The first part of the assignment focuses on research methods and referencing. The second part is more substantive and focuses on organizational misbehavior.
Your score for this assignment will, of course, rely on the substance of your answers but it will also depend on the extent to which you respect the basic rules for academic writing. This concerns three aspects:
– Most importantly, this means that you do not commit plagiarism. For the consequences of plagiarism please check the MACS Academic Handbook.
– It is also essential that you use the Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) guide (Anglia Ruskin University 2017) and the addendum as guidelines for your referencing, both for in-text references and for the reference list at the end of the assignment. You will be expected to follow those rules not only in this assignment but in all your assignments during your MACS studies.
– Finally, it is also very important that you use proper academic writing style and layout. For that, follow the recommendations in the style guide (see part III of Turabian (2017) where necessary. Also use the very useful advice in the chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Turabian (2017) to inspire and improve your writing in this exercise.
Maximum number of words: 1500(+- 10%)
Part 1: A research question with some initial references (max 750 words)
1.1. Research question and research hypotheses
– Formulate one good empirical research question on a topic that you would like to empirically investigate and that relates to corruption. Make sure that it is an empirical research question that can be answered by an empirical study by a master student within one year. Turabian {(2017, chapter 2) (1 This assignment does not refer to pages but to paragraphs and chapters to accommodate students working with the e-version of Turabian (2017)}. provides useful general guidance on formulating questions. King and Wincup (2008: 13-23) provide more specific background on how to write a good research question for empirical research. (Please note that this is just an introductory exercise. For your actual dissertation, you can work on an entirely different topic).
– Formulate two initial (working) hypotheses in response to your research question. Again, use Turabian (2017, paragraph 2.3) and King and Wincup (2008: 13-23) as inspiration. In formulating these propositions, try to make some link with theory or the academic literature.
1.2. Explanation
– Write a brief text (think about the word limit!) that argues why this is a good research question referring to Turabian’s (2017, paragraph 2.1.4) considerations and why these are relevant hypotheses.
– In your text, you should refer to 5 academic sources (e.g. academic journal, book, book chapter) relevant to your research question. In order to find those sources, use the recommendations provided in Chapter 3 of Turabian (2017). – Refer to these sources in your text using in-text citations.
This is a brief example: Some researchers (e.g. Punch 2009) have addressed this topic, but only in European countries. The research question that is proposed here targets countries outside Europe. Specifically…
1.3. Reflection on the relevance and reliability of the used sources
– For each of the five sources, first write the full reference following the ARU guidelines and then discuss briefly:
o its relevance (Turabian 2017, paragraph 3.3.1): be as specific as possible on how this source will help you answering your question;
o its reliability (Turabian 2017, paragraph 3.3.2): make sure you address the different aspects of reliability.
Again, here is a brief example: – Punch, M., 2009. Police corruption. Deviance, accountability and reform in policing. London: Routledge. o Relevance: This offers a very thorough analysis of corruption in European countries. Therefore it can give very useful insights to address the research question. o Reliability: The book is written by a well-known academic with extensive research experience. It has been published by an important academic publisher (Routledge), although there is no mentioning of peer review.
Part 2: Essay on organizational Misbehavior (max 750 words)
2.1 Essay: organizational misbehavior
Before this part 2 of the assignment, you will have to go through the mandatory readings of days 1 and 2 of the course on Organizational Misbehavior. As mentioned above, make sure to follow the ARU-guide and addendum for referencing and to follow the style guidelines. Also use chapters 5, 6 and 7 of Turabian (2017) to inspire and improve your writing.
Robinson and Greenberg (1999) distinguish between five dimensions of deviance: perpetrator, intention, target, action, and consequence. These offer an interesting framework to analyze specific cases of organizational misbehavior. Briefly analyze the case of “deadly transport” (see mandatory reading) addressing Robinson and Greenberg’s five dimensions.
Punch, M., 2008. The organization did it: individuals, corporations and crime. In: Minkes, J. and Minkes, L. eds., Corporate and white-collar crime, London: Sage, pp. 102-121. You only need the case Deadly transport (pp. 111-115).
Below are some of the questions that you might want to address in answering the assignment, but not all might be relevant to the case and you might think of other relevant elements that would fit Robinson and Greenberg’s 5 dimensions.
– Who is the perpetrator? Is it an insider or outsider? Is it a person or an organization?
– What were the perpetrator’s intentions? Were they intentionally harmful? Or was the behavior unintentional?
– Towards whom or what was the behavior directed (i.e. what were the targets)? Were these actors within or outside the organization? Were these individual, organizational or other targets?
– What was the nature of the actions? Did they violate organizational and/or societal norms?
– What were the harmful, but perhaps also beneficial, consequences of the behavior?
As for the structure of your text, start with an introduction, then structure your argument around Greenberg’s 5 dimensions, and end with a brief conclusion.
3.2 Reference list
Add a reference list at the end of your assignment. List all sources that you used in the essay. For this reference list, use, very meticulously, the rules in the ARU-guide and its addendum (see reading list). Practice these rules in ARU’s online tutorial (see reading list).
The reference list is not included in the word count.
In order to develop in-text citations and generate this reference list (or bibliography), we recommend to use the ‘references’ function in Word. This allows you to develop a database of all your sources in Word and then use that database to insert in-text references and to automatically generate a reference list at the end. You can find useful information on this at:
– https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19-E1OCdvbY
When using this possibility, which is certainly recommended, make sure you follow these guidelines:
– Make sure you use the ‘Harvard – Anglia’ style (not the default ‘APA’) for the reference list.
– Make sure that in the ‘manage sources’ application you provide all the information that the ARU-guide requires (usually this coincides with the ‘recommended fields’ indicated with a red asterisk). E.g. for a journal article add volume, issue, page numbers etc.; for a website also fill out ‘year, month and day accessed’. In order to make all field available, click ‘show all bibliography fields’.
– Make sure that in the ‘manage sources’ application your input of the information is consistent with the ARU-guide. E.g. for a heading of a chapter, book or article do not use capitals (unless when necessary e.g. for the first word or a name of an institution or person); for a journal name or for a publisher name use capitals.
– Most importantly, always check your reference list at the end and check whether it is consistent with the ARU-guidelines. The reference might look differently when you see at as a reference instead of in the ‘manage sources’ application.
– Please note that you can remove coding by selecting the text (e.g. the reference list) and typing the combination CTRL-6. Please note that this irreversible. The coding disappears after this is done.
