What does COMM1170 Organisational Resources assess?

Direct answer: The course is about transitions. The UNSW Handbook describes organisations as constantly growing, restructuring, merging, digitalising and recovering from crises, and asks you to study how those transitions are resourced and managed, treating human, strategic and financial considerations as interdependent. The course frames this as work done for the senior management of an organisation.

The Handbook entry for COMM1170 Organisational Resources states the idea your whole term rests on: "These transitions are not single events; they are extended periods of uncertainty in which existing routines break down and organisations must reconfigure how they use their resources" (UNSW Sydney, n.d.). That sentence explains why the assessments ask for timelines, triggers and decisions rather than a list of resources.

The same entry gives the practical facts. COMM1170 carries 6 units of credit, runs in Term 1, Term 2 and Term 3 on the Sydney campus, and lists COMM1140 or COMM1240 as its prerequisite in the 2027 edition (UNSW Sydney, n.d.). Students who are still working through COMM1140 Financial Management will reuse that financial reading here, because the course expects you to apply financial tools to a change management problem at UNSW Sydney. If you want the people side of the same changes, our MGMT2004 Managing Organisational Behaviour guide covers how motivation, teams and leadership are assessed in a later management course.

Source: UNSW Sydney Handbook, 2027 edition, read 2026-10-27.

Direct answer: The Handbook lists four assessments weighted 15%, 15%, 35% and 35%, so the two heavier tasks carry 70% of the course. It does not set the detail of each task. Formats, word limits, due dates and penalties are set in the course outline for your term, which you find on Moodle.

The weights tell you where preparation for COMM1170 Organisational Resources pays off: the two 35% tasks together carry 70% of the course and deserve most of your time. We do not reproduce task rules here, because they change between terms and the only version that counts is the one your convenor published. Read the course outline in week 1, copy every due date into your calendar, and check the late penalty and the permitted use of generative AI before you start drafting.

Source: UNSW Sydney (n.d.), Handbook entry for the 2027 edition. Your term's course outline sets which task carries which weight.

Direct answer: For COMM1170 Organisational Resources, choose an organisation with a long, well documented public record and at least two moments where its size, structure or ownership clearly changed. Listed companies suit this well, because their annual reports give you primary evidence for every claim.

COMM1170 Organisational Resources asks you to study transitions as extended periods rather than single events (UNSW Sydney, n.d.), so you need an organisation whose records let you see the before, the break and the after. A company that has merged, divested, restructured or digitalised gives you that. Exchanges such as the Australian Securities Exchange publish the annual reports you will need.

Check how your term allocates companies before you fall in love with one. Convenors often limit how many students can take the same organisation, so a shortlist of three is safer than a single favourite. Confirm the rule in your course outline.

Charts help only when they serve the argument. Choose the data series where the break is most visible, such as headcount or total assets across a decade, and read each data point from the annual report itself rather than from a summary website.

Direct answer: In COMM1170 Organisational Resources, name the type of change, identify its trigger, then analyse the resourcing decisions that followed, using evidence from the company's own reports. Description alone is the weakest answer, because the course is about explaining decisions, not narrating history.

Two ideas help you separate the pieces. Weick and Quinn distinguish two tempos of change: "Episodic change follows the sequence unfreeze-transition-refreeze, whereas continuous change follows the sequence freeze-rebalance-unfreeze" (Weick & Quinn, 1999, p. 361). A restructuring after a leadership change reads as episodic, while a gradual shift in how work is done reads as continuous. Naming which one you are describing tells the marker you are applying a concept rather than telling a story.

For triggers, Kotter (1995) is a useful anchor on why urgency matters: he names failing to establish a great enough sense of urgency as the first of eight errors behind unsuccessful transformation efforts. A strong trigger paragraph shows what created urgency inside the company, not only what happened outside it.

Then ask what each decision did to the company's people, strategy and finances together, since the Handbook treats those three as interdependent (UNSW Sydney, n.d.). If you are still building financial reading skills, the COMM1140 guide covers the tools you will reuse.

Direct answer: A line shows direction but not the flows beneath it. Microsoft's headcount fell by about 7.8%, from approximately 128,000 to approximately 118,000, between June 2014 and June 2015, yet its annual report states that the company eliminated approximately 19,000 positions in the same year.

The figures below show how to read data, and they are not a model answer. Microsoft's 2014 annual report states that on 30 June 2014 it employed approximately 128,000 people, 62,000 in the U.S. and 66,000 internationally, including approximately 25,000 who transferred with the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services business in April 2014 (Microsoft Corporation, 2014). That is about 19.5% of the workforce arriving through a single portfolio decision. The same filing announced a restructuring plan to eliminate up to 18,000 positions in fiscal year 2015, including 12,500 professional and factory positions tied to that acquisition, with pre-tax charges of approximately $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion expected (Microsoft Corporation, 2014).

Source: Microsoft Corporation (2014, 2015), Form 10-K filings, read 2026-10-27.

Direct answer: The 2015 filing shows that the cuts were larger than announced and fell mostly outside the U.S. Microsoft eliminated approximately 19,000 positions against 18,000 announced, and 8,000 of the 10,000 net fall in headcount came from international staff.

Microsoft Corporation (2015) reports approximately 118,000 employees at 30 June 2015, 60,000 in the U.S. and 58,000 internationally. It states that the plan eliminated approximately 19,000 positions in fiscal year 2015, including approximately 13,000 professional and factory positions related to the Nokia business, and that a second plan approved in June 2015 would eliminate up to 7,800 positions in fiscal year 2016. Of the net fall of 10,000 people, about 7.8% of the 2014 total, 8,000 sat outside the U.S. (66,000 down to 58,000) and 2,000 inside it (62,000 down to 60,000).

The arithmetic is worth noticing: 128,000 minus 19,000 is 109,000, which sits about 9,000 below the reported 118,000. That gap is our inference, not a reported figure, and it suggests hiring ran alongside cutting.

The lesson for any transition analysis is that a chart alone cannot tell a portfolio transition from an organisational one. Your classification and the decisions behind it have to come from evidence you cite, and from primary sources such as the filings of Microsoft and the Nokia business it bought, not from the chart.

Direct answer: Published reviews give you numbers to anchor a transition analysis. A meta-analysis of 125 studies puts the link between strategic resources and performance at r = 0.22, and a review of 282 works frames digital transformation as eight building blocks, not one event.

Three published reviews are worth knowing. Crook et al. (2008) meta-analysed 125 studies covering over 29,000 organisations and estimated the effect of strategic resources on performance at r = 0.22, rising to r = 0.29 when resources met the criteria set by resource-based theory and the performance measure was not affected by value appropriation. For your analysis, this means that a resource only explains an outcome when it is valuable and hard to copy, not merely large.

On technology-driven transitions, Vial (2019) reviewed 282 works, of which 226 came from research outlets and 56 from practitioner outlets, and built a framework with eight building blocks. Hanelt et al. (2021) analysed 279 articles and found two thematic patterns and four perspectives on digital transformation. Use these counts to show a marker that your classification rests on a body of evidence.

Source: abstracts and methods sections of the three articles, read 2026-10-27.

Direct answer: Treat a business case as a structured argument about a decision: set out the context, evaluate the options and recommend one. A short pitch frames the decision, while a longer video can weigh the decisions the organisation made and test an alternative.

Because the Handbook frames the work as advice to the senior management of an organisation, write for a reader who needs a recommendation, not a lecture. Lead with the decision, give the evidence, then say what you would do differently and why. Treat it as a case study argued aloud, and rehearse against a timer, since the time limit in your course outline is strict.

If your company's transition involved technology, Hanelt et al. (2021) reviewed 279 articles and concluded that digital transformation is only partially covered by conventional frameworks on organisational change. That is a legitimate reason to say where a standard model stops fitting.

Direct answer: In the course outline and assessment instructions for your term, on Moodle. Referencing style, formatting, late penalties and the permitted use of generative AI all vary by term and by task, so confirm them there before you submit.

We do not state the COMM1170 Organisational Resources rules here because we could not verify them against an official UNSW source for your term. What we can say is general: cite every source you use, keep your drafts and version history, and if generative AI is permitted, record how you used it. Our Harvard referencing guide covers the mechanics if your outline asks for Harvard. When a rule is unclear, ask your convenor or tutor before the due date, not after, and keep their reply in writing so that you can point to it if a question arises later. A short checklist helps: due dates in your calendar, word limits noted, referencing style confirmed, and AI policy read.