Sample Business Capstone Project Assignments

MGT605 Business Capstone Project Assignment Sample

Question:

Subject Learning Outcomes

SLO A. Develop and articulate a theoretical or practical perspective on management issues through a substantial applied project.

SLO B. Demonstrate collaborative leadership and ownership in the preparation of a significant original body of practical or theoretical work.

SLO C. Use specialist research skills to analyse a complex management problem and then synthesise the research, communicating it effectively to both specialist and lay audiences.

Instructions:

In this assessment, you are required to propose how you are going to study your capstone project. Before you can propose, you first need to identify a project idea on which to develop your project proposal. Your project proposal must include the opportunity statement or pain/problem statement.

The capstone project proposal serves two basic functions. Firstly, it presents and explains how you are going to study and analyse the issue of your capstone project. This is essential to make clear what you aim to achieve by the end of this study period, what data you will collect and analyse and what MBA subject theory applies to your project.

Secondly, how you will conduct the capstone project. This is an account of the steps you will take until you produce the final report. This includes a timeline. The timeline will help you track your progress.

With this information, your facilitator will be able to guide you concerning the suitability and feasibility of your capstone project idea.

Answer:

Introduction:

Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, many countries adopt the lockdown regulation to maintain physical distance with each other. The drastic outbreak of this deadly virus has declined economic growth of counties by hampering business and social activities. Australia also imposes lockdown and consequently companies are forced to shut down or reduce production temporarily during this time. Tech industry is Australia has also significantly experienced the negative impact of COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic leads tech companies to adopt remote working strategy (Wang et al., 2021). Accenture has more 4500 employees in Australia. Many Australians also work at client sites with the organization. During pandemic, the company considers remote working as the necessity instead of a choice. However, managing isolation and disengaged of employees through virtual team collaboration also becomes an important issue for managers during the current time.

Background:

It is known that COVID-19 opens a new dimension of work culture, which is remote working. The working nature of Accenture allows remote working and hence more than 500000 employees work remote working across the world (Accenture, 2021). The global IT organisation has adopted a digital work program to communicate with remote employees to increase their capability of being efficient and productive. During the unpleasant situation of pandemic, the company provides significant effort to keep its work force productive across the world and this is also true for employees in Australia. From the report published by the company on remote working, it is seen that 94% of the company’s global office employees work remotely (Accenture.com, 2021). Moreover, it is also seen that employees are seeking more support from employers as they need greater connection while separation from work also causes an issue for them.

Aim of the Project:

The project proposal is designed to find challenges in managing employees at Accenture during COVID-19 pandemic and to find out effective solution. The project is taken under consideration for knowing whether managing isolation and disengaged of employees by team virtually is a serious issue or not as the remote working can be a new future for organisations (Accenture, 2021).Working from home remotely creates the feeling of loneliness and lack of work motivation among employees. In this situation, managing Isolation and disengaged feelings among workers become a serious issue among employers.Whether managing team virtually is practical or not, depends entirely on the workforce along with the facility of work. However, managing work force is a great challenge as employers cannot practice the existing workplace policies when employees are working from their home. The project addresses the MBA subjects that emphasis on employee motivation, satisfaction and engagement.

Therefore, the main aim of the recent study is to analyse the issue and solve the problem with proper managerial strategies so that employers of other sectors be motivated and engaged their remote employees with work in any situation.

Literature Review:

Theories:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: According to the motivational theory, developed by Abraham H Maslow, people have a hierarchy of needs. According to this theory, actions of human are influenced to achieve certain needs and when one need is fulfilled, the person goes to the next level of the hierarchy. The hierarchy has 5 steps of needs related to physical, security, social, esteem and self-actualisation (Jonas, 2016). Employees work to meet their basic needs like food, clothing and shelter. At the same time, they need job security along with safe work environment. Moreover, employees need to belong in a team and want to be an important part of it. Employees seek valuable treatment from the organisation and rest of the team members. This is self esteem which leads employees to be successful in their work (?tefan, Popa & Albu, 2020). Lastly, self-actualisation occurs when employees’ all the previous become fulfilled. This stage leads the employee to become more creative and progressive in its career.

Two factors model of job satisfaction: The theory was developed by Herzberg who recognises some factors that can either satisfy or dissatisfy employees. Satisfactory factors are recognition, achievement, and responsibility (Velmurugan & Sankar, 2017). On the contrary, dissatisfactory factors are salary, work condition, company policies, safety, security and supervision. The theory tries to address work motivation from the perspective of work satisfaction. From the finding of Alshmemri, Shahwan-Akland Maude, (2017) it is seen that the factors that cause dissatisfaction among employees are called hygiene that are the part of the aspect in which the job is done. On the other side, motivation are the factors like recognition, achievement, increased responsibility, interesting work, advancement etc which are intrinsic to work.

Findings of others:

From the finding of Toniolo-Barrios and Pitt (2021) it is seen that homes do not allow employees to balance personal and professional life properly and consequently their work productivity have declined. Employees face lack of motivation and increasing work stress during this situation. In another finding, Wang et al., (2021) also observed that employees’ performance depends completely on their well-being and challenges that they experience during work.

Literature Gap:

The studies focus theories related to employee motivating and satisfaction and also focus on challenges that employees and employers face in conducting remote work during pandemic. However, there are lack of studies that focus on the specific issue of motivating isolated and dissatisfied employees of a large tech company, which is, Accenture through virtual communication during pandemic.

Method:

According to the WHS laws, each organisation needs to take care of the health and safety of their employees. This responsibility leads employers to protect employees from possible risks associated with COVID-19 by implementing proper safety measures. To avoid the risk and to continue working, organisations encourage employees to work from their homes (Accenture, 2021). However, the situation also generates the risk of managing, encouraging or directing workforce effectively to work. Perceived social isolation during pandemic has significant impact on humans, especially at psychological grounds. To find out challenges in managing isolation and disengaged feelings among workers at Accenture through virtual team collaboration, the project proposes a research method that includes research design, research approach and data collection as well as analytical technique.

In general, a research method can be either quantitative or qualitative or mixed in nature. In this study, the researcher will apply qualitative research method as quantitative research method only helps the researcher to get objective outcomes only. Qualitative research method focuses on in-depth analysis and helps the researcher to obtain outcome in descriptive way. This method will allow the study to find why virtual team collaboration faces challenges in managing employees who feel isolated and disengaged due to remote working system.

Qualitative research design varies on the basis of the method is applied. Each research design follows a formal, systematic and objective process for collecting data. In this research, the researcher will apply descriptive research design that will help to explain the research aim (Doyle et al., 2020). This research study is considered as the simplest analytical method. Hence, it is useful in shedding light on the selected research issue by collecting and analysing data.

In the study, the researcher will apply secondary method to collect data (Kizil, Muz?r & Y?lmaz, 2021). In this type of research, researcher can consider newspapers, magazines, reliable publications that focus on motivating employees who work remotely. Moreover, the report will consider report published by Accenture related to the recent pandemic on the company performance.

The entire study will follow deductive research approach, which leads research to develop hypotheses depending on existing theories and to design a research strategy for testing these hypotheses (Casula, Rangarajan & Shields, 2021). The approach will help to consider motivational and satisfaction theories of employees in organisations to find challenges faced by Accenture and the way these challenges can be solved. The outcome of the capstone project will be applicable in finding the casual relationship between isolation and disengaged feelings among workers and virtual team collaboration in Accenture. The approach will help the study to find and establish a valid outcome.

The study will collect performance report of Accenture for last 5 years including profit and company’s costs on employees. Moreover, the project will also consider other relevant articles that discuss on relevant topic emphasising on tech companies. The study will conduct content analysis to get the desired outcome.
From the finding, it can be seen that employees will experience isolation and dissatisfaction in their jobs due to lack of recognition through virtual team collaboration. Moreover, lack of job security will also force them to remain dissatisfied with their jobs.

Conclusion:

The present study focuses on managing isolation and disengaged feelings among workers at Accenture through virtual team collaboration. The study will focus on the employee motivation, engagement and satisfaction topic of MBA. The study finds that the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has forced all employees to work from their home. In this situation, managing employees by keeping them motivated and satisfied with works become a serious issue for employers in Accenture. Hence, through the study, the researcher will focus on the issue. Here, the study considers secondary qualitative research method that will be analysed by considering descriptive research design and deductive research approach.

Indictive Framework:

Task	Start week	End Week	Duration
Topic Selection	1st	1st	2
Finding research aim	1st	1st	1
Finding related theories and literature	1st	2nd	4
Analysing process of data analysis method	2nd	2nd	2
Submitting project proposal	3rd	3rd	1
Analysis of more literature	4th	7th	11
Data collection and analysis	8th	12th	15
Discussion and findings	13th	15th	9
Conclusion and recommendations	16th	20th	25

 

References:

Accenture. (2021). COVID-19: Remote Work Solutions | Microsoft Teams Case Study | Accenture. Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/in-en/case-studies/energy/national-oil-company-remote-workplace

Accenture. (2021). Enabling Effective Remote Working | Accenture. Retrievedfrom https://www.accenture.com/us-en/blogs/how-accenture-does-it/how-accenture-enables-effective-remote-working

Accenture. (2021). Ready and Remote | Global IT | Accenture. Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/cr-en/case-studies/about/ready-remote

Accenture.com. (2021). Retrieved from https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/PDF-152/Accenture-Final-Remote-Working-POV-April-2021.pdf.

Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg’s two-factor theory. Life Science Journal, 14(5), 12-16.

Casula, M., Rangarajan, N., & Shields, P. (2021). The potential of working hypotheses for deductive exploratory research. Quality & Quantity, 55(5), 1703-1725.

Doyle, L., McCabe, C., Keogh, B., Brady, A., & McCann, M. (2020). An overview of the qualitative descriptive design within nursing research. Journal of Research in Nursing, 25(5), 443-455.

Jonas, J. (2016). Making practical use of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs theory to motivate employees: a case of Masvingo Polytechnic. Journal of Management & Administration, 2016(2), 105-117.

Kizil, C., Muz?r, E., &Y?lmaz, V. (2021). Auditing Techniques to Minimize Accounting Related Fraud and Errors: A Qualitative Analysis with the Interview Method. Emerging Markets Journal (EMAJ), University of Pittsburgh Press (USA), 11(1), 95-103.

?tefan, S. C., Popa, ?. C., &Albu, C. F. (2020). Implications of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory on healthcare employees’ performance. Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences, 16(59), 124-143.

Toniolo-Barrios, M., & Pitt, L. (2021). Mindfulness and the challenges of working from home in times of crisis. Business horizons, 64(2), 189-197.

Velmurugan, T. A., & Sankar, J. G. (2017). A comparative study on motivation theory with Maslow’s hierarchy theory and two factor theory in organization. Indo-Iranian Journal of Scientific Research, 1(1), 204-208.

Wang, B., Liu, Y., Qian, J., & Parker, S. K. (2021). Achieving effective remote working during the COVID?19 pandemic: A work design perspective. Applied psychology, 70(1), 16-59.

Wang, B., Liu, Y., Qian, J., & Parker, S. K. (2021). Achieving effective remote working during the COVID?19 pandemic: A work design perspective. Applied psychology, 70(1), 16-59.