they are accepted for
publication.
The goals of this part of the
assessment are to collect, summarise, and evaluate research from peer-reviewed
scholarly journal articles that examines the technical and generic skills and
competencies required by contemporary Human Resource Management professionals.
For this part of the assessment, an annotated
bibliography provides an explanation of the best available research on a given
research topic. The annotation usually contains a brief summary of content and
a short analysis or evaluation of the research article.
For the first part of this
assessment, evaluate ten (10)
key journal articles related to the research topic. Evaluate the article with
the goal of informing the reader as to the content, quality and relevance of
the research to the topic (about 150 words for each article).
At the start of every evaluation,
please insert a full reference as shown below. These will not be included in
the word count. Please note that these references must ALSO be in the end-text reference list.
Coetzer, Alan, and Helen Sitlington.
2014. “What knowledge, skills and attitudes should strategic HRM students
acquire? A Delphi study.” Asia
Pacific Journal of Human Resources 52 (2): 155–172.
doi:10.1111/1744-7941.12008.
The evaluation should start with a
short statement of the issue discussed, the author’s purpose, approach or
methods, hypothesis, and major conclusions.
The bulk of the critique, however,
should consist of your qualified opinion of the article. Read the article you
are to critique once to get an overview. Then read it again, critically. The
following are some questions you may want to address in your evaluation no
matter what type of article you are evaluating. (Use your discretion. These
points don’t have to be discussed in this order, and some may not be pertinent to
your particular article).
·
Have any ideas been overemphasized or
underemphasized?
·
Do you find errors of fact and
interpretation?
·
Is all of the discussion relevant?
·
Has the author cited the pertinent,
and only the pertinent, literature that provides a balanced perspective?
·
Should some sections of the
manuscript be expanded, condensed or omitted?
·
The following questions are more
specific to empirical rather than conceptual articles.
·
Are the study design and methods
appropriate for the purposes of the study?
·
Have the procedures been presented in
enough detail to enable another researcher to duplicate the study?
·
Are the statistical methods
appropriate (and/or sufficient)?
The goal here is to identify all
themes, trends, and areas of confluence with regards to the technical and
generic skills and competencies needed by contemporary Human Resource
Management professional of according to academics and researchers. This means
that all the sources MUST be
peer-reviewed, academic journal articles from a quality journal.
How should I set it out?
Introduction – set out the key elements of the
topic so that you have them as a frame for the annotations. This is a good
opportunity to briefly comment on the overall state of the literature on the
topic.
Each entry
Reference – set out correctly in the
appropriate selected reference list format (APA or
Chicago).
One to two paragraphs on the article
(about 150 words on average – some will be a little more) which briefly
summarise, then analyse and evaluate that article.
Conclusion– bringing it all together. This is a
good opportunity to present your overall analysison the literature you
reviewed.
Mandatory Appendix – provide a table summarising the
technical and/or generic competencies the review has identified. This table is
not included in your word count.
Reference list (at the end of both parts of the assessment)
This list should include the
references you have annotated in the correct reference list format.
This is not included in your word
count.
Part b) Professional Literature Synthesis
The discipline of Human Resources
Management is influenced by professional associations which provide resources
and accreditation for the HR practitioner. Some of the resources include
information about HR as a professional practice; continuing professional
education courses, development courses for the working practitioner; and
networking opportunities for association members.
In this assessment you will be
required to synthesize the literature which is distributed by such associations
(for instance the Singapore Human Resources Institute, the various newsletters
from SHRM, various periodicals from World at Work); professional practice
magazines (including humanCapital); and practitioner websites (i.e. the
websites of consultancy firms such as Randstad, Accenture or KPMG) to identify
which skills and competencies are considered to be needed by HR practitioners
or people managers.
The layout of this part of the
assessment is up to you, but you have to provide a table of the technical
and/or generic competencies the review has identified. This table is not
included in your word count and is a separate table to the one from part (a).
Assessment 2: Data Collection and Analysis; Summary Report and Implications
(Approx. 2000 words)
Part a) Data Collection and Analysis.
This assessment aims to address the
characteristics, skills, qualifications and/or experiences that current
employers are looking for when employing HR practitioners. You are required to
complete desktop research for this assessment, by following these steps.
Step 1:
Collect 10 job advertisements from sources including online
commercial job boards (such as
http://sg.jobsdb.com/sg ), LinkedIn.com
and government or military recruiting websites.
These jobs must be for entry-level HR
positions or for HR graduates. Only one of these jobs can be for an agency
recruiter. Please scan or image-capture these ads and append to your submission.
In your report, describe how you
selected the job advertisements (for instance did you retrieve them all on one
day?) and any criteria you used to make this selection (i.e. did you remove any
job ads that asked for over three years work experience? etc). Cite any sources
which have assisted in the development of this research strategy.
Also provide some detail about the
general characteristics of the job advertisements. For example in what
industries were the job advertisements; were the jobs full-time or part-time;
were jobs for continuous positions or fixed-term contract only posts?
Step 2: Collate and synthesise the key
skills and competencies referred to in the job advertisements.
In your report, describe how you went
about this synthesis process.
You should provide a table of the
technical and/or generic competencies the review has identified. This table is
not included in your word count.
Part b) Summary Report and Implications
Using the outcomes of assessment one
and part (a) of assessment two, provide a short synthesis of the technical and
other generic skills needed to be a successful practitioner from the three
different perspectives.
Your report should include
identification of both the similarities and differences you identified as a result
of the research you have undertaken; and come up with a conclusion identifying
priority technical and generic skills needed of the HR professional.
The report should also include an
evaluation and implications of the connection or disconnection between these
three perspectives.
The layout of the assessment is up to
you, but you should provide a final table summarising the technical and/or
generic competencies the review has identified of the three perspectives. This
table is not included in your word count.
