This unit belongs to the pre-2012 Master of Business Administration Program. It's content is deemed equivalent to, and will be delivered under unit code and title of Enterprise Project (HBR683). Please follow the link for more information on the unit.

This unit is the second part of a core pair with Enterprise Project 1 and involves undertaking the project planned in that unit.

The two unit sequence provides a unique opportunity to utilise the knowledge gained from previous and concurrently studied units to demonstrate, to oneself and others, that one can apply theory and knowledge to a real situation, task or challenge, as well as derive theory from such work. The ‘hands-on’ approach is hoped to provide the student with the skills and experiences to become either a researcher or a more successful and effective manager and innovator within an organisation.

 

Two project modes envisaged are: (1) an individual applied research project, and (2) a collaborative action-reflection project designed to create or add value in a business, community or public sector setting.

 

The objectives are

Supervised inquiry group meetings; experiential learning.

Mode 1: Project report; and Project defence. Mode 2: Professional Practice Development Targets – report on achievements, reflections and new targets; and project report.

Enterprise Project 1 & 2 has been designed to allow students to further have and develop capabilities from across the spectrum. Students will determine the specific capabilities when they review their professional development needs.
 
Leadership: Students successfully completing this subject will have acquired interpersonal skills that facilitate bringing thoughts, feelings and imagination to the service of a task; and feeling at ease with self and be able to relate to a wide range of others. The will be confident when working in teams and large groups/organisations. It is hoped that engaging with complexity and increasing their sphere of influence and responsibility within an organisation, industry or community will be skilfully accomplished.
 
Strategy; Entrepreneurship and Innovation: The research inquiries or practical interventions will develop specific cognitive abilities that relate to practice of the tools of imaginative analysis as well as synthesising from differing events and paradigms. They will be able to adopt holistic thinking: discerning and connecting emerging patterns that lead to imagining, shaping and orchestrating a series of future positions.
 
Global Focus: In addition, the practical interventions will hone their skills and use of tools and techniques relating to monitoring external change – demographics, new knowledge, changes in perception, mood and meaning; operating across national, religious, ethnic differences; systemic thinking: finding the interconnectedness of apparently discrete issues and events.
 
Financial Competence: From an economic perspective, the following abilities will be inculcated: ability to quantify alternative opportunities for resource utilisation; and communicating financial information in a useable form.
 
Ethical and Social Responsibility, Individual and Organisational: In developing research topics or other interventions, students will display an ability to engage effectively with ethical dilemmas which do not have simple or happy endings, and ensure application of the triple bottom line, thus reflecting sustainability as a criterion in decision-making.
 
Lifelong Learning: In sourcing and evaluating information and conceptual frameworks, students will exhibit an overarching capacity for life-long learning.

 

Mode 1: Data gathering, analysis and reporting; writing of the report; defence of the arguments.

Mode 2: Managing the project; group-based critical reflection on unfolding action; responsiveness to change and reframing the problem or task; renegotiating the contract when necessary; recording progress towards professional development targets; reporting on the project (inc. style variation according to context and client).

Mode 1:

McMurray, AJ, Pace, RW & Scott, D 2004, Research: a commonsense approach, Thomson Learning Social Science Press, Melbourne.

Mode 2:

Block, P 2000, Flawless consulting, 2nd edn, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.