FINALESSAY
EFN505 (FINANCE RISK MANAGEMENT)
[25 MARKS OUT OF 100 MARKS TOTAL]
TASK
“To Philosophize: tospeculateortheorize,usuallyinasuperficialorimprecisemanner; tothinkorreasonasaphilosopher.”
Philosophy has too often been criticised as being self-indulgent, and solelythe pursuit of those people living inivory towers with too much time on their hands. The character Callicles in one of Plato’s stories suggests that philosophyis,moreor less,child’s play: fit to entertain youths, and hardly a decent pursuit for serious adults.
Whilst this may be an accurate reflection of those who do not need to act on their beliefs (no ‘skin in the game’ so to speak), others whoare forced tomake the hard decisions I life may well think about this differently.
Indeed, philosophy pursues twocritical questions: “What is true?” and “What is right (the value I put upon something)?” Business people ask themselves these questionsevery day in a business context. For example, “Are these sales figures accurate?”, “Given our sales, where should we invest next?”, “What can go wrong?”, “What don’t we understand well enough?”
Unfortunately, in the typical business schoolwe only meetthe ‘traditional’ philosopher. These philosophers have ignored the real world because it’s messy. Results from their philosophical enquiry are seldom incorporated into real-world things, instead they are incorporated into the process of inventinga make-belief world of plentiful assumptions.However, asking yourself questions about a make-belief world—is hopelessly outdated.
David, David, & David (2011) note that very little is taught in business schools that will actually have value to the corporate world. According to Belkin (2017): “A survey by PayScale Inc., an online pay and benefits researcher, showed 50% of employers complain that college graduates they hire aren’t ready for the workplace. Their No. 1 complaint? Poor critical-reasoning skills.”
Title: “The most practical thing you will ever do.”
Subtitle: “About philosophy and surviving in the AI (real) world.”
Your essay should notextend beyond 1200 words and must be uploaded as a Microsoft Word document (StudentName_StudentNumber.docx) on Blackboard by the due date. References (I am happy with none) should appear in endnotes to the essay.
Your submission must include a one-page (maximum) self-reflection where you reflect on your learning experience when writing this piece, such as difficulties in sourcing and assimilation of literature, critical thinking and forming your thoughts on an issue.This will help us in judging your efforts in writing.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
The aim of writing the opinion piece is for you to develop your critical thinking skills in finance. Critical thinking is “the ability to develop a capacity to reason logically and cohesively.”It refers to the capacity to carry out a set of logical operations, to evaluate categories and forms of knowledge in order to determine their validity. Hence, critical thinking builds your capacity to apply theoretical concepts to practice. Critical thinking mayalso be defined as “the ability to question and challenge existing knowledge.”It is about identifying and challenging assumptions and exploring and imagining alternative solutions. It is also about understanding the nature of our thinking and the meaning of knowledge.
The taskset in this exercise requires you to collect, organise and carefully weigh up the information you have collected. Doing so you will have applied your critical evaluation skills and have started to form an opinion. When writing the opinion piece you will need to supply logical arguments and evidence that support your opinion in an attempt to persuade the readers your thoughts are worthy of attention. If you find this is not the case, you are not yet finished writing. It is about your ability to question fundamental knowledge and though processes and correcting mistakes in defining what to do and how to do it better.
The CRA for this assessment piece is available on Blackboard.