UTS21895 Chap.12 Agency, Career Choice and Leading Social Change
Agency, Career Choice and Leading Social Change
The subject ends where it began, by asking what you intend to do inside organisations rather than only how to judge them. The final module is named in the assessment brief as personally contributing to change, and its concepts are critical reflexivity, agency and career choice, leadership and collaboration, and social entrepreneurship.
The chapter treats agency as a claim about constraint rather than about enthusiasm, separates reflection from reflexivity, and uses the subject's own opening framing of mission against major.
It then builds the reflective essay from the brief's stated structure, shows why the three arguments should sit at different levels of agency, applies the four commitment requirements to your own plan, and covers the short spoken feedback discussion and its three published criteria.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Four concepts named for the final module, and the two weeks that carry them
- 02
Agency as a claim about constraint rather than about intent
- 03
Reflection against reflexivity, and where the difference earns marks
- 04
Mission against major, and why a mission has to be narrow enough to act on
- 05
Three arguments at three levels of agency rather than three versions of one
- 06
The stated structure: career and context, mission, three arguments, a plan
- 07
The third argument's extra requirement, and what a plan has to contain
- 08
The feedback discussion, its three criteria and its five preparation steps
- 09
Three minutes as an arithmetic constraint on what can be said
A single reflective argument with all four parts
- +1Name the decision you will actually hold. In supply and operations the earliest decision is who is allowed to quote.
- +1Attach the evidence. Businesses inside the Indigenous business ecosystem employ Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers at around one in three, against roughly one in thirty-six outside it, so moving spend changes employment outside your own payroll.
- +1Concede the constraint. Published analysis of inclusion policy finds a gap between policy presence and impact wherever no measurable target and no accountable owner exists.
- +1Give the plan three specific moves: record the categories where a minimum contract size screens out small suppliers; when you hold approval over a category, set and publish a share-of-spend target with a date; and when choosing an employer, ask whether supplier diversity reporting names an accountable role.
Key terms
- Critical reflexivity
- Examining what your own position, training and interests do to a judgement you have just made, rather than only what happened and what you would do differently. It is the move the final module is named around and the one the third argument in the reflective essay requires.
- Agency
- What an individual can actually move against a problem, given the constraints on their role. The subject's own material on systemic constraint applies to a person as much as to a firm, which is why an argument that names the constraint reads as more credible than one that promises everything.
- Personal social mission
- The specific change a person intends to contribute to through their working life. The reflective essay asks for it in the introduction, and it has to be narrow enough to connect to an actual career decision.
- Social entrepreneurship
- Building a venture whose purpose is a social change, named as one of the final module's concepts alongside critical reflexivity, agency and career choice, and leadership and collaboration.
- Action plan
- The short written response to assessment feedback that the one to one discussion is built around, covering what you understood, what you would do differently and how you will approach future assessments.
Agency, Career Choice and Leading Social Change FAQ
What does the reflective essay actually ask for?
Three arguments or actions for how you will have a positive social impact through your working life, drawing on the final module's concepts and on real examples from business practice. One of the three must be a critical reflection on how Australian organisations work with and for Indigenous Australians, and it must include a plan.
The structure asked for is an introduction naming your career and context and your personal social mission, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion with a general plan.
How personal should the reflective essay be?
Personal enough to name your intended career, your context and your own mission, and no more. The rubric rows are the same as the first essay's: an introduction, three separately assessed arguments, a conclusion and writing style. Sincerity is assumed and earns nothing on its own, while a paragraph of it takes space an argument needed.
How do I stop the three arguments repeating each other?
Choose them at different levels of agency: something you will control in your own work, something you will influence through the roles you take, and something you can only advocate for. That gives the three paragraphs different shapes and different evidence, instead of three restatements of one intention.
What should I prepare for the three-minute discussion?
A written action plan. Three minutes is roughly four hundred spoken words, which is about one short paragraph for each of the three criteria: one sentence naming what the feedback said, one naming what you now understand about why, one or two describing the specific change you will make, and one saying how you will know it worked. The criteria do not reward explaining what you originally meant.
Assessment move
Start the reflective essay far earlier than its deadline suggests, because its hardest part is choosing a mission narrow enough to argue from and that choice does not improve under pressure. Draft the mission sentence in one line, then test it: can you name a decision in your intended work that it bears on? If not, narrow it until you can.
Pick the three arguments at three different levels of agency and write the level beside each in your plan, which prevents the three-restatements failure that costs marks across three separate criteria. Reuse the subject's own standards on yourself: run the four commitment requirements across your plan, and run the reflexive question across every evaluative sentence in your draft by asking what would have changed your mind.
For the discussion, write the action plan the week you receive feedback rather than the week you present, because the specific change you would make is clearest while the feedback is still fresh.
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