Topic: Commercial and contract management

No# of Pages:
7 pages (1,750 words)

Subject Area:
Business Management

Paper Style:
Harvard

No# of Sources Required: 10

Details:

Required to write a reflective practice paper using appropriate module concepts applied to a real commercial and contract management issue in your own work experience. Please use a banking institution as your case study. A fuller explanation and guidelines for this reflective practice paper follow.

The issue or opportunity you identify should relate to either a project/contract on which you are currently working, or on a recently completed contract/project that could have been more successful. It could also relate to how commercial and contracting activities are managed generally in your organization, what is done well and areas where improvements could be made.
You must identify appropriate concepts from the Commercial & Contract Management (CCM) module that can be applied to help you understand the root causes of the identified issue, leading to recommendations for improvement. The CCM module deals with strategic issues in the commercial management of projects and is structured around four themes/sections:

1. Principles: The role of commercial & contract management (C&CM) within the management of projects, C&CM bodies of knowledge, C&CM maturity, C&CM success criteria, value creation, competitive advantage theories, relationship management

2. Principles of C&CM for clients (demand-side - procuring assets and services) throughthe project life-cycle; including:
Process: asset/service identification (strategy formulation & implementation,requirement identification), requirement specification, solution selection (procurement strategy), asset/service procurement (supplier selection), contract management (asset receipt & usage/service management), asset disposal/service termination

Techniques: procurement management, drafting & negotiating contracts, contract management (relationship, risk & value management, performance measurement)

3. Principles of C&CM for suppliers (supply-side) through the life-cycle:

Process: asset/service identification (strategy formulation & implementation,opportunity identification), opportunity development (business development), proposition identification, proposal development & submission (tendering strategy), project implementation/contract management (asset delivery & maintenance/service delivery), asset disposal/service termination

Techniques: bid management (procurement of resources, estimating, bid strategy, pricing policies, bidding models, risk & uncertainty, producing the proposal), drafting & negotiating contracts, contract management (cash-flow, relationship, risk & value management, performance measurement)

4. National applications, where the role of nationally or regionally specific approaches is explored with particular emphasis on the role of government in shaping procurement practice.

Additional underlying concepts include, for example: transaction cost economics, relational contracting, trust and the power perspective etc.
The module concepts you select for this paper must be related to the above themes, including associated wider reading.

The self-selected, self-driven reflective practice paper provides you with an opportunity to examine a real life commercial or contracting issue, which should lead to a discernible improvement in your performance and enable you to produce a tangible benefit as a result of your participation in the course.

This reflective practice must be distinct from any other such assignments you are asked to undertake.

The Reflective Practice Paper

The reflective practice paper uses a dynamic learning framework to help structure the reflection process around your current role and responsibilities, including your professional experience to-date.

An introduction to appropriate concepts is used as the source of questions for reflecting on your current approach to commercial and contract management, resulting in various insights and actions that might be implemented in the future. Your selection of relevant literature, concepts and principles is a key part of the process, but whatever concepts are chosen, they should always be specific to your work role, thereby enabling the learning process to be self- driven and directly centred on your particular interests and concerns. To summarise, the whole process is about enriching your current knowledge and experience through structured reflection and clearly connecting the codified knowledge discussed in the classroom with the tacit knowledge of commercial and contract management in practice.

The reflective practice paper has five parts (see Figure 1):

A. Delegate in Work Role: In this section you are asked to pose structured questions about your current work role, and appropriate prior experience. It should include:

• an introduction to the topic you are investigating/examining - e.g. an issue relating to an aspect of your work or gap in your current knowledge
• the reasons why you have chosen the topic - plus a link to your current role, organisation & career development to date
• self-generated questions that would help you examine the issue/topic/relevant literature

This section should be personal to you so should be written in the first person

B. Programme Concepts and Principles: This part requires you to research more deeply and fully understand the programme concepts and principles appropriate to your current and future work role. Essentially this is a literature review of the concepts and principles that underpin the CCM module, which you have selected to help you examine the issue or gap in your knowledge, identified in Part A above. For example, you may have selected the topics of trust, power and relationships to examine behaviours of the parties to a contract you are involved in or you may have selected negotiation if you have recently moved into a role that requires you to lead negotiations etc. These are only given as examples - the choice is yours. Additionally, it is expected that you take a critical perspective rather than a descriptive regurgitation of the literature include approx. 10 academic (academic papers and text books etc.) and 5 professional journal sources.

The style of writing in Part B should be similar to the background or literature review sections of academic paper. As such this is the only section of the reflective practice paper that needs to written in a more formal academic style.

C. Reflective Assessment - Ideas and Insights: This is about linking theory to practice and is, therefore, the core of the reflective practice paper where you are required to connect Parts A and B to generate new insights into how, for example: your role can be performed more effectively the activity can be performed more efficiently/effectivelythe issue/problem can be explained by the literature and how it might beaddressed differently in the future.

D. Key Learning Points and Actions: This section summarises your learning through the reflective practice process and identifies potential routes for implementation. It should include: the lessons learnt for you, your team and the organisation an action plan for implementing change Useful questions to ask yourself:

• Why did I choose the topic?
• What was I expecting to learn?
• What have I learned?
• What new techniques, skills, abilities have I acquired?
• How does this connect with my previous experiences?
• What do I not understand?
• What am I going to do about it?

E. Critical Reflection: This is a critical review of the process of preparing the reflective practice paper and how the experience has developed your competence: the aim being to identify what you will do differently in the future. It is not to be confused with a conclusion or summary to an essay.

Useful questions to ask yourself:

• What "critical incidents" occurred?
• What did I find inspiring in doing this assignment?
• What went well - why?
• What was not so good - why?
• What have I discovered about myself from undertaking the exercise?
• What changes have occurred in your perspective/understanding?
• What would I like to change and why?
• What would you do differently next time?

E Critical Reflection

Figure 1 The Reflective Practice Paper

Implementation on the Programme

The five elements of the paper are scheduled throughout the module in order to balance your workload. Submissions (Assignments A1 &

A3) are cumulative in that the second submission (Assignment A3) can be revised to incorporate tutor feedback on Assignment A1.
In addition to providing an assessment mechanism, the paper will support your professional development. Completion of the paper will aid the internalisation of the material delivered by the module within your current role and working practices. For your organisation, the paper will provide valuable feedback on the effectiveness of its current working practices and present action points for remedial action/intervention.

A Delegate in Work Role
650 words

B Programme Concepts and Principles
1350 words

C Reflective Assessment: Ideas and Insights
1350 words

D Key Learning Points and Actions
400 words

E Critical Reflection
250 words

Since assignment is in two parts A1 and A3, only half of this specified word count is required for this assignment hence making up 2000 words.