Assignment 3: Ethics management report

Word/time limit: 2500 words (+/- 10%)

Weighting: 40%

Due date:  5pm AEST Monday 29 September 2025 (Week 12)

Individual/team task: Individual

After you have read this information, head over to the Assignment 3 Q&A discussion board to ask any questions and see what your peers are saying about this assignment.

Assignment overview

In this assessment, you are required to write a 2,500-word report that demonstrates your ability to evaluate, analyse, and solve a real-world problem while considering ethical implications. This task mirrors the analytical and decision-making challenges graduates face in professional settings, equipping you with essential skills for your future career. To strengthen your analysis, use credible research, including figures, statistics, and expert insights.

This assignment supports unit learning outcomes 1, 2, and 3.

View the Rubric to learn about this assignment's marking criteria.

Assignment details

Scenario

You have finished your degree at Swinburne University and have been a great success in your developing career. You have become one of the most sought-after Ethics of Innovations Managers globally and you have decided to take on a difficult challenge in your career. You apply for and have been successfully appointed as the Ethics of Innovation Manager in the United Nations Climate Action Team. Your challenge is that you are immediately dealing with very serious global climate change issues. You have come in at a time when there is a rapidly rising temperature of the earth’s atmosphere.  

The United Nations Climate Action Team is looking to you for some fresh ideas, some new innovations, good quality analysis, sensitive advice, practical recommendations and some outstanding problem-solving around the outcome surrounding serious global climate change issues. All senior executives at the United Nations are now expecting you to provide some high-quality researched analysis, critical thinking and a degree of sensitivity, plus apply solutions and creative thinking to the complex issues surrounding global climate change.

The following resources will help you to get an outline of the main issues related to global climate change and some recent innovations aimed at mitigation. You are not limited to these resources and are encouraged to seek and use your own additional good-quality research, experts and statistics.

• See what three degrees of global warming looks like (The Economist, 2021).

• Why big tech is pouring money into carbon removal (CNBC, 2022).

• From ‘reverse coal’ to reviving peat bogs: the push to catch carbon (Vaughan, 2025).

Task

Your report must address the following four key areas:

1. Understanding the problem – Define and critically analyse the issue.

2. Mitigation through innovation – Propose innovative solutions to address the problem.

3. Ethics of innovation – Assess the ethical considerations of your proposed solutions.

4. Conclusion – Summarise your key findings and recommendations.

To strengthen your analysis, use credible research and well-supported justifications to support your content. Include figures and statistics.

Report parts

Part 1: Understanding the problem (approximately 400 words)

• Background Information: Provide a summarised description regarding your understanding of the main issues relevant to global climate change.

• Ethical Issues: Identify the main ethical issues involved with global climate change and identify who you believe are the main stakeholders affected.

Part 2: Propose Climate Change Mitigation Innovations (approximately 900 words)

• Propose four (4) specific innovations that may help to mitigate or even reverse current and impending climate change damage. Be clear about how they will work and outline the advantages and disadvantages of using them.

Part 3: Ethics of innovations (approximately 900 words)

Based on your four proposed innovations that may help mitigate or reverse climate change please specifically discuss ethics in relation to these. Answer the following questions for each of the four innovations you identified in Part 2:

• There is a view that it is too risky and very unethical to manipulate nature to fight climate change. Do any or all of your suggested innovations potentially manipulate nature in some way? Are there potentially long-term unknown problems created by the new innovations? Can these problems be overcome?

• Many innovations aimed at fighting climate change are invented, built and used in relatively wealthy and developed countries. How might you respond to this fact in an ethical manner? Discuss whether it is right or wrong for wealthy and developed countries to focus on new innovations to tackle their own individual country’s climate change issues while ignoring developing countries’ needs for help. Bear in mind that there are often not black and white answers to ethical issues.

Part 4: Conclusion (approximately 300 words)

• Make some realistic recommendations for climate change innovations that may help global climate change.

• Summarise the key innovations proposed and how they align (or not) with ethical principles.

• Briefly address and potential challenges in implementing your main innovations.

Supporting resources 

The following resources will assist you with completing this assignment: 

• Visit the Student Hub's useful Study resources, specifically the Academic practice and Academic writing and presenting pages.

• For guidance on completing report, visit Understand assignments., and scroll down to Assignment types. 

• For guidance on conducting research and finding resources through the library, visit the Student Hub Research page.

• This assignment requires referencing in APA 7 style. For referencing support, use the APA style guide

As you’re finalising your draft, don’t forget that the Alvie Assignment Feedback Tool is available 24/7 to help you refine your grammar, referencing, writing style, and more. For more details, see 0.4 Assignments and support.