When management ask for flexible working I always worry”. Discuss employers’ and employees’
1. “When management ask for flexible working I always worry”. Discuss employers’ and employees’ attitudes and approaches to flexible working. Use case studies of real firms to put forward a balanced review of the benefits, if any, of more flexible forms of working./HRM has grown as a practice and academic subject over the last three decades, but is there any such thing as a “universal” set of HRM practices that employers and academics across different countries and/or sectors can agree on?/“HR managers should ensure that an organization reflects the society in which it operates by always seeking to align staffing decisions to the social demographic profile of the society or locality”. Critically discuss this statement with reference to the literature of any aspect of discrimination and diversity./“It has been argued that the vulnerability and precariousness of migrant workers is facilitated by state immigration policies and the institutionalization of uncertainty which allows employers’ greater control over migrants”. Critically discuss this statement.
Or/Critically discuss “employers’ preferences for migrant workers” and the concept of embedding and disembedding of employment relations./What do trade unions do in the employment relationship? Discuss with reference to one sector where trade unions are being challenged or resisted, and examine the strategies that employers and trade unions use to further their separate interests.
6. Is pluralism dying in the UK? Discuss with reference to new industrial sectors and/or new multinational company entrants into the UK

Essay Questions MN2705 2015-16

Visiting students who will not take the May exam are required to submit 2 Essays of 1500 words max: these need to be submitted as follows – 1 after Reading Week (9th November); the 2nd at the end of Term (11th December)
Choose from below
1. “When management ask for flexible working I always worry”. Discuss employers’ and employees’ attitudes and approaches to flexible working. Use case studies of real firms to put forward a balanced review of the benefits, if any, of more flexible forms of working.
2. HRM has grown as a practice and academic subject over the last three decades, but is there any such thing as a “universal” set of HRM practices that employers and academics across different countries and/or sectors can agree on?
3. “HR managers should ensure that an organization reflects the society in which it operates by always seeking to align staffing decisions to the social demographic profile of the society or locality”. Critically discuss this statement with reference to the literature of any aspect of discrimination and diversity.
4a. “It has been argued that the vulnerability and precariousness of migrant workers is facilitated by state immigration policies and the institutionalization of uncertainty which allows employers’ greater control over migrants”. Critically discuss this statement.
Or
4b. Critically discuss “employers’ preferences for migrant workers” and the concept of embedding and disembedding of employment relations.
5. What do trade unions do in the employment relationship? Discuss with reference to one sector where trade unions are being challenged or resisted, and examine the strategies that employers and trade unions use to further their separate interests.
6. Is pluralism dying in the UK? Discuss with reference to new industrial sectors and/or new multinational company entrants into the UK

choose one of the topic from the word document(essay quentions mn2705 2015)

Paper details:

1. Write the title clearly at the top of your essay. Don’t leave it for the markers to figure out what you are writing about.

2. Read widely. Do not rely on lecture notes and workshop materials alone. Doing so will result in a lower grade.

3. Read the essay question/topic several times before you start writing. Students usually end up getting low grades on their essays and exams because they fail to answer the question or directly address the essay topic. You will lose marks if you write irrelevant material.

4. Essay questions often consist of more than one part. Make sure you answer all the parts and don’t leave any out.

5. Assignments should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Many assignments either begin or end abruptly (or sometimes both), without any introduction or conclusion. Other assignments have hasty or rushed conclusions, suggesting a lack of pacing and/or editing. Please allow yourself space to develop adequate conclusions.

6. Try to be as analytical as possible. Do not copy and paste material from text books or journal articles. Merely telling us what is written in books or journals is not good enough. Relying exclusively on lecture slides is unacceptable. You must interpret what has been written and explain it in your own words.

7. Look at all sides of the argument. Explore the essay topic from different perspectives. Try to find links between different topics that have been covered in this course. None of the topics stand in isolation. They are all linked to each other in some way.

8. Make sure your arguments are logical and coherent. Wherever possible support your arguments or claims with evidence published in respectable journals and books (not Wikipedia). Simply expressing opinions is useless. Evidence is what counts.

9. Use ‘quotation marks’ when you are quoting someone else’s work verbatim. Keep quotations to the minimum. Explain the literature in your own words. Don’t just copy.

10. You must cite all references in the main body of your essay (e.g. Huselid, 1995). Insert the page reference if you are quoting the author. For example, if the quotation comes from p.636, then cite if as follows: (Huselid, 1995: 636). If you are using any material from the lecture slides make sure you cite the appropriate lecturer.

11. You must also provide full references at the end of your essay in a bibliography. Refer to your student handbook for Harvard Style Referencing, but the basic format for books, chapters and journal articles is as follows:

Beardwell, J. and Claydon, T. (2010) Human Resource Management: A Contemporary Approach 6th Edition, FT Prentice Hall.

Allen, M.R. and Wright, P. (2010) ‘Strategic management and HRM’, in: P. Boxall, J. Purcell and P. Wright (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Human Resource Management. Oxford University Press.

Huselid, M.A. (1995) ‘The impact of human resource management practices on turnover, productivity, and corporate financial performance’, Academy of Management Journal, 38(3): 635-72.

12. Once you have completed your assignment, you must proof read it carefully. Many assignments contain misspellings, incorrect punctuation, ungrammatical sentence constructions, poor paragraphing and so on. At best, this looks shoddy and rushed but at worst it leads to incomprehensible English, for which you will lose marks. Bear in mind that any employer will expect intelligible, not to say correct, English from you, so get in the habit of proofing your own work now.