Instructions and Submission: Problem Solving Case Study and Proposal Report

  

This case study describes how a mining company desires to continue to be

 business-sustainable, i.e. to continue to make money.  However, as it turns out, 

the mining company has been heavily criticised on social media, news outlets, 

and experienced criticisms and support from different sides of the political divide. 

As part of the exploration phase, the company has decided to engage the 

community to prepare them for the new mining activity. Some members of the 

community welcomed the new investment, welcoming jobs, the influx of new 

workers and therefore anticipated an increase in economic activity.

The company has embarked on a social sustainability initiative. The mining 

company has established a new function to develop community relations through 

contributing to a school initiative and also other community actions, e.g. charities, 

donations, public sporting events.  However, members of the public flooded the 

company's social media page with complaints about the company disrespect and 

accused the company of being hypocritical in their intentions.  The accusations 

were about the use of a charity to increase their market share. The company did 

not have any plan to respond and this  vitriolic attack came as a surprise. The 

company shut down its social media page and withdrew from the campaign.

You have been engaged by the company to do a study on this failed campaign 

and to write a report. The purpose of this is to enable the company to learn from 

what occurred and for proposals to be considered to avoid this situation.

Prepare a report, to your executives, highlighting to them some of the points of 

view that may not have been considered in their campaign.

Your report should be 2500 words maximum, excluding references and appendices.

As a guide, you should consider these points:

1. Propose a risk management framework that may be incorporated into future projects at planning stage;

2. using Neohumanism as one of the two conflict based perspectives, explain the methodology for avoiding, as best as possible, individual employees from being partisan to this conflict;

3. using Radical Structuralist the second conflict based perspective, explain in your report why there is a predicable negative backlash from the public against this marketing campaign;

4. propose a set of questions that the project teams may ask in the future, to avoid the pressure in individuals;

5. make well argued proposals, that are well grounded in literature, that would help future campaigns;

6. demonstrate your ability to research this topic through the identification of at least 10 journal articles to support your work.