THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTHAMPTON

Faculty of Business and Law

MODULE: HRM3007 - Strategic HRM

Module Code Level Credit Value Module Tutor

Emma Humphries
HRM3007 6 100
Jerry Aunt Khaing (MIU)

Khin Phyu Saw Lin (MIU)

Assignment Brief

Assignment 1 is about Individual Performance Related Pay and

Assignment title: its links to motivation.

Assignment 2 is about Human Resource Challenges in a

specific country.

Weighting:
50%

Assignment 1 – 22nd Nov 2019

Deadline:
Assignment 2 – 20rd Dec 2019
(TBC)
(Confirm the dates on NILE)

Feedback and Grades

Within 4 weeks of the day on which a student submits their
due:
essay.

Resit Date Dates to be Confirmed

Purpose of the Assessment

The purpose of these assignments are to test your level of knowledge and

understanding of specific Human Resource issues and research findings and your

ability to use these in producing a well written and persuasive essay.

Assessment Task

Your task is to complete sufficient reading and any other independent research in

order to produce a good quality essay solely focused on the questions below:

Assignment 1

Drawing on published research, critically evaluate the extent to which individual

performance related pay can stimulate higher levels of performance from

employees.

Consider in what circumstances does IPRP tend to motivate employees and why,

and in what circumstances it tends not to work so well and why?

Ensure that in answering this question you take account of contextual issues such

as those concerning the type of occupation, the standard of income and values in

a country and individual differences etc.

Assignment 2

(a) Explain the strategies and approaches a newly internationalising

organization can take to prepare and train groups of employees to work for

it in overseas locations on projects lasting a year or more. Which

approaches may work best and why?

(b) Discuss what challenges employees often face when working abroad and

how management and HR practices can assist them in coping with the

difficulties and being successful.

For both essays you must write an essay (not a report) but may use sub headings if

you wish.

Word length: The essay must be approximately 2,500 words in length, not including

any appendices. You can exceed the word count above by up to 10%. If your essay is

less than 2,250 words you are unlikely to pass.

You must put references and sources and page numbers within the main body of the

essay (in-text) not just in a list at the end. References are there to support your ideas

and to show where evidence, theories and other ideas come from. An essay with no

in-text sources or references has no or very minimal credibility and is almost certain

not to be passed.
Please read the assessment criteria below carefully before you begin the reading for

your essays to help you do well.

Assessment Breakdown

(a) Presentation, grammar, writing style, use of correct

referencing methods. 20%

(b) Use made of relevant academic literature and

research to support views. 30%

(c) Amount of critical analysis / demonstration of subject

Knowledge and quality of answer. 40%

(d) Focus on the question and development of logical

arguments and conclusions. 10%

Assessment Submission

To submit your work, please go to the ‘Submit your work’ area of the Module NILE

site. It is important that you submit your work to the correct module NILE site, and

that your work is submitted on time.

Assessment Guidance

It is expected that in order to attain a good grade you will devote between 20 – 30

hours of reading to each assignment before writing the final essay.

It is also expected that a minimum of 15 in text references will be used.

Question 1 asks you to use ‘published research’ which means research done by others

such as journal articles. Text books may be used for part of this question but you will

also need to find, read and use journal articles for Question 1 otherwise you will not

meet the pass criteria for using published research.

The reference numbers above are a minimum.

For assignment 1 a good way of organizing your thoughts is to write about the

circumstances in which PRP works best and then the circumstances in which it does

not work well.

In doing this provide the reasons why it does or does not work well from research

done by academics not just the opinions of text books or websites. Journal Article

Remember to get a good grade you need to also try and explore the issues for PRP in

relation to a few different contexts such as the values in a country, the income levels

of employees overall, small and large organisations, different generations of

employees in terms of age etc, public/government sectors and the private sector,

professional jobs and manual jobs, different industry sectors etc.

If you can briefly refer to some of the different contexts this will help boost your grade.

Producing simple lists of strengths and weaknesses of PRP is not adequate to pass.

For assignment 2 you must write around half the words in your essay for part A and

half for part B. Read articles and book chapters on International HRM. Look at the

different approaches and methods that are used to prepare and train employees going

abroad.

The essay is not about selecting employees to work abroad so do not write about this.

You can make some assumptions about which regions of the world the employees are

being sent to or just leave this as very general.

Try to read plenty of different book chapters and articles to ensure your essay is of

good quality. Make sure you use sources within the essay itself not just at the end.

Look at the concept of ‘culture shock’ as this is also relevant but do not write more

than a few hundred words just on this. Companies do not find it easy to get employees

to be good performers abroad and it is also hard to get them to stay overseas for the

whole project so the reasons for the quite ‘high failure rates’ can also be mentioned

briefly.

Academic Practice

These are individual assignments. Myanmar Imperial University & The University of

Northampton policy will apply in all cases of copying, plagiarism or any other

methods by which students have obtained (or attempted to obtain) an unfair

advantage.

Support and guidance on assessments and academic integrity can be found from the

following resources
SkillsHub: http://skillshub.northampton.ac.uk

CfAP: http://tinyurl.com/UoNCfAP

Learning Outcomes

The learning outcomes being addressed through this assignment are:

Question 1 and Question 2 both have direct and indirect relevance to the learning

outcomes below:

Knowledge and Understanding

 Understand, examine and assess the main drivers, enablers, barriers and

blockages in relation to the development and implementation of different

HR strategies

 Critically evaluate the significance of different human resource policies,

processes and practices for the particular contexts in which organisations

may operate and analyse the major factors involved in their design.

 Analyse the main factors governing relationships between line managers

and human resource/personnel managers and devise strategies to enhance

such relationships.

 Evaluate management actions in the treatment of employees in terms of

'ethical',’ legal’ and 'managerial' criteria.

Subject-specific Skills
  Design and tailor HR policies and strategies to 'fit' particular organisational

contexts.

Key Skills

Learning to Learn

 Develop an awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses in analysing

material and formulating logical and coherent proposals.

Communication Skills

 Communicate effectively to an acceptable and appropriate

standard in terms of written communication.

Self-Management

 Undertake and complete individual study activities to an appropriate

standard within a set timescale.

Tutorial deadline (15.11.19)

Question For Assignment 1
 Critically evaluate IPRP links to Performance
 When IPRP motivates & when not
Suggested format (750 words)
-What is Individual Performance Related Pay (IPRP) ?
-Background history
-Positive aspects at IPRP on Performance
-IPRP links to motivation theories* – Taylorism, Maya’s, Edward Deming, Herzberg, Goal
setting. Agree & Against Theory on IPRP, For M grade – choose only each one for agree &
against. Make point of view for each opinion (500 words).
Cases where IPRP : Choose case three among these six. Compare these three sector.
Motivate Employees Demotivate employees
1.Industry (Production/Service) (or) 2.Sector (Private/Public)
3.Individual, Country Culture, Personality)
4.Blue Collar – White Collar
5.Generation (Age Group)
6.Country economy (High – Low)

The negative of PRP is that it only force on the management to people but not leading the
employees. PRP effect is not useful when manager appraisal employee, because of kind
manager will not make decision correctly.

Key of Explanation Essay

-maintaining awareness of the audience, which will influence your tone and word choice

How to write background history or information

-Purpose of a background study is to help you to prove the relevance of the thesis question
and to further develop the thesis.
Guideline
-create five separate sections that cover the key issues, major findings and controversies
surrounding the thesis.

Three types of motivation

Direction – what a person is trying to do
Effort – how hard a person is trying
Persistence – how long a person keeps on trying
Intrinsic motivation is achieved – work is important, interesting and challenging, with a
reasonable degree of autonomy, opportunities to achieve and advance.

Extrinsic motivation – compensation, punishment and reward.

Managers can take to improve motivation – autonomy, mastery and purpose. Pink (2009).