Final Project (Instructions)
Overview
You will, in the hypothetical role of a consultant to senior leadership, prepare and submit a business strategy study to the management of your selected organisation. This study, which will be contained in one document, is composed of two parts: (1) a detailed Business Strategy Report (which you complete first but will present last) and (2) a Strategy Recommendations and Evaluation Summary (which you will complete last but present first).
Your Business Strategy Report will provide an in-depth set of analyses, based on the organisation’s current strategic position. The report will also provide a comprehensive set of recommendations and action plans, with supporting reasoning and evidence. This cumulative report will be approximately 4000 words.
Your Strategy Recommendations and Evaluation Summary will distil and synthesize your work from your report into a 1000-word summarized version that will focus on calling out your recommendations and that will provide an evaluation of the strategy and its action plan details.
Thus, the Final Project paper will contain two major sections: the Strategy Recommendations and Evaluation Summary should come first, followed by the detailed Business Strategy Report (and its appropriate subsections). The combined work should be in the range of 5000 words
Selecting an Organisation
In selecting this company, you will need to ensure the following:
• Availability of information about the companies’ strategy, innovations, products, services and human resources mix
• Availability (with management’s permission) of staff members to discuss issues and challenges related to strategy and innovation
• Availability of key executives to provide you with information about the corporate culture and any innovation initiatives undertaken
• Access to the various functional areas of the organisation, including the information technology (IT) department, marketing department, human resources department, research and development (R&D) department (if existent) and other manufacturing or service departments
Note: You may select a non-profit or a non-governmental organisation (NGO) instead of a publicly listed company. Regardless of the organisation, you will need access to information and key leaders in order to complete the Final Project.
Contents
Your Final Project in this module consists of:
• Part 1: Business strategy report (5,000 words)
o Section 1: Strategy Recommendations and Evaluation Summary (1,000 words)
o Section 2: Business Strategy Report (4,000 words)
You will prepare a business strategy report that will follow this general outline:
• Section 1: Strategy Recommendations and Evaluation Summary (1,000 words)
In this section, distil and synthesize your work from your detailed business report in Section 2 into a powerful, persuasive version that will focus on calling out your recommendations and that will provide an evaluation of the strategy and its action plan details. Remember, your audience is the senior leadership team and you must write your summary to persuade them to accept your recommendations.
• Section 2: Business Strategy Report (4,000 words )
Imagine that you are the business consultant of your chosen organisation and you are requested to prepare a comprehensive business strategy report for the top management team.
• Appendices (New)
Include any supporting documentation that you believe is required in this section. This documentation may include organisational data, historical information, additional information on tools, or any other information that would be pertinent in support of your proposed solution.
• References
Include all references with appropriate formatting in the Harvard Referencing Style.
Please note:
• Students should recognise that assignment submissions that fall outside these parameters may be marked down, since the quality of the assignment is likely to suffer accordingly.
• All citations in your report should be supported with appropriate literature sources. These should appear in Harvard format in your References section at the end of your report.
• Critical analysis of organisational strategy and innovation (80%)
• Writing and presentation style (20%)
GUIDELINES
• Examine the mission, vision and objectives of several organisations and select the company that best meets the requirements described in the Final Project Guidelines. This may be the company that you work for, or another organisation with which you are familiar and in which you are interested. To find an appropriate organisation, you may want to consider a publically traded firm listed on one of your country’s stock exchanges since their annual reports and other communications will be readily available. If you anticipate problems due to confidentiality or intellectual property concerns, select a different company.
• Consider how strategic intent can lead to sustainable competitive advantage.
• Also consider how an organisation’s posture towards CSR can affect its long-term opportunities.
• Briefly describe the company you selected, its products and services, market and niche.
• Conduct a thorough and well-argued analysis of your selected organisation’s strategic intent posture that provides evidence that the organisation either has, or does not have, a strong strategic-intent posture.
• Be sure to explain the strategic implications of your analysis and speculate on what this strong strategic intent posture could bring to the organisation in terms of future strategic direction and choices.
• Be sure to support your assignment with evidence from credible sources.
• Evaluate the CSR and mission/vision and values of the organisation by conducting on-line research of secondary sources (annual reports, magazine and journal articles, etc.) and answering the following questions as an analyst, making sure to document your sources:
o What is the fundamental purpose of the organisation (apart from ‘making money’), why does it exist and what problems does it solve in the world?
o How would customers and other major stakeholders react if this company were to go bankrupt next year? Would it matter? Why or why not?
o Has the company been consistent and true towards it purpose and vision over the years? Is it consistent now?
o Since ‘actions speak louder than words’, has the company said it valued its human resources and then cut back or laid off many workers in a time of retrenchment? Is this a historical pattern?
o Has senior leadership demonstrated a willingness to give-back in times of organisational stress?
o How many CEOs, COOs and CFO’s has the company had in the past 10 years?
o Is leadership stable and forward looking?
o Are organisation-wide goals stated merely in terms of market growth or financial outcomes for a year or two?
o Does the organisation have a long-term, ambitious strategic intent? Note: Review and integrate the Hamel & Prahalad (2005) concepts into this answer.
o Is it clear where the company would like to be in the long-term?
o What must the organisation do differently to achieve its long-term intentions?
• Once you have conducted your research and have responded with detailed evidence and documentation, take a look at all of your answers and identify the major implications, in terms of strategic analysis.
o Remember, an implication is the conclusion that can be drawn from something, although it is not explicitly stated. In this case, you as the analyst should review all of your answers to the questions and write a ‘what does it mean?’ summary. This summary will help you as you move into new areas of analysis-- and eventually this summary along with others will be used to craft your Final Project.
• Review the Readings and, in particular, examine the articles by Eccles and Serafeim (2013) and Kim and Mauborgne (2004) and the case studies for the unit.
• Search the the online business press for articles on the company you selected for your Final Project that are related to its strategic innovation and sustainability strategies (including ESG issues).
• Conduct a brief, well-argued analysis of the past 5 to 10 years of strategic innovation actions by your selected company (particularly relative to core competitors), which explains the evolution of the company through the lenses of both traditional and blue ocean innovative strategy frameworks.
o Based on your analysis, provide a convincing argument on how well prepared you think your company is to create new strategic innovation actions or to respond to competitor’s innovations. Be sure to clearly argue how you’ve reached your conclusions and why you think they are appropriate. (Note: approximately 250 words)
• Conduct a thorough and well-argued ‘performance frontier’ analysis which evaluates how well the company you have selected for your Final Project has done in the past five years in terms of ESG sustainability innovations and organisational improvements. Consider an in-depth examination of the company through the core questions that Eccles and Serafeim (2013: 53) outline:
o Have they identified which ESG issues are most critical in their business?
o Have they quantified the financial impact that such improvements would have (had)?
o Have they undertaken major innovation in products, processes and business models to achieve the improvements?Which ones, and which stakeholders benefited?
o Have they communicated with stakeholders about those innovations? Who were the winners and/or losers that the innovations impacted?
o Did the company break down barriers to change or change its incentive systems? Did it exhibit ‘strategic intent’ on these issues, as Hamel and Prahalad (2005) treat the topic?
• Be sure to identify the implications for future competitiveness, based on your analysis above.
• Review the Readings and, in particular, examine the articles by Collis and Rukstad (2008), Mitchell et al. (2011) and Reeves et al. (2012).
• Search the UoRL Library and the business press for scholarly sources and articles on the company you selected for your Final Project. Review resources that are related to its strategic position statements, any inferential information on its recent strategies and current strategic plan.
• Conduct a thorough and well-argued strategy and strategic position evaluation which evaluates your selected company’s recent and current strategy, either based on explicit information directly addressing strategy or based on inferential and circumstantial analysis of general information. Use the following questions to guide your analysis and summary:
o Is your organisation’s strategy and the specific action plans it has put in motion, consistent, and do all the elements align to support each other? How and why?
o Are the activities, skills, competencies and capabilities of your company tailored to suppor its strategy? How and why?
o Is the organisation’s strategy, and the specific action plan steps it has taken, consonant with the current and future needs of the external ecosystem and stakeholder needs? How and why?
o Is the organisation’s strategy, and the specific action plan steps it thas taken, feasible, given current and future investments? If not, what would make it feasible, and how can the company reach the stretch goal (intent)?
o Does your company’s strategy lead to incremental change within the industry, or more fundamental change within the industry, or does it establish new positions outside the industry or in blue ocean spaces? How and why is the scope of your company’s strategy the most appropriate?
o Does your company’s strategy preserve any advantages of the company? Which advantages, and how and why?
o Does your company’s strategy position the company to perform activities differently than rivals do? How and why?
o Has the company identified trade-offs and limitations of its strategic action plan? What are they and why?
• Examine and critically review the peer and faculty feedback that was offered during the Shared Activity.
• Review the Readings and, in particular, examine the works by Porter (2008) and Pitt and Koufopoulos (2012: Chapter 3).
• Review the Tools for Your Strategic Thoughts document and consider how to best deploy them. You are not required to use the pre-designed templates, but you will be responsible for a robust and complete analysis with implications clearly stated.
• Consider the implications of the articles by Nandakumar, et al. (2010) and Andrews and Morgen (2013) as you develop the final draft of your Individual Assignment.
• Examine and critically incorporate peer and Faculty Member feedback offered during the Shared Activity to modify and improve your general ecosystem and stakeholder analysis work.
o Note: This draft is not meant to be a wholesale but rather an inclusion of any important changes based on peer feedback recently given.
• Conduct a thorough and well-argued competitive forces analysis (focusing on the Porter (2008) framework and work by Pitt and Koufopoulos (2012: Chapter 3).
• Examine and critically review the peer and faculty feedback that was offered during the Shared Activity.
• Review the Readings and, in particular, examine the VRIOS framework and internal value chain information in Pitt and Koufopoulos (2012: Chapter 5).
• Review the SCOT Analysis document and consider how to best deploy it. You are not required to use the pre-designed templates, but you will be responsible for a robust and complete analysis with implications clearly stated.
• Prepare a table in Word that replicates Figure 5.3 on page 138 in Pitt and Koufopoulos (2012: Chapter 5). Rather than just using the phrase ‘distinctive capability’ as the left hand column, use the following category boxes, in this order from top to bottom:
o Skills: 1, 2, 3, and so on (i.e. core individuals in the organisation who bring distinct value to it)
o Competencies and capabilities: 1, 2, 3, and so on (i.e. work-groups, functional units, discrete activities), as ordered by a detailed rendering of the organisation’s value-chain activities
o Other strategic assets
• Using the table to organise your thoughts, make a detailed VRIOS evaluation of the skills, competencies and capabilities and other strategic assets of the organisation that you selected for your Final Project. Use the A through D scale shown in the figure.
• Be sure to explain what the strategic implications of your analysis are and how the set of implications limits or shapes your strategic recommendations.
• Be sure to identify specific future strategy actions and recommendations based on your evaluation of options and to provide a basic defense of why your recommended actions are the most appropriate.