Organizational Behavior and Design

The following suggestions are for you to consider when you try to find an essay topic.

1. Think of a specific topic within the broad topic, Motivation or Teams at work. The best ways of doing this are to start with the relevant chapters in the textbook and/or find one good scholarly article that starts you thinking of questions you might like to investigate eg Is there a difference between nationality or genders or industries or professions in relation to motivation or team effectiveness at work? etc.
2. Start to search the databases for journals relevant to your topic or question. Make an appointment with the librarians on Level Twelve and they will help you to use databases effectively while searching on your topic.
3. Refine your topic or question, and search again. Once you find two or three very relevant journal articles, then use their references lists to search back for more literature as well as the citations on the database to search forward for more recent relevant articles that have cited your article.

If you cannot find your topic, you can consider one of the following essay topic:

1. Move motivates./Does money motivate?
2. Heterogeneous/diversity teams are more effective than homogeneous teams.
3. team based reward is more effective than individual performance based reward.
4. Building effective teams
5. Financial rewards enhance employee motivation
6. Pay for performance is detrimental to the public sector
7. Extrinsic rewards benefit both employees and organisations
8. Monetary rewards are the major source of employee motivation
9. Equity works better than equality in motivating employees

The Structure:

Part1: Introduce your topic.

Part2: Argument to support your topic (1-2 evidences to support your topic)

Part3: counter argument (e.g. However, xxxx argues that)

Part4: conclusion

Note: you have to choose a main position to write it in part2. And write counter argument in part3.

Previous General Feedback on Essays

1. Design paragraphs by first planning the essay and then ensuring each paragraph deals with one topic and commences with a topic sentence that explains what is in the paragraph. See NGSB Student Manual on academic writing.
2. The introduction includes: Context; purpose; outline of argument which reflects the outline of the essay; and a précis of the conclusion.
3. The conclusion should briefly summarise the argument in the essay by drawing on the themes, not the specifics, and draw a conclusion based on and justified by the information in the body of the essay. Do not introduce new information into the conclusion but try and use the conclusion to shed new light on the argument.
4. Make sure you use credible sources for your work. Credible sources include: peer reviewed journal articles; government publications or statistics. Wikipedia is not a credible source, nor are web-sites that are opinion based.
5. Do not use tables of contents and headings in essays under 3000 words. Keep these for reports. If you do use heading, do not make them substitutes for sentences.
6. Formatting of assignments requires double spacing and 12 point font, usually times roman.
7. Referencing is used to provide credibility to your work. If you make statements, then they should be referenced as closely as possible to the statement. If quotations are used, you must include the page number of the quotation. If you find references in the sources you are using and want to include them, then state, for example, Ryan (2004 cited in Chang, 2008) or (Ryan cited in Chang, 2008). Do not included references cited elsewhere in the Reference List. Please download and use the referencing section in the NGSB student manual when you are writing assignments.
8. Avoid plagiaphrasing or changing a word or two in a sentence or paragraph from another source like a book or journal article. Either paraphrase by rewriting what is said in your own words, or summarise the intent of the other work.
9. Ensure you maintain focus on the assignment question by checking that each paragraph responds to the question and does not deviate.
10. Once you have finished your assignment, EDIT, EDIT and EDIT. Ask your friends, family and/or colleagues, to read your work to make sure there a minimal grammatical, spelling or typing mistakes. We learn by editing the work of others.

The following criteria will be used to allocate grades for the assignment conducted instructors:

• Content: Ability to identify relevant theory, concepts and arguments.
• Analysis: Ability to analyse issues, concepts and arguments.
• Academic argument: Ability to integrate academic material And present cogent argument.
• Presentation: Ability to present alternatives conventional academic slide conventions, including those relating to clarity, spelling, grammar, use of syntax and academic referencing.