Strategic Management Program Assignment

Assessment: Project Report (Weightage 100%, Project of 4000 Words Max)

Assignment Requirement

For this assignment you can choose your organization where you are currently working or where you have worked earlier. If you are choosing any other organization it has to be one about which you have firsthand knowledge so as to fulfill the requirements of the assignment. You will write a Report on the chosen organization’s strategic management changes that it wants to incorporate, to find answers to certain questions set up in the main assignment task given below. 

The assignment will have the following important components/steps:

1. Analyze  the current vision, mission, objectives and existing strategy of the organization
2. Conduct a  detailed environmental analysis using the tools in the modules and identify the environmental challenges and possible opportunities
3. Identify an important environmental challenge and discuss the possible impact of it on the organization and its stakeholders
4. Create a strategy using tools learned to overcome this challenge and discuss how you would implement it in your organization.
5. Discuss the various challenges you would face in the implementation and discuss how you would improve innovation as well as make effective use of change management principles.

Assignment Task

Suggested Report Format

Executive Summary (10 marks) – The Executive Summary content should not be more than one A4 page size. It will contain briefly all important elements of discussion brought about in your report. 

1. Introduction

1 1.Introduction to the company (5 marks) - Here you can give a current brief of your organization including vision ,mission, strategic objectives, product/services offered, regions served ,revenues, employee size etc.

1.2 Current Business Scenario (10 marks) - How is the company faring in the current changing business scenario? Analyze its competitors and how the company ranks among them. Critically evaluate strengths and weaknesses and core competencies? Identify and discuss the specific sources of its competitive advantage. Use a minimum of 2 models /tools such as Miles and Snow typologies, VRIO model, Porter’s 5 forces and Business portfolio analysis, to critically analyze and describe current strategies of the organization to control external challenges. Evaluate how is its current strategy affecting organizational performance? Analyze the organizational design as well as lifecycle and how it affects the organizational performance.

2. Environmental Analysis and need for change (15 marks) –

           Using a minimum of 2 relevant tools/models (PESTLE, Environmental Uncertainty Model, SWOT and Scenario planning) conduct an environmental analysis and critically analyse impact of key factors the organization will have to consider in order to ensure its success. Evaluate how effective was your organization’s response to these environmental factors.  

3. Strategy Identification and implementation

 3.1. Strategy to overcome challenge/s (10 marks) – Apply minimum any two strategy formulation tools to design a business strategy for your organization and discuss the success factors that will be critical to organizational success.

3.2 Implementation of strategy (15 marks) – Prepare a plan of how would you implement this strategy? Critically evaluate some of the possible consequences (positive and negative) of how will the change management principles be useful for handling the shift in strategy during implementation? Also, carry out a critical discussion on how would you improve innovation and readiness to change in your organization?

4. Leadership Values to Manage Strategic Change

4.1 Leadership styles and Organizational Performance (20 marks) – Does adopting different leadership styles affect organizational performance? Critically analyze and discuss using academic articles on how different leadership styles in your organization will affect the organization’s performance and effectiveness to manage the strategic change they want to implement. How would it retain or change the organization’s corporate values? What could the leadership do to fulfill some its corporate social responsibilities? You can bring in various debates and insights academic articles as well as include your own experiences in the work place to discuss the impact and effectiveness of the various leadership styles. You are expected to refer only peer reviewed journal articles (5-8) for your analyses and for supporting your statements.  

4.2 Recommendations (5 marks) – Give out your recommendations of changes you envisage and the corporate values you need to incorporate to effectively implement these changes in your chosen organization.

5. Conclusions (5 marks) - Summarize the strategic management issues including the solution. Analyze the possible limitations of the strategy identified and main assumptions that drove the new strategy formulation process. Discuss briefly how the strategy identified is the best, given the context.

6. Presentation & References (5 marks) - You should present the whole report written well in a good format, and which makes good use the Harvard Referencing System (HRS).