Operations Management - Level 7

Assignment - Job Creation and the Circular Economy

Learning outcome 1: Identify and integrate relevant data/information/literature from a range of self-identified sources.
Learning outcome 2: Devise and sustain an argument, supported by valid/significant, evaluated evidence, including some elements which are new/original/unusual and may offer new insights or hypotheses.
Learning outcome 3: Demonstrate ability to relate theory to practise and critically assess organisational problems in order to design specific responses to address the issues identified.

Purpose of the Assessment

The purpose of this assignment is to develop your ability to present the fundamental principles of the circular economy and critically discuss how the adoption of circular economy principles can help organisations and related supply chains to increase their economic, social and environmental performance.

Assessment Task

You are required to discuss how companies that adopt circular economy principles increase their economic and social efficiency and minimise their environmental impact.

More specifically, you are required to write a report that provides two perspectives of the topic above: A theoretical and a practical perspective. The report as a whole should be no longer than 3000 words (excluding cover page and references).

Assessment Breakdown

Theoretical perspective:

The first part of the report should address theoretical perspectives of the subject. For this, you are expected to draw from academic publications and articles fundamental circular economy aspects. The topics you should address are:

- Concepts and characteristics of the circular economy

- The main drivers of the circular economy, i.e. why it is important and benefits for businesses, society and environment

- The role of circular supply chains in supporting circular economy processes in organisations, and

- The role of the circular economy in promoting job creation

Practical perspective:

In the second part, you are expected to apply the theoretical perspectives above to describe a business model case of a specific company implementing circular economy principles.

For this, you should choose a particular company and describe its operations in terms of circular economy aspects. Reports explaining how the company's supply chain supports the business operations will achieve higher marks.

Your chosen company should represent a real-life illustrative example of how a business attempts to implement circular economy practices and the economic, social and environmental benefits the company can achieve.

You are expected to support the description of your chosen company with business articles from high quality reliable sources such as the Financial Times (FT.com), The Economist (economist.com) or other similar sources. A business case presented with basis on the company's website only will be considered unsatisfactory, i.e. exam fail.

You can access electronic versions of business articles through the university library online services and reputable newspapers websites (e.g. The Guardian Sustainable Business reports).