ASSIGNMENT 1 - TITLE: Strategic Analysis
All work submitted must adhere to the University Policy on ‘Cheating, Collusion and Plagiarism'
You must not submit an assignment that analyses the mobile phone industry and or a mobile phone company.
Task:
You are required to submit an individual report of 3,000 ± 10% words, on the Business Strategy of a major publicly listed organisation in Singapore. The strategic analysis should focus on a strategic business unit (SBU). This usually means one SBU in a publicly listed corporation. Undertake the following tasks:
• Describe briefly the background information of the organization selected. This information should be relevant to the discussion of your assignment and thus may include ownership, history, size, business scope, major products/services, and major markets of the organisation selected.
• Conduct a macro-environment analysis for the industry within which the business organization operates. Emphases should be placed on the understanding of the purpose of this analysis, the interconnectedness of the different environmental factors, and their overall impact, in terms of key opportunities and threats, on the industry. Draw your conclusion based on your analyses;
• Carry out an industry or competitive analysis using Porter's 5 forces model. Again, you are also required to pay attention to the purpose of this analysis, the inter-connectedness of different aspects of the competitive forces, the links between the competitive forces and macro-environment, and their overall impact on the industry and the organization selected in terms of main driving forces in the competitive environment.
• Identify core competences of the organization. Justify why the competences identified can be regarded as core competence for the organization based on the four criteria covered during the workshops. You can use the activity mapping technique to logically reason out the skills and resources that support the key activities, which underpins the reasons for success.
• Describe the content of the current business strategy deployed by the organization through:
- Identifying and briefly discussing the contents of the business strategy; and
- Explaining how the strategy has been identified (i.e., is it intended as a written document (as a plan), or emergent as a pattern of decision-making/activities/behaviours (you can use value chain analysis to help identify the patterns of the organisation's activities and processes.
• Evaluate the suitability of the strategy identified in the light of the outcomes of your analyses on the environment (both macro and industry environments), and the organization's core competence.
• Provide recommendations accordingly.
The report must be written in a recognised style, i.e. table of contents, introduction, main analysis, conclusions, recommendations, references and bibliography. You must apply the Harvard system of referencing in your report.
Objectives
To analyse a business policy or strategic management topic, to carry out individual research or evaluation of an organization.
Requirements
Meet the learning outcomes listed above, identify and critically analyse fundamental issues related to strategic management. Undertake a study that shows clear evidence of synthesis and evaluation.
Assessment Criteria
Your seminar tutor on the basis of the following general criteria will assess the paper:
• Content - the quality of research and analysis undertaken and the use of initiative in finding sources of information;
• Process - the quality and clarity of the assignment and your ability to demonstrate command over the subject area and the development of a case or argument;
• Discretion - additional credit may be awarded to a student who tackles a difficult subject well.
The assignment will be graded for individuals on the basis of the specific criteria outlined on the following page.