Skip to Main Content

BUSS 3081: Planning and Implementing Organisational Change

1. Assignments 1 & 2: Essay and Project Report

This page provides information to help you complete your assessment tasks for BUSS 3081. Please see your Course Site and Course Outline for full details of the assessment requirements.

2. Getting started

1. For Assessment 1 select Option 1 or Option 2 for your assignment and identify key words and phrases to be used in your searching. Here are some we have highlighted to get you started.

*NOTE* These are not the only keywords in the question below.

Option 2: Discuss why the ability of managers to understand change and implement effective policies and procedures is important for organisational success. Explain the factors that enhance or undermine managers' plans to achieve smooth transitional change. 

2. Create a table for your keywords and identify some synonyms to be used for searching. *HINT* Use a thesaurus

manager AND change  AND "organisational success"
OR   OR   OR
supervisor    alteration    "company success"
boss   remodel   "business success"
"head of department"   modification   "institutional success"
As you search for information you will identify other keywords . Add these to your table and try new search combinations.

3. Search by linking keywords together using AND and OR, along with the use of truncation and wildcards, (PDF 301 KB) i.e:

change AND "organisational success" OR "organizational success"

For more information on planning your search, please see 'Plan your search' below

3. Plan your search

Your assignments will need to be supported by evidence. Before you begin searching, it's a good idea to think about the search terms you could use. Watch this video (2 min 26 sec) to learn more.

Here are some examples of search terms you could use in the Library Collection:

Tips for searching:

  • Use quotation marks around words that you want to search for together, e.g. "market share".
  • Use an asterisk to find multiple endings of a word, e.g. competit* would find competitor, competitive, competition.
  • Use a wildcard (?) to look for variant spellings of words 
  • Use the OR keyword to connect different words for the same concept, and AND to connect different concepts.

For more detail, see this guide:

4. Scholarly sources

Your essay and report must contain peer-reviewed resources or references from a reputable publisher. These are also known as scholarly sources. Watch this video (2 min 22 sec) to learn how to identify scholarly sources:

5. Where to search

How to start your search (opens in a new tab)

In the Library Collection, you can use the options on the right hand side of your search results to help identify peer-reviewed resources. To do this, under Show Only, select Peer-Reviewed Journals.

You can also limit the search results by Publication Date. This can help you find the current references you need for your essay.

Databases can be be used to find additional, topic-specific resources beyond what you can find in the Library Collection. Start with our list of Management databases, or try the example below.


The Business Source Ultimate database is a great place to search for scholarly or industry resources related to business.

As with the Collection, use the filters on the left-hand side of your search results to narrow your results. Select Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals to find scholarly sources, and use the Publication Date slider to find only current research.

6. Write your assignment

Study help

The Student Engagement Unit has created a suite of resources called Study Help that can help you understand how to write your assignment.

Have a look at:

  • Assignment writing
    A collection of resources and videos about writing assignments
  • Essays
    Gives examples of how to structure an academic essay
  • Referencing
    Online guides and help with using the Harvard-UniSA referencing style
  • Reports 
    How to write a report