MGT5101 Adaptive Leadership

Assessment 3 - Reflection

Task Overview

• Due Date and Time: 5 December 2025 by 11:59pm AEST.
• Weighting: 50%
• Marks: 100 marks
• Length: No more than 8 pages, not including references.

Assessed Course Learning Outcomes

• CLO1: Analyse how to lead strategically through increasing individual, team, and organisation adaptive capacity across functional disciplines;
• CLO4: Analyse how different environmental factors and the competition for talent influences future leader success;
• CLO5: Document a suite of communication skills as a leader of the modern organisation.

Task Rationale

This assessment develops students’ ability to integrate theory and practice through reflective analysis of complex organisational scenarios. By examining issues of sensemaking, resilience, self-concept, and collective leadership, students evaluate how leaders adapt under pressure and respond to competing stakeholder demands. The reflection task builds the capacity to question assumptions, apply theoretical insights, and develop communication strategies suited to modern leadership contexts.

The task supports UniSQ Graduate Attributes by fostering: Critical and creative thinking, through analysing complex leadership challenges and generating new insights; discipline-specific expertise, by applying adaptive leadership frameworks to real-world case scenarios; effective communication, through professional reflective writing that engages specialist and non-specialist audiences; ethical and engaged professionalism, by reflecting on leader behaviours, values, and decision-making impacts; employability and adaptability, by strengthening resilience, sensemaking, and reflective practice, as essential leadership skills.

Task Instructions

Reflection: Integrating Written Reflection

The following reflection statement is designed as an integrating written reflection representing many of the themes and findings from both Module 7 and 8.

Reflection Statement

Introduction
Hydrovane¹ is a hydraulics manufacturer making hydraulic and fluid power products for infrastructure projects used in water dams and defence and aviation mainly operating out of Australia and New Zealand. Turnover for the company just recently exceeded $100m. The product range includes titanium alloy hydraulic cylinders, hydraulic power units, and valve and gate actuators. This also includes precision engineering and machining services related milling and turning, drilling, tapping and high skilled welding for hydraulic cylinders. Within the last 10 years, Hydrovane had extended their range of services to include design and repair of hydraulic products, maintenance, installation and commissioning on behalf of buyers.

¹ Hydrovane is a fictitious name of a company based on a real-life problem for the purposes of studying adaptive leadership for Business students at the University of Southern Queensland. Any resemblance to an actual company is purely coincidental.

Scenario 1: Sensemaking & Resilience

Raj Agarwal was part of a senior management team of thirty people including product and design engineers, production engineers and installers, production middle level team managers, including sales and marketing, purchasing, accounting and HR and training managers. Raj was responsible for the entire manufacturing division which also included 1200 workers split between two factories in Australia and one in New Zealand. All factories supplied local city and rural water and defence requirements. At least 70% of staff had been with Hydrovane for 20 years or more showing staff engagement and commitment. Within the prior 12 months, a crisis event started to appear with strong restructuring rumours surfacing and massive staff retrenchment concerns. The rumours related to outsourcing all maintenance and repairs and setting up new manufacturing capability in Malaysia for the production of hydraulic cylinders and hydraulic power units. Since costs were higher in the southern states, this extended to the idea of exporting hydraulic products at high quality and low cost. Workers started to speculate that this would potentially halve production and manufacturing in Australia and New Zealand. The idea of restructuring was a shock and created extreme uncertainty about what areas of production would remain and what would go. As rumours gave way to real concern, production workers plus some managers who were out of the decision making loop began to question Raj. Mostly, Raj would shrug his shoulders and pass it off as just a rumour saying ‘we will worry about that when it happens’ approach. Once external suppliers – who seemed to know more about the truth than actual workers – started to question what will happen to customers once you ‘go offshore’, most workers became extremely worried about their future, highly concerned about their livelihood, as similar skilled work was not available in hydraulics. Workers including many of the managers became highly stressed which increasingly affected work life balance and staying focused. The HR department started to field dozens of complaints and burnout and fatigue, as managers seemed to avoid systems and process issues and were not willing to involve collective staff in making sense of the proposed changes. Staff were increasingly worried about their adaptive ability.

Required
Using the marking rubric below:

1. Develop at least 3 to 4 assumptions in addition to the statement since it is based on less than perfect information. Write up the assumptions by relating them to both the case and theory by writing at least 2-5 lines for each assumption.
2. Using assessment element 1 and 2, and by incorporating the assumptions above, how has the situation, activity or experience of Raj and others triggered necessary reflection and what value judgements are evident about the focus of reflection? To what extent has the prior conceptions and beliefs and awareness of previous beliefs, knowledge and experiences limited the response by Raj and others?
3. How do the theories and ideas presented in Conz and Magnani (2020), Georgio and Murillo (2023), and Tisch and Galbreath (2018) in Module 7 inform the case facts? How do they assist Raj to solve the problems faced and increase sensemaking? To what extent do the unfolding events increase or decrease resilience ? In this case, how is sensemaking and resilience related?
4. Using assessment element 3 and 4, what kind of new questions and hypothesis based on the theories might Raj develop about himself, staff, and the workplace? Which future action plans and approaches will assist him to initiate a new reflective cycle of his leadership approach in terms of solving the emerging crisis?

Scenario 2: The Effects of Self and the Collective

Raj had left most of the growing complaints to the Production manager for Australia and New Zealand (Tina Cheng). Tina just wanted to get on with business as she was worried about meeting production targets related to defence while water infrastructure demands were ramping up. As production started to be outsourced, partly because of demand but also because of costs, workers began to blame themselves for being inefficient. The lack of perceived support from leaders was growing daily while highly committed workers had a sick feeling or falling production quality and Hydrovane’s reputation. This came to a head when 200 workers led by their supervisors (Mike and Remi) confronted Tina in a constructive manner that the company was not inclusive, was not communicating the change, and was showing a disregard for collective well-being. Tina surprisingly took the complaints personally. She tended to show her supremacy by being in charge, was dismissive by saying ‘these are just rumours’, and was aggressive by devaluing the supervisors’ efforts by saying Mike and Remi should know better than to allow a large group of workers to confront ‘me’. Later, she pulled Mike and Remi aside and threatened they would be sacked if they added to or allowed the rumour mill to increase. In fact she saw the responses of the workers as threatening her perceived level of power and her own concept of self. She saw the idea of the collective group as threatening her leadership and a challenge to her authority.

Required
Using the marking rubric below:

1. Develop at least 3 to 4 assumptions in addition to the statement since it is based on less than perfect information. Write up the assumptions by relating them to both the case and theory by writing at least 2-5 lines for each assumption.
2. Using assessment element 1 and 2, and by incorporating the assumptions above, how has the situation, activity or experience of Tina and others triggered necessary reflection and what value judgements are evident about the focus of reflection? To what extent has the prior conceptions and beliefs and awareness of previous beliefs, knowledge and experiences limited the response by Raj, Tina and others?
3. How do the theories and ideas presented in Wisse and Rus (2012), Mao et al (2023) and Ottati et al (2015) in Module 8 inform case facts? How do they assist Raj to solve the problems faced? What do case facts say about Tina? In this case, how is her self-construal influenced by the group? What are the issues?
4. Using assessment element 3 and 4, what kind of new questions and hypothesis based on the theories should Tina and to a less extent Raj, develop about themselves, staff, and the workplace? Which future action plans and approaches will assist both leaders to initiate a new reflective cycle of their leadership approach to staff supervision and toxic work?

Please note: For points 1 to 4 for the effects of the work scenario above, please write at least 3-4 pages not including references. Please do not exceed 4 pages in total. Please also use a separate rubric for scenario 1 and scenario 2. Please refer to the marking criteria for each element below.

***For both scenarios, please do not write more than 8 pages not including references.

General Requirements: Please do not use bullet points where possible and refer to the content and references for module 7 and 8. Please use additional references where required from your own source material. Generally, at least 10 references would be expected for Assignment 3.

Written Format

1. You may use either a report or essay format.
2. Submit your responses in one MS Word document.
3. Please state your name, student ID and course lecturer name on the front cover sheet. Avoid using graphics in cover sheets.

Acceptable AI Use Level

For this Assessment Item, acceptable AI use is set at: Level 1.
Level 1 - AI-Assisted Structure Checking
Description: Students may use Artificial intelligence (AI) tools to organise and check the structure and flow of their Assessment Item. This includes grammar checks, coherence, and flow of arguments but excludes using AI to generate new text and/or new content.
Additional Information Required: Indicate the AI tool(s) used for structure checking at the beginning of the Assessment Item and include the prompts you have used. Save copies of your drafts and content before/after AI was used, to produce upon request.

Academic Integrity

Students should be familiar with, and abide by, UniSQ’s policy on Academic Integrity and the definition of Academic Misconduct. Penalties apply to students found to have breached these policies and procedures. Please ensure you have completed the mandatory Academic Integrity training and have familiarised yourself with Academic Integrity at UniSQ.

Individual or Group: Individual.
This assignment must be all your own work. It is acceptable to discuss course content with others to improve your understanding and clarify requirements, but solutions to assignment questions must be done on your own.
You must not copy from anyone, including artificial intelligence tools (such as ChatGPT), tutors and fellow students, nor allow others to copy your work.

Assessment Marking Criteria

Refer to the Rubric for this Assessment Item below.

Submission Information

Relevant Information and Resources

• The relevant Study Modules.
• The relevant Selected Readings.
• USQ Study Support https://www.usq.edu.au/library/study-support
• Harvard AGPS Referencing Guide https://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/harvard-agps-referencing-guide
• Report Structure https://usq.edu.au/library/study-support/assignments/assignment-structure-and-writing/reports

Questions

If you have questions about the assignment, please post them on the Discussion Forum on the Study Desk. Even if you don’t have questions, it is important that you follow the discussions on this forum to make sure that you are on the right track with your responses to the case study questions.

Referencing/citations

For this assessment, you will use Harvard referencing. At least 10 references.
Academic writing and copyright law require that you acknowledge the source when using the ideas of others. In this course, we use the Harvard AGPS Style that requires a list of references (not bibliographies) and in-text citation of sources. Include page numbers in in-text citations for paraphrased material. All ideas/information that you used from your prescribed text and readings, and all other sources, must be cited in-text and included in the list of references. Only list those sources that you cited in your written work. Make sure that you follow the correct Harvard AGPS method of referencing. Please see the USQ Library website for help on how to use the Harvard AGPS method: http://www.usq.edu.au/library/referencing/harvard-agps-referencing-guide.

Submission Instructions

What you need to submit:
Submit only one Microsoft Word document (.doc or .docx) to the submission link on the course StudyDesk that contains the following items:

• No coversheet but footer must include: course code and name, semester and year, assignment title, student name, student number
• Do not include the rubric
• Save your document with the following naming convention: surname_initialORstudentnumber_coursecode_A1.doc/docx/pdf
  E.g: Jones_J_A3_MGT5101.docx

Please make sure that you submit the correct file and the final version of your assignment.

Turnitin
Turnitin is a detection software and text matching tool used in this course. Plagiarism checking is automatically done when you submit your assignment. An originality/similarity report is automatically created which checks the originality of your assignment. You can access and review the report.

NOTE:

• It may take up to 24 hours for a report to be issued from Turnitin
• When the assignment has been checked, you will see a notice in the Files submission area.
• The percentage mark given indicates the amount of text matched against the Turnitin Database. It is merely an indicator that should always be reviewed to identify where Turnitin have picked up potential plagiarism.
• You may have the option to edit submission or the option to submit assignment, this is determined by your lecturer.
• Once you submit assignment you are no longer able to edit it.

Moderation (optional)
All staff who are assessing your work meet to discuss and compare their judgements before marks or grades are finalised.

Assessment Policies & Procedures

Information and links regarding USQ’s assessment policy/ procedure; extensions and late submissions; academic integrity & misconduct and marking are found on your course StudyDesk Assessment page.

Note on Late submission & extensions: Applications for an extension of time will only be considered if received in accordance with the USQ Assessment procedure and the Assessment of Compassionate and Compelling Circumstances Procedure. Refer to the links on StudyDesk for copies of these procedures.