Individual Reflective Essay

Assessment 2. Group Project Report # Form of Assessment Size ILO’s Weighting Feedback Submission

date

2

Project Report –

Project Group

3500

words

1-6 & 8 20% Written tutor 12/3/21

Assignment 2 for the BEM3033 module requires you, as a group of 4 – 6 students, to choose a company to study and to obtain enough information about it to carry out a detailed analysis. In each seminar session, we will ask you to collect and analyse information relating to the material discussed in that week’s lecture. By completing these seminar activities, you will gain a clearer idea of the overall strategic management process and a detailed understanding of the organisation you have chosen. This, in turn, will help you in producing a quality report on the organisation you choose to investigate. Assessment/Learning Objectives:

 Diagnose an organisation’s situation by critically analysing its external and internal environments.

 Apply a range of module theories and frameworks for describing and setting an organisational direction.

 Evaluate different strategic options using objective criteria to support and justify recommended decisions and use these skills in case study discussions to research real world organisations.

 Discuss how strategy is delivered and the implementation tools and techniques which are used in different contexts.

 Develop strategic analyses based on case material, desk research and research in the marketplace.

 Explain the difference between complex but tractable problems and truly wicked or soft problems.

 Demonstrate team working skills.

 Manage time efficiently in preparing for learning activities and to work independently within a limited timeframe to complete a specified task.

Process.

1. The first step in this process is to pick a company to study. Remember that we will be asking you for information about the corporate and international strategies of your company as well as its structure. So, we strongly recommend that you pick a company for which such information is likely to be available.

There are two approaches that can be used to select a company to study (see below). Your seminar tutor will help you decide which one to follow.

2. The second step is to decide on the perspective your project group will adopt. This is important as it helps to provide a context to your research and the underlying discussion throughout your report. It may be that you choose adopt the perspective of an external consultant who will be looking at the suitability of the organisation possible a merger or acquisitions. Alternatively, it could be that you adopt the perspective of an internal project group charged with the responsibility of identifying new growth platforms for the business. Whatever perspective you adopt, please discuss this with your seminar tutor.

3. Once you have decided on the perspective to be taken, apply a range of strategic

and analytical tools to determine the strength of the organisation’s position in relation to its intended aims.

4. Provide a discussion of your findings, highlighting what you consider to be the most

salient aspects of your observations. Here, the value of your discussion will be in the way you synthesise the different aspects of your analysis and the depth of discussion. The depth of discussion will be a reflection of the level of engagement your project group will have had with your chosen organisation.

5. Provide a conclusion which establishes a vision of the future of your chosen organisation. Use as much of the evidence generated in your report to support your vision.

6. Finally, produce a list of recommendations that will present the organisation with an outline strategy for achieving that vision. Your recommendations should also include the key performance indicators that will help the organisation monitor its progress and development towards the achievement of that vision.

Please make sure you comply with and effectively use the APA referencing system when citing sources. Turnitin is a tool which the teaching team use to identify academic offences such as plagiarism.

Selecting a Company to Research. Approach 1 The first approach is to pick a well-known company that has a lot of information written about it. For example, large publicly held companies such as BNP Paribas, Tesco, Microsoft, and Alibaba are routinely covered in the business and financial press. By searching the University of Exeter library databases (see below), you should be able to track down a great deal of information on such companies. These databases will enable you to identify any article that has been written in the business press on the company of your choice within the past few years. You can filter UoE library A-Z databases list to just those categorised as Business, and further narrow it down by type of database or vendor:

https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/az.php?s=123462 Or the following link will take you to the business subject libguide: https://libguides.exeter.ac.uk/business. We use, for example, Statista for information on global industries and markets. Factiva is an excellent source of information on individual companies, their financials and senior executives along with recent news articles. Other popular sources include (but are not limited to) the following: American Consumer Culture APA PsycInfo Chatham House Online Archive China: Trade, Politics & Culture Economist Economist Historical Archive Emerald Insight Europa European Sources Online Factiva – my personal favourite! Fame Financial Times Historical Archive Ft.com Henry Stewart Talks: The Marketing and Management Collection IBFD Tax Research Platform JSTOR Market Research & American Business, 1935-1965 MarketLine Advantage Mintel Nexis UK Orbis Oxford Handbooks Passport GMID Sage Business Cases Sage Knowledge Statista ScienceDirect Sustainable Organization Library Transportation Research Information Services Wharton Research Data Services Most SEC forms (10-K) submitted by public companies in the USA can now be accessed from Internet-based financial sites, such as Yahoo!’s finance site (www.finance.yahoo.com) or the SEC itself. Approach 2 A second approach is to choose a smaller company in your city or town to study. Although small companies are not routinely covered in the national business press, they may be covered in the local press. More important, this approach can work well if the management of the company will agree to talk to you at length about the strategy and structure of the company. If you happen to know somebody in such a company or if you have worked there

at some point, this approach can be very worthwhile. However, we do not recommend this approach unless you can get a substantial amount of guaranteed access to the company of your choice. If in doubt, ask your instructor before making a decision. The primary goal is to make sure that you have access to enough interesting information to complete a detailed and comprehensive analysis.