Essay Assignment
Purpose:
This essay will serve five main purposes, as well as numerous corollary benefits to your future academic and professional skills building.
• Research Aptitude - Research skills will add value to your work within any graduate program or workplace industry. Due diligence and preparation benefit from research capabilities, and because "time is money," the better you master this skill, the more time you save for your employer's monetary gain.
• Directed Feedback - There are simply too many backgrounds, variations in existing knowledge, and diverse learning styles to comprehensively convey information to all students in the class setting. In addition to my pedagogy, this essay offers me an opportunity to even more effectively address your particular areas of confusion and interest.
• Law Knowledge - This exercise will encourage a broader understanding of the legal framework in which all business is conducted. Whether the topic you select involves international law, or municipal law, or an arguably lawless scenario such as piracy as a shipping and insurance concern, the questions of who has standing/who is a party, measurability, and enforceability will be relevant.
• Ethics Awareness - Your essay should include some address of potential ethical issues, or your proactive address of building an ethical model. Examining the sometimes amorphous topic of business ethics will allow me a forum through feedback on this essay to expand your perspective on this topic.
• Supply Chain/Cycle Specific Knowledge - The topic you choose will present a scenario or problem that focuses within the supply chain or supply cycle universe. Whether you focus on Information Technology, Human Capital/Resources, Risk and Insurance Management, Supply Chain Finance, or some other element, I will be able to offer constructive input on any misunderstanding or unique perspective that you may want to emphasize in your current or future roles.
As you consider possible topics, your understanding of this subject matter will organically increase. If you work for Starbuck's, for example, you might wish to explore logistics parallels between the corporate and store locations. Bartenders might look at the various tiers of supplier liability and legal frameworks at different levels of the supply cycle. Students may wish to explore a topic outside of a specific industry. An umbrella topic could be the examination of the contracting process, and those particular aspects of a contract tied to supply cycle management. Examining when force majeure comes into play, or when delivery times can be tied to liquidated damages are timely topics.
Instructions:
Your two page, double spaced essay should include at least two external sources cited for full credit. You may find helpful direction for formatting and style within the 2017 Winter NAEP Journal articles.
You may also wish to create a memorandum. If you currently have full-time employment with supply chain responsibilities, you may choose the memorandum ("memo") format for this assignment. You must still cite at least two external sources for this option.