ACCT 5919 Business Risk Management

Individual Assignment and Reflection

Due 5pm Friday 5 July 2024 (Week 6)

The Context

You are an employee in the Risk Management Department (RMD) of ABC Limited. The Head of RMD is aware that you are completing a course in risk management. They have asked you to prepare a case study report that would provide learnings for ABC Limited staff based on major real-life failures in risk management. You can choose one of the following cases:

The Project – Part 1

The Head of RMD has agreed the following specific tasks after discussions with you:

1. Research the facts of the case. The facts and material for the analysis should be drawn mostly from primary sources such as company and regulator reports, wherever possible, and then secondary sources such as press and other reports or published articles by third parties and experts commenting on or analysing the incident. Sources should be fully referenced.

2. Identify three risk management issues illustrated by the case. Analyse why and how these issues developed in the case study company, thereby causing or allowing the crisis to occur.  Analyse the developments and actions of the case study company prior to the crisis event and compare them with the material presented in your course dealing with the framework of risk management practices and related frameworks (strategy, culture, and corporate governance). Explain the weaknesses and shortcomings in the risk management practices and processes and related areas of strategy, culture, and corporate governance.

3. Based on your analysis, provide your lessons for ABC Limited staff on how to achieve better risk management so as to avoid the types of issues and underlying causes of the risk management issues. Provide specific suggestions for better risk management practices and improvements that could be made in related areas of strategy, culture, and corporate governance practices. Illustrate the suggestions with examples of actions that you consider would provide better risk management outcomes.

4. The Head of RMD believes that the value of this report will come from the depth of analysis of the underlying causes of the issues and the specificity of the lessons provided on how to avoid these types of issues and achieve better risk management outcomes. The lessons need to be relevant to ABC Limited’s risk management and not relate to the technical aspects of the operations of the case study company.

5. Submit the report as specified below.

The Report (30 marks)

Your report should contain the following sections:

1. Issues Analysis: This section should include brief facts of the case and your analysis of three risk management and related issues including why and how the issues occurred.

2. Learnings: Describe the lessons that your company staff can learn from the case, the improvements in risk management processes, governance, and strategy, including control procedures and treatment systems that you consider could be used to address the types of issues you identified. Give the reasons for your suggestions and be specific as to how to achieve better outcomes.

3. References List: List the sources you have consulted for the completion of the report.

The report should be approximately 1500 words (A4 page size, 12 font, one and a half line spacing) excluding the cover page, the reference list, and any attachments.

Part 2 – Individual Reflection (5 marks)

Applying Driscoll’s What Model to answer the following questions. (400 words)

1. What? Describe your experience to date in undertaking the ACCT5919 Business Risk Management course.

2. So What? What are your key learnings from ACCT5919 Business Risk Management from the first half of the course?

3. What Now? What will you change as a result of what you have learned?

Grading

The assignment is worth 30 marks, based on three criteria:

· Content quality – relevance and depth of analysis of issues specific to selected case study company, specificity of issues and learnings, relevance of learnings to issues analysed and illustration by examples of actions for better risk outcomes;

· Report readability – format and expression to create a clear and easily understandable business style. report;

· Research quality – number and relevance of sources cited as well as referencing in the report body.

The individual reflection is worth 5 marks and is based on addressing the What, So What and What Now of Driscoll’s What Model.

Submission

The report should be submitted via Turnitin by the deadline noted above. It can be submitted in Word or PDF format.