HOLMES INSTITUTE

FACULTY OF
HIGHER EDUCATION

Assessment Details and Submission Guidelines

Trimester T3 2021
Unit Code HI6008
Unit Title Business Research Project
Assessment Type 2. Group* Report on Literature Review
Assessment Title Literature Review
Purpose of the This assessment item seeks to ensure that all students enrolled in the Capstone Unit
assessment (with – Business Research Project – are competent at sourcing relevant and current
ULO Mapping) literature using academic search portals, such as Pro-Quest, and other places where
high quality secondary data resides.
Furthermore, this assessment requires students to not only read and summarise
what other authors have already established, but also to become skilful at weaving
together
complementary or contrasting arguments relevant to their approved topic, research
problem, and research question(s). This assignment builds on and extends the topic
that was selected for Assignment 1.
Relates to Unit Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 3 and 5

Weight 30 % of the total assessments

Total Marks 30
Word limit At least 2500 words for the Literature Review
Due Date Before midnight on the Tuesday of Week 9, i.e. 25 January
Submission ● All work must be submitted on Blackboard by 12 midnight on the due date, with a
Guidelines
completed Assignment Cover Page as one single document. [If no cover page your
mark is reduced -10%; Late submissions attract penalties at the rate of -5% per
day]
● The group members’ names and student numbers listed on the Cover Page must
align with the members officially registered in your group. [any errors or
omissions may affect your grade and there is no guarantee of any adjustment]
● The assignment must be in MS Word format, single spacing, 12-pt Arial font and 2
cm margins on all four sides of your page with appropriate section headings,
paragraphing, and page numbers.
● Reference sources must be cited in the text of the report, and listed appropriately
at the end in a reference list, all using Holmes adapted Harvard referencing style.

HI6008 ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Page 2 of 6
● Include as an Appendix, your group statement of ‘who wrote which sections’)

Holmes Adapted Harvard Referencing

Holmes has now implemented a Holmes adapted Harvard approach to referencing:
1. Reference sources in assignments are limited to sources which provide full
text access to the source’s content for lecturers and markers.
2. Your Reference list is to be located on a separate page at the end of the essay
and titled: References.
3. It should include the details of all the in-text citations, arranged
alphabetically A-Z by author surname.  In addition, it MUST include a
hyperlink to the full text of the cited reference source. 
For example;
Hawking, P., McCarthy, B. and Stein, A. 2004. Second Wave ERP Education,
Journal of Information Systems Education, Fall, 
http://jise.org/Volume15/n3/JISEv15n3p327.pdf
4. All assignments will require additional in-text reference details which will
consist of the surname of the author/authors or name of the authoring body,
year of publication, page number of content, paragraph where the content
can be found.
For example;
“The company decided to implement an enterprise wide data warehouse
business intelligence strategy (Hawking et al, 2004, p3(4)).”

Adherence to Referencing Guidelines is Mandatory

If students do not follow the above guidelines:
1. Students who submit assignments which do not comply with the guidelines
will incur penalties.
2. Students whose citations are fake will be reported for academic misconduct.

*Note: Students will already be registered in assignment groups of 3 or 2 or 1 (same as for assignment 1).

HI6008 BUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT. ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Page 3 of 6

HI6008 BUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT. ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Page 4 of 6

Assignment 2 Specifications
Purpose:
This unit aims to give you an opportunity to combine many facets of your acquired MBA skills into
the production of a high-quality research project.
Assignment 2 - the Literature Review - is designed to ensure that each team member masters the
skills of searching, locating, reading, summarising, and using relevant academic literature as
secondary data to support a compelling discussion of factors central to the identified and specified
research problem and crafting an ‘argument’ that brings the reader closer to a prospective answer
to the specified research question(s).
Your tutor will FACILITATE the process, week by week, in the tutorials, BUT remember that this is a
‘learn-by-doing’ unit, in which you will spend a significant amount of tutorial time discussing and
practising research skills. The learning will be progressive, so for best results you will need to be
listening to the weekly recorded lectures as well as participating in the interactive tutorials and
using the discussion board to interact with other students in your cohort.
[note that you are not expected to solve the research problem entirely from secondary data, just to
demonstrate sufficient context to be able to plan the methodology phase of your research, which is
assignment 3]
Assignment Structure should be the following:

1. Cover Page
2. An opening statement of the Research Problem and Research Question (RQ) – your
explanation of these should at this stage be more detailed than what you wrote in your
Topic Approval.
3. Discussion of major theories, models or streams of influence relevant to the RQ. This
provides evidence that you are able to find literature relevant to a deeper understanding of
your Research Question (RQ) as well as a model or theory that will support your quest to
answer it.
4. Draw the reader’s attention to any contrasting views expressed in prior research in this area
and give your view of how differing opinions can be brought together to help answer the
research question and ultimately resolve the research problem.
5. Converge on how this literature review has brought you closer to an answer to your
research question(s).
6. Ensure all in text citations are correctly referenced. [10-12 academic sources are required]
7. Add a comprehensive List of References, in Holmes adapted Harvard referencing style.
[Students please be warned that errors in referencing attract suspicion of
plagiarism/academic misconduct and may require detailed investigation. It is always
essential that academic integrity is upheld. Don’t take a chance!]
8. Append a statement indicating ‘who wrote which sections of this report’

[The more comprehensive your literature review, the better. Whatever you do NOT find out in this
literature review will leave you with more work to do when you move to the next part of the
project, i.e. methodology, which is assignment 3]

HI6008 BUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT. ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Page 5 of 6
HI6008 Assignment 2 – Literature Review - Marking Rubric

Excellent Very Good Good Questionable Unsatisfactory

5 marks 4 marks 3 marks 2 marks 0-1 mark
Identification of Cited sources are Cited sources Cited sources Cited sources Irrelevant or poorly-
Body of Knowledge all current and are mostly are somewhat are only selected sources
appropriate to RQ relevant current and current and marginally
[Max 5 marks] relevant relevant current and
relevant
Depth of literature The sources The sources The sources The sources Insufficient depth
search and provide an provide a very provide a good provide some
evidence of excellent depth of good depth of depth of contextual
competence in contextual contextual contextual understanding
understanding understanding understanding
searching for
current and
relevant academic
literature
[Max 5 marks]
Quality of Literature At least 12 At least 12 At least 10 Less than 10 Low quality
Cited additional sources additional additional additional literature, lack of
of excellent quality sources of very sources of high sources of sufficient academic
[Max 5 marks] high quality quality questionable sources, or too few
quality relevant sources

Structure of the The literature The literature The literature The literature Little or no logical
Literature Review review is extremely review is very review is well- review is poorly structure
well-structured, well-structured, structured, structured, i.t.o.
[max 5 marks] with sub-sections with sub- with sub- sub-sections
and logical sections and sections and and logical
paragraphing logical logical paragraphing
paragraphing paragraphing
Design, content and The literature The literature The literature The literature Difficult to make
flow of discussions review is review is very review is well- review is sense of what is
or arguments exceptionally well- well-designed, designed, with questionably written; significant
designed, with with interesting interesting designed, with grammatical or
interesting and and well- discussion or discussion or spelling mistakes.
[Max 5 marks]
well-formulated formulated argument that argument Not of a sufficiently
discussion or discussion or makes for good difficult to read high standard for an
argument that argument that reading in parts MBA Capstone
makes for makes for very Project.
compelling reading good reading
Convergence Excellent – the Very good Good context, Questionable Unsatisfactory in
around RQ literature review is convergence although not context or focus relation to RQ
totally focused on around RQ totally focused
[Max 5 marks] the RQ on RQ
Less Penalties Late
submission: /30
…………. Days
@ -5% per day
=
………………….
No cover
sheet /

HI6008 BUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT. ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW

Page 6 of 6
incorrect /
inaccurate / not
single
document @-
10%
Non-compliant
referencing @-
10%
Note: fake referencing is academic fraud and will result in a report of Academic Misconduct

HI6008 BUSINESS RESEARCH PROJECT. ASSIGNMENT 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW