COMM 1011 Assignment #2 requires searches in databases for newspaper / magazine articles and academic journal articles. The search tips below can help you do searches to find the best material.
We want your feedback! At the end of today's session, please fill out this quick survey so I can know if today's session was helpful and if we should change things for future sessions. Thank you! --Laura
Survey link: Survey in Mount Allison's Microsoft Forms app
1. Directors and officers of corporations owe their shareholders and corporations a fiduciary duty. Under the Canada Business Corporations Act (CBCA), directors and officers of Canadian corporations have two overarching duties. These duties are codified in section 122 of the CBCA.
(a) List both duties and explain them in your own words.
Tip: Go to CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute at canlii.org and search Canada Business Corporations Act under statutes. Use the Act's table of contents to quickly find Section 122. (You can also search this act online, but may face more scrolling to get to s. 122.)
Tip: APA does not provide comprehensive advice for citing Canadian legislation. CanLII provides a citation for this Act that you can use with a minor modification. Cite it this way: Canada Business Corporations Act, RSC 1985, c C-44. https://canlii.ca/t/56c7c
(b) Discuss one recent example in Canada or the U.S. (not earlier than 2020) where shareholders filed a lawsuit against the board of directors or individual board members of a corporation for breach of fiduciary duty. To support your position, cite evidence from articles found in the business magazines or newspapers found through the Library's news databases. (The news databases are Canadian Newsstream, CBCA, U.S. Newsstream, or Eureka. See A-Z List of Databases on Mount Allison Libraries’ website.)
Tip: Search CBCA, Canadian Newsstream and U.S. Newsstream at once by using ProQuest All and limiting source type to newspapers, magazines and websites. Remember to set your date limits:
Tip: Tweak your search by adding and changing words depending on results. E.g.:
Tip: Found an example of a company lawsuit through an Internet search? Search it in ProQuest All or Eureka to find news articles to cite.
Re: "Greenwashing", "Redwashing" and CSR
a. Define Greenwashing and Redwashing, and explain the difference between both in your own words.
Tip: Refer to your textbook for sections that discuss these concepts. If you paraphrase Sexty's explanations, be sure to include an APA citation.
b. Corporate redwashing is common in Indigenous communities across Canada. Some argue that corporations essentially use CSR to secure social licence from Indigenous communities. Provide a practical example in Canada. To support your position, cite evidence in two scholarly journal articles OR one scholarly journal article and one news article found through Novanet or the Commerce databases.
Tip: Try an Internet search to find examples of extractive industries engaged in "redwashing", and then search these examples in the ProQuest All database to find newspaper articles and scholarly journal articles. Other recommended databases to try: Taylor & Francis, Business Source Complete. Find the databases in the Library's A-Z List of Databases.
Tip: Try Novanet to crawl multiple databases. Limit to "peer reviewed".
Tip: Try the word "redwashing" in databases to see what you get (hint: there's a good academic article in Novanet!), but you will likely need to use other keywords. Articles about redwashing might not use that term.
Re: Fink's Anatomy of a Crisis
a. Choose a corporation and identify a crisis they may have experienced (list at least four stakeholders involved). Based on the stakeholder matrix mapping technique, identify two of the four categories of stakeholders and justify this categorization in your own words.
Tip: See Sexty textbook detailed information on Stakeholder Matrix Mapping and Identifying Stakeholders.
b. Discuss how the firm above navigated the four distinct phases of the crisis (based on Fink's framework). Support your analysis with four citations to discuss each phase of Fink's framework. You need four different sources; use a different source for your analysis of each phase. Permitted sources: business books, newspaper, magazine, and scholarly journal articles found in Novanet or the Commerce databases. One of your four sources may come from a website.
Tip: See page 53 in Sexty (LO 3.2) for Fink's Anatomy of a Crisis.
Tip: To start, try broad searches about your company and their issue (e.g., "Maple Leaf Foods" AND listeria) rather than using the words of Fink's phases. You will likely need to read about what happened and how the company responded and then use your understanding of the crisis and of Fink's framework to discuss how the firm navigated each phase.
Tip: Consider using a business book from Novanet to answer parts of this question. Examples:
Crisis Leadership by 
Crisis Management by 
Crisis Management by Apology by This assignment requires in-text citations when you refer to information you learned from the textbook, lectures, and other sources such as books, academic journal articles, and newspaper articles.
Commerce uses APA citation style.
Tip: Use citation generators within Novanet and databases, but always double check them because they often make mistakes.
Tip: Use APA's examples for how to format citations of books, journal articles, newspaper articles, websites, etc. found at the link below. (See "Textual Works" for journal and newspaper articles, even if they are online. See Online Media for websites and web pages.)
Tip: To cite class notes from Dr. Olayele's PowerPoint slides, follow the format listed on the APA website here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/powerpoint-references#2
Tip: To see where and how to place in-text citations, and how to format a list of references at the end of your assignment, see Purdue OWL's sample APA paper.