MGTS1301: Planning And Controlling The Rapid Development Of A COVID-19 Vaccine Including Running Clinical Trials: Introduction To Management Assignment, UQ, Australia

Task description

Research media articles to identify a management issue

Find a minimum of eight media articles concerning a management issue related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Your issue should be related to one of the four functions of management discussed in this course: planning, controlling, leading, or organizing. As planning and controlling are closely connected you may choose an issue that relates to both of these functions.

Possible management issues include:

1. Planning and controlling the rapid development of a COVID-19 vaccine including running clinical trials.

2. Planning for the roll-out of vaccines in Australia.

3. The challenges faced by hospitality businesses when implementing COVID-Safe plans mandated by the Australian Government.

4. Control of misinformation about COVID-19 during the pandemic.

5. Planning and controlling the shift to working-from-home during and beyond lockdown.

6. Leadership approaches adopted by political leaders in Australia or globally (choose one or two leaders to focus on).

7. Problems with organizing and the use of network structures during hotel quarantine in Victoria.

8. Problems with organizing casual employees and the rights of delivery workers.

9. How organizational structures shaped the implementation of contact tracing by health services in New South Wales and/or Victoria (or in other states or countries).

These are suggestions only. You may investigate other issues as long as they relate one of the functions of management to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you choose one of the suggested issues you may need to refine it further by choosing specific people, countries, or situations to foc

1.  Research journal articles to identify scholarly management evidence

Find three journal articles published in scholarly management journals which relate to the management issue you have identified. For example, if your issue is about the leadership style Jacinda Arden adopted during New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, you might find three articles on authentic leadership. Alternatively, you might find one article on authentic leadership, another on leading in a crisis, and another on authoritarian leadership.

Your articles must be published in journals on the approved list of journals on the course blackboard site. You do not need to choose your three articles from three different approved journals. However, you cannot choose an article from a journal not on the approved list. These journals have been chosen because they represent high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarly research in the field of management.

2. Write up your assignment

Your assignment should be structured into five sections, as outlined below. Please use the template provides on the course blackboard site.

Section 1: Introduction 

Write a brief introduction that outlines your issue, explains the focus of the journal articles that you found, and outlines the three recommendations you identified.

Section 2: Management Issue

Use media articles to describe a management issue related to COVID-19. Be sure to explain how the issue you identified relates to one of the functions of management (or two if you have chosen an issue related to planning and controlling).

For example, if your issue is about the leadership style Jacinda Arden adopted during New Zealand’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, it would be clear that you are focusing on the management function of leading.

This section should not contain more than 10% direct quotes from the media articles

Section 3: Scholarly Management Evidence

This section should be structured into three paragraphs with one paragraph written on each journal article. Write 150 words on each article discussing the insights it offers into one of the functions of management. Rather than summarising the whole article, focus on explaining what you learned about the function of management from reading the article.

One option is to paraphrase the author’s ideas and insights into your own words by answering the following questions:

1. What question is the author(s) trying to answer in their research?

2. What did they find?

3. How are their findings interesting and relevant to the functions of management you have chosen?

4. What new insights does the article offer?

Section 4: Application of Evidence to Issue

In this section, you should show how one insight from each journal article relates to how managers, leaders, organizations, and/or government departments responded to your management issue. You should use these insights to explain the elements of your function of management that were done well and elements that needed improving. You might also comment on whether the management evidence from the journal articles seems to support or contradict what happened in practice.

Be sure to cite each journal article as you discuss it, so it is clear which insight came from which article.

Section 5: Recommendations

In this section, you should outline three recommendations that logically flow from the application section. Given everything you have read, what advice would you give to a manager, leader, organization, or government department who needed to respond to a similar issue in the future? For example, if your application suggested that a certain management style was ineffective you might recommend an alternative style.