Topic: Corporate Social responsibility(CSR)-How can project managers implement CSR?

Order Description
Literature review
The purpose of the coursework is to ensure that students have developed an understanding and some relevant knowledge of the literature. related to their dissertation topic, as well as assessing their ability to: conduct a literature search, summarise and critically assess journal papers and apply their literature findings to their own specific project.

There are 4 sections to the coursework
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Required Coursework Structure
Page 1:
SECTION 1
Working title, Synopsis, Aim and Objectives

Page 2:
SECTION 2
Search Strategy

Pages 3-5:
SECTION 3
Mini-Literature Review – 4 Core papers and a maximum of 8 supporting sources.

Page 6:
SECTION 4
Conclusions
The requirements for each section are outlined below
1. A working title, synopsis (including beneficiaries) and aim and objectives

The topic that you are researching for this assignment is the topic that you are allocated for your dissertation, and your ‘Working Title’, ‘Aim and Objectives’ should be those that you plan to pursue in your dissertation
Your project topic may change a little as the work develops but at this stage you should give your ‘working title’. Its purpose is to give the reader a broad indication of the topic of the coursework, and the dissertation topic area, or an aspect of it. The synopsis is a short summary, outlining the topic you are proposing to investigate in your dissertation and its importance and significance. It should state the nature, purpose and approach of your project and who the potential beneficiaries will be. The aim and objectives outline your intended area and focus of the coursework and your dissertation project and help the reader to get a more detailed picture of your proposed project as well as some indication of its structure (there are more details on aim and objectives in the ‘critical concepts’ tab in Blackboard). The aim is ideally one sentence and no more than a couple of lines long. The objectives (typically 3 – 5) should be in the form of a list. It is appreciated that, at the moment, the focus of the dissertation research may not be established and so this section may still be quite broad. That is fine at this stage, although clearly the research will need to become more focused later.
References should be used in this section if appropriate. The list of references should be included in the references pages at the end of the coursework and should not be included in the one page allocated to this section. The requirements for references are explained later in this document.

2. Search strategy
In this section you should set out the search strategy you have used to find and select appropriate journal papers – this should include such aspects as key words and phrases, and why these are relevant to your topic, and the search engines used, and why these are appropriate. You should include an explanation of how and why you selected the 4 core papers included in your review; for example how did you judge their importance and/or relevance?
Note that all sources that you use must be written in English

3. Brief Literature Review (3 pages maximum, 60 marks)
This section should include a brief introduction setting out the scope and focus of the review, and also a summary and comparative review of each of the core papers. Your brief literature review should provide a background, critical analysis and synthesis of a particular area of academic research related to your dissertation topic. It is up to you to decide which research area you wish to focus on and you may wish to discuss this with your supervisor. You may take a broad approach or a very narrowly focused one – this is up to you.

You must select 4 core papers, which must be peer reviewed journal papers. Your brief literature review should be primarily based on these 4 core papers. You must summarise the core papers demonstrating critical engagement. This will include critical comparison and evaluation of the content and research approach. By critical engagement we mean that you are actively engaging with what you are reading and with the way in which you report the information you gather back to the reader (See ‘General Guidance Notes’). In deciding which 4 core papers to review, the ideal approach would be to select papers which have some overlap of the subject matter but with different approaches rather than dealing with separate aspects. For example, if your topic was Outsourcing, you may select 4 papers which deal with the management of risk in outsourcing. However, it is appreciated that this may not be possible, so instead you may choose to select 4 papers which deal with different aspects such as HR, cost reduction, and managing relations.
The review should be supported by no more than 8 additional sources. These additional sources should provide support and context for your review. In addition to peer-reviewed papers, these may include sources that are not peer-reviewed such as government or industry reports, newspaper articles and web sites. The suggested limit of up to 8 additional sources is given to assist you in giving an in-depth account of the literature in the space permitted.

4. Conclusions from the literature review, implications for your own project and next steps

You should summarise the key findings from your literature review (including relevant critical comparison) and discuss how these relate to your own project. You should outline and discuss the implications from the literature review for your own project (this could include, for example: the implications for the focus of your research, your methodological approach, your conceptual/theoretical framework, the relevance of the project to industry etc). You should indicate the next steps for your own project which result from your brief literature review. Parts VI and VII in the list below (General Guidance notes) are particularly relevant to this section.
General guidance notes
Thinking about the following topics should assist you in developing your brief literature review and critically engaging with what you are reading:
I. Area: Briefly explain the context of the paper and the topic area that it addresses (including any terms or acronyms that you haven’t yet explained)
II. Focus: Describe the particular ‘gap’ or new issue that this paper addresses
III. Approach and methodology: Describe the approach taken to address this gap/issue (e.g. a systematic
literature review of academic papers, questionnaires, interviews, observations, quantitative analysis of trends etc). Why was this approach selected? What was the scope of the approach – was it a particular company, sector, country, time period? Make it clear what is included in the research and what is not so that the reader knows what context the research applies to i.e. do not report it as being representative of the whole field of PM when it was it only included a few interviews in a single company.
IV. Findings: What were the findings from the research and how did these relate to the authors’ aim and objectives?
V. Conclusions: What conclusions did the authors draw from these findings? What evidence did they use to back up their findings? Are the findings justified/valid in your view and why? Does the paper achieve its aim?
VI. Comparison: Do these conclusions agree or disagree with other work in the area? Why is this the case?
VII. Application: What does the above mean for your own area of research?
References
You must provide a full bibliographic reference for all of the sources cited in your submission at the end of your coursework (not just the url/weblink). References for your core papers must be given on a page titled ‘Core References’. Additional references (journal papers and other sources) must be included on a separate page(s) titled ‘Additional References’. The pages of references do not count towards the page limits set for each component of the assignment. Submissions that do not have a Core References page will be given a mark of zero.
You must use the standard Harvard style of referencing.