You can choose any organization for the purposes of this assignment, including not-for-profit organizations. You must ensure, however, that you are able to obtain sufficient information and data about the organisation in order to be able to undertake a sufficiently convincing analysis and evaluation within your assignment. Your starting point will probably be information published by the organization itself but investigate other sources, particularly for quoted companies. The organisation you choose must be large enough to have a realistic range of possible alternative strategies to pursue in the future, and therefore very small businesses will probably not be appropriate. Very large businesses may well be too complex for you to undertake meaningful analysis within the word constraints available to you, and therefore selecting a part (e.g. a division) of such an organization may be appropriate. Using the organization that you work for is often an appropriate selection but ensure that you maintain a sufficiently objective and dispassionate view of that organisation.
This is not a data-gathering exercise. You will need to have a minimum amount of data and information about the organization you choose, but it is the use of that data and information on which you will be assessed. You will need to use a range of academic models and frameworks to systematically analyze that data and information in order to produce convincing conclusions.
Task 1
a) Critically analyze the environment facing YourOrg and identify the central issues confronting YourOrg resulting from that analysis.
b) Critically analyze the strategic capability of your org, and identify the central issues facing YourOrg resulting from that analysis.
c) Critically analyze the organizational culture of your org, and identify the central features of the organizational culture that will influence the selection and implementation of the future strategy of the organization.
d) Critically analyze the stakeholders involved with YourOrg, and identify the central issues confronting YourOrg from that analysis.
Task 2
Making use of appropriate analytical frameworks, identify and critically evaluate the strategy that you consider YourOrg should pursue in the future.
Task 3
Critically evaluate the alternative approaches to managing ONE issue associated with the implementation or management of change arising from the strategy you identified in Task2.
Guidance
You should apply academic concepts and frameworks from the relevant literature at all stages to help you analyze yours. It is not enough to just describe your org, its strategies, and site links to a website. You must provide organizational context but ensure it is analyzed through the application of relevant literature, models, and frameworks.
You will probably find it useful, when completing the assignment, to refer to the following diagrammatic model of Strategic Management:
Task 1:
Do not attempt to include a full PEST analysis, a full 5-Forces analysis, stakeholder analysis, value chain analysis, cultural web analysis, etc., etc., in your assignment. Undertake those pieces of analysis yourself, and provide the key outcomes from those analyses. Key outcomes are the important conclusions from the various pieces of analysis which will – or should – have an impact on the future strategy of YourOrg. This means not mechanically going through all the various models and frameworks, but focusing on the important outcomes from those models and frameworks in terms of the
implications for the future strategy of your org, and explaining and justifying why you believe those to be the most important outcomes.
Task 2:
The overall approach for this Task is similar to Task 1. Select the models, frameworks, and concepts that are most useful to the analysis of your org, and emphasize – again – the conclusions and implications from those models, frameworks, and concepts. Your aim is to produce a convincing identification of the ‘preferred’ strategy for the organization, building upon your analysis of the various elements of the strategic position of the organization in
Task 1.
You do not need to include coverage of all five elements of the “Strategic Choices” circle in the diagram above, since some may well not be relevant to your org. You should, however, be clear on why you are not including discussion on any elements that you omit. To ensure that you undertake a convincing evaluation of the strategy you are recommending YourOrg should pursue it. Do this systematically, using an appropriate
framework. You may find it useful to identify one or more alternative strategies for YourOrg, so that you can demonstrate that your recommended strategy is, indeed, the most appropriate.
Task 3:
For this Task, you need to ensure that you select just one issue associated with the implementation, or the change management, of your recommended strategy for YourOrg. It might be the case, for example, that your recommended strategy involves a merger or takeover, and therefore your selected issue could be the effective integration of that organization. Whatever issue you select, ensure that it is associated with either the implementation of the change management resulting from the recommended strategy and then critically evaluate the alternative approaches to managing that issue. You should aim to identify the most appropriate approach and justify why it is the most appropriate approach. You should make use of appropriate academic concepts, models, and frameworks through which to analyze the issue you select and convincingly identify the most appropriate approach to managing that issue