Assignment 1 (1000 words) 20 20 12 August 2013
Choose an organisation that you have some basic familiarity with. It could be the organisation you are currently working for or one you have had a lot of experience with for example.
The strategic positioning of your chosen organisation is a central issue for its senior managers. As you know from your readings, strategic positioning has two important themes: strategic potential and organisational ambitions (page 46 of your text – 9th edition).
You are asked by the management to do an analysis of that organisation’s current strategic potential. But before you can undertake that task, you are required to write a paper that provides some background for such an analysis.
Hence for assignment 1, you are required to:
Identify the sort of information you believe to be essential and relevant to the analysis and then critically discuss what you think are the appropriate tools of analysis that would deliver the information fundamental to such an analysis.
The following are some notes to assist with interpreting the requirements of this assignment:
• You can use essay format to respond to this requirement.
• Most major organisations have a deal of information and news items about them on the Web so you should be able to construct sufficient context for your case study organisation. It is advisable that you don’t select a small organisation where such an analysis may not be appropriate.
• In order to provide some context for your answer, you can put the basic description of your case in the appendix. The appendix does not count in the word count.
• You must make clear what strategic potential is in relation to your organisation.
• The subject of strategic management describes many tools of analysis to provide information for specific purposes. You will be demonstrating your understanding of those purposes in your critical discussion of them.
• Critical discussion relates to your analysis and critique of the various tools – the ‘what’ and the ‘why’ aspects in particular. Don’t forget the identification of the essential information also requires some rationale for your selection. It is easy to make a statement such as ‘I would use SWOT analysis’ but in a critical discussion it is the ‘why’ or rationale for your selection that is more important to demonstrating your understanding of strategic potential. Your understanding can also be demonstrated by pointing out why some tools of analysis are not appropriate.
• Please note, you are not required to do the actual analysis.
• Use the discussion forum on the study desk for this course assignment to raise questions and make comment about these requirements.
• Make sure you study the marking criteria for this assignment very carefully because this is the template for assessing and grading your submitted assignment. The marking criteria sheet is provided below.
• You are required to have a minimum of 10 references to support your critical discussion.
• Don’t forget, you must submit your Turnitin report when you submit your assignment file. Hence, you will be submitting two files on submission day.
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