Contents
Programme Assessment
Teaching and Administrative Staff
The Modules
BS0602 - Business Economics
BS0603 - Business Strategy
BS0609 - International Business
BS0611 - Marketing
BS0612 - Organisational Behaviour & Human Resource Management
Programme assessment
Rules and degree classification
The programme is assessed through coursework, final examination and project.
For students doing a three-year degree course, the final degree result is assessed in performance in the Management year (weighted at 40%) and the preceding two years (weighted at 60%). For students who are doing a four-year course, the years are weighted at 1:2:2:2.
Attendance at examinations is compulsory. Any student who fails to present him/herself for examination will be deemed to have failed the entire year and will be required to re-present themselves for all elements of the programme in the following session. Deferral of examinations can only be agreed on medical grounds and applications must be made to the Teaching Administrator prior to the date of your first examination.
Summary of grades, marks and their interpretations for undergraduate degree classification:
First 70 – 100% A
Outstanding work, wide knowledge of the material, accurate, arguments concisely and clearly presented, clear evidence of critical thought and enquiry, evidence of originality, insight and superior critical and reflective abilities.
Upper Second 60 – 69% B
Work well organised, good knowledge of the material, logical, sufficiently detailed and clearly presented, evidence of an enhanced capacity to develop and apply their own grounded and informed perspectives to their work, evidence of problem solving competence, ability to explore alternative solutions, to demonstrate critical evaluation and integrate theory and practice
Lower Second 50 – 59% C
Work displays a satisfactory knowledge of the material, substantial recall of relevant facts but little evidence of enquiry beyond lecture notes or prescribed texts, manipulations and/or calculations competently performed to a reasonable but not necessarily entirely correct solution
Third 40 – 49% D
Work displays a limited knowledge of the material, essential elements of solution correct, sufficient factual recall, ability to perform routine calculations, arguments developed but incompletely.
Pass 35 – 39% E
Work with serious inadequacies, very limited knowledge of material, poor presentation, minimal ability to formulate arguments and results presented in incomplete form and/or with errors
Fail 0 – 35% F
Solution basically incorrect, defective recall of basic facts, little or no understanding of relevant principles, failure to develop from starting point to result, obvious failures and/or mistakes in manipulation. Or, work not submitted.
Assignments
Assignments should be submitted via WebCT. Submissions by hand or by email will not be accepted.
It is important that all work is legible and should be produced using Arial font size 11. Adequate margins should be left on each side of the paper. A single colour of ink should be used.
Assignments are not always marked electronically by staff and if printed, will be printed in black ink, and so any references to coloured text might be overlooked.
It is also important that you produce your work in a printable format. Use the ‘print preview’ function to ensure that the work will print exactly as you would expect. Assignments will be printed in batches and time will not be spent by School staff re-formatting work.
It is recommended that you put your name in a header or footer so that it appears on every page.
All assignments must be submitted with a completed plagiarism/ cover sheet (as a separate file). Copies of the form are available on WebCT. An example is provided at in the appendix of the first day folder. If you do not have a digitised version of your signature, typing your name is sufficient.
Electronic submission for an assignment will close at the cut-off deadline. If you are late in submitting an assignment, you need to contact Vicky Nicholson. Note the College procedure that in cases where a coursework is submitted late, a reduction of 5% per day will apply.
There are no excuses for late submission.
If you require an extension for an assignment, you should complete the extension approval request form, which is available on WebCT, and submit this to Dr Thomas Lawton in advance of the submission date. The form will be returned to you by Vicky Nicholson. It is then your responsibility to attach the approved extension form to their assignment upon submission; otherwise the School’s penalties for late submission will apply.
The penalty for late submission does not apply to the end of year project/thesis. It is a College regulation that students who fail to submit their project/thesis on time, will automatically fail the programme.
The above procedures are implemented to ensure that all students are treated uniformly, across the Programme, the School and the College.
You are advised to keep all work that is returned to you until the programme has been completed.
Assignment Submission Guidelines
Coursework is submitted via the WebCT area for the relevant course.
It is your responsibility to ensure that an assignment has been submitted and you should ensure that you obtain and keep a submission notification as your proof of submission.
When submitting groupwork, only one member of the group needs to submit the piece of coursework but all members should submit a completed plagiarism form.
Submitting an assignment involves two steps:
upload your file from your computer to WebCT
Submit the file for grading
Uploading files:
1. Move to the WebCT area for the relevant course and click on the "submit coursework here" button within the "coursework" area.
2. Click the coursework that you want to submit and the "Assignment" screen appears.
3. To upload the file, under Student files, click Upload file. The Upload File for Assignment screen appears.
4. To locate the file, click Browse to open your computer's file browser.
5. Select the file. The Upload File for Assignment screen reappears, with the path and filename displayed in the Filename text box.
6. Click Upload. The Assignment screen appears and the uploaded file is added to the Student files table.
Submitting files for grading:
To submit the uploaded document(s), under Submit Assignment, click Submit assignment. The Submit Assignment screen appears. Notes: All assignments in the Student files table are submitted.
Click Submit assignment. A confirmation screen appears.
Click OK. The Assignments screen reappears, with Submitted displayed in the Status column.
Notes:
§ Filenames can contain any of the following: a–z, A–Z, 0–9, spaces, _, &, ( ), –, ., and ~
Note: The tilde (~) cannot be used as the first character in the filename.
§ You should also add the file extension that corresponds to the software you used. For example, if you completed your assignment in Excel, add .xls to the filename if the software program doesn't automatically add it.
Obtaining submission notification:
It is strongly recommended that you obtain an e-mail notification to confirm that you have submitted an assignment successfully. This will be requested to help us establish an audit trail in cases where coursework is not received.
To obtain a notification, enter an e-mail address under "Notification" in the submission screen as follows:
If you experience technical problems when submitting coursework, click on the ‘help’ link in the WebCT menu bar for detailed help and instructions. You can also contact the Imperial Help Desk at . For all other problems, contact your Programme Administrator.
Assignment Feedback
With each returned assignment, a written evaluation will be provided on a standard form. A copy of the form is displayed in the appendix of this booklet. Lecturers will strive to return marked work as soon as is practically possible.
Plagiarism
The presentation of another person’s words, ideas, judgement or data as though they were your own. For example not referencing the source of your ideas or arguments where they have derived from your reading, directly taking verbatim the words of someone else’s work and putting it into your project without putting it in quotation marks and referencing it, taking whole chunks out of books, articles, lecture notes or other reports or other students work, and putting them in your report uncited. This is the same for all coursework which is assessed formally on the programme.
When submitting your assessed coursework you will be required to submit a form confirming that you have read the above definition of plagiarism and are fully aware of what it means. The submitting of this form will certify that the report is entirely your own work, except where indicated.
All Group Projects will be scanned electronically to check for plagiarism.
Plagiarism is a serious offence. The exam board are entitled to penalise you for plagiarism, and serious cases will result in an automatic failure of the coursework/project. The exam board reserves the right to take further action as it deems appropriate to protect the good name of the School and the College, and this may involve expulsion of a student from the course or withdrawal of a degree award.
There are further guidelines relating to plagiarism displayed in the appendix of this booklet and your first day folder. Please take the time to read it.
Teaching and administrative staff
ADMINISTRATION
Director of the Programme Dr Thomas C Lawton
Ext: 49117, e-mail:
Deputy Director Dr Tim Meldrum
Ext: 49209, e-mail:
Programme Manager Afrey Edes
Ext: 49152, e-mail:
Programme Administrator Vicky Nicholson
Ext: 49135, e-mail:
TEACHING
Course / RoomBusiness Economics / Prof Ciaran Driver: BE, MA, MSc, PhD / TBS 385
Business Strategy / Dr Thomas C Lawton: BA Hons, MSc Econ, PhD / TBS 180
International Business / Dr Thomas C Lawton: BA Hons, MSc Econ, PhD / TBS 180
Marketing / Colin Love: MBA, DIC, BSc. Econ / ------
Organisational Behaviour & Human Resource Management / Dr Namrata Malhotra: BCom Hons, MCom, M.Phil, PhD / TBS 390
TBS = Tanaka Business School
The Modules
BS0602 - BUSINESS ECONOMICS
COURSE TUTOR
Professor Ciaran Driver Room 385 Tanaka Business School
Extension 49123, email
COURSE AIMS
This course contributes to the student’s understanding of decision making in an economics context.
COURSE OBJECTIVES
(i) Knowledge
· the theory of the firm
· input choice with fixed output level
· production relations
· nature and theory of cost
· models of revenue
· profit maximisation
· market structure
· oligopolistic decision making
· capital investment
(ii) Skills
The course will facilitate the students’ development of:
· conceptual skills in an economic context
· quantitative skills in an economic context
· critical reasoning skills
LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of the course the students will be able to:
· think in the terms of a professional economist
· read the microeconomic issues discussed in the Financial Times
· solve stylised quantitative questions in a business context
TEACHING METHODS
The main mode of teaching is the lecture. There are some tutorials and these are used for a mixture of discussion and problem solving.
ASSESSMENT
The course is assessed by one group project (30%) and one multiple choice exam (70%).
COURSE STRUCTURE
Lecture Topics
1. The firm and its environment
This lecture will look at the various types of decision that a firm is faced with and the constraints that it operates under. It will consider the extent to which a firm can shape its own environment. It will also consider the objectives of firms.
Reading: Lecture notes, Microeconomics Section 8.2
2. Production relationships
This series of lectures will discuss the economics of producing a single output with two or more inputs and the choice of input combination when substitution is possible .
Reading: Microeconomics Chapter 6
3. Cost analysis
This series of lectures will discuss the economic meaning of cost – which costs matter? It will look at how cost varies with output both in the short term and the long term, including economies of scale. The lectures will deal also with learning – the way that costs decline with experience.
Reading: Microeconomics Chapter 7
4. Demand curves and price elasticity of demand and supply
These lectures will show how revenue is related non-linearly to output. The concept of marginal revenue will be introduced and related to price elasticity. Supply curves and supply elasticities will be explained.
Reading: Microeconomics pp 20-44 and Section 4.4 and 11.2
5. Profit maximisation: choosing the right output level
This lecture shows how a firm in a competitive market faces a given price but has to choose its output level. It shows how a monopolist chooses a profit maximising price.
Microeconomics Chapter 8 and Section 10.1
6. Game theory
This lecture introduces the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the concepts of a dominant strategy and Nash equilibrium.
Reading: Lecture notes and Microeconomics Chapter 13
7. Oligopoly
This is the name given to the type of industrial structure between monopoly and competition. We will ask how price and output is determined when just a few large producers compete in an industry. Particular attention will be paid to the Cournot model of output.
Reading: Microeconomics Chapter 12
8. Investment
The concept of discounting future streams of costs and benefits. Basic rules for rational investment choices and the ranking of projects.
Reading: Microeconomics Section 15.4
KEY TEXT
Pindyck R.S. & Rubinfeld D.L. Microeconomics, 6th Edition, Prentice Hall, 2005
Additional supplementary readings may be found in:
Salavatore D Managerial Economics in a Global Economy 5th edn Thompson 2004
Mansfield E Managerial Economics, 3rd Edition, Norton, 2002.
Waldman D and Jensen E Industrial Organization, Addison Wesley 2000
Besanko D and R.R.Braetigam Microeconomics by 2nd Edition, Wiley 2005
BS0603 - BUSINESS STRATEGY
COURSE TUTOR
Dr Thomas C Lawton Room 180, Tanaka Business School
Tel. extension 49117, e-mail:
Course Aims
Strategy is the art of creating value. The ultimate objective is to attain or maintain a competitive advantage in a market or markets. Success stories abound. AirAsia, Cirque du Soleil, HSBC, Nestlé and Samsung have each been acclaimed in recent years as triumphant products of the strategic imagination. Yet for every example of strategic success, it is possible to trade an equally spectacular example of strategic failure. We only have to think of Enron, ABB, Worldcom, Marconi, Cable & Wireless, Vivendi Universal and any number of Japanese banks to witness the potentially destructive power of wrong-headed strategies. The fact is that strategy is a double-edged sword: it can be the source of power and wealth but equally the cause of disaster. It is therefore essential that any existing or aspiring strategic leader understand the nature and purpose of strategic management.