Mgmt Homework Help (Proven Sterling) ONLY

This week, you have another individual report. You should assess the internal factors of the company for which you work.  I won't have comments on the Week 3 discussion completed until later this week, but the material prior to the discussion and below should provide some help with this next individual assignment.  However, be prepared to review your work based on my discussion comments before you submit it next week.

You will review the organization's internal capabilities in this paper, and their external environment in another shortly.  Strategy is crafted as a response to internal capabilities and external factors.  Soon we will look at strategic options.  For example, you will learn about Porter's 5 forces and how they define the competitive environment for an industry.  Each force represents a threat to profits.  One way to look at strategy (Porter's way) is as a defense against the dominant force(s) in the competitive environment, a defense that makes the best use of internal resources.  You can look at this the other way around - why choose one strategy over another? The answer is that it is the best response to the conditions at hand.

When you get to writing about an organization's strategy it is important to look at not just WHAT they are doing, but WHY they are doing it.  This concern is relevant for the strategy of any organization.  It may be presented in the text with reference to a profit-making firm, but non-profits and public sector organizations have the same issue to address.  If you are writing about a non-profit or a public sector firm, it might be difficult to think in terms of competition.  Don't worry about that.  With public and non-profit sector organizations, think about value rather than profit.   Look at their mission, look ahead to their vision, and then examine the objectives in between.  Look at what the organization is doing, whether it can get them to their vision, and think about the forces that can affect their work.  When you have a good idea of what they are doing, then ask yourself why are they doing it this way?  A related question is how else they could proceed, given the forces at hand.  After this sort of examination, it is good to return to the idea of competition, but even here it helps to revise traditional perspectives.  Instead of asking how an organization competes, think instead about what makes it distinctive.

But remember, don't just observe (that's the WHAT), explain (that's the WHY).  Back to internal capabilities, the issue is distinction.  Given the mission and the vision, given objectives that operationalize these determinations, what resources does the organization in question have and how are they deployed.

Now, here is something important.  Do not refer to "strategies", as in the organization has several strategies.  Strategy is singular.  Some of our course material takes a different approach, but I recommend that you think about it in this way.  Think in these terms - strategy is an organizing principle.  Strategy provides cohesion, it gets everyone and every division working in sync with common goals (mission, vision, values, etc.)  An organization may implement their strategy with several tactics.  Think in terms of strategy as a unifying force for an organization, one that reconciles internal capabilities, external forces, and purpose.  Also, think in terms of strengths and weaknesses here, but not in terms of opportunities and threats.  The former are internal, the current area of study.  The latter are external, and that comes next.  Finally, strategy is not really the issue in the current investigation, capability is the focus.  Later, knowing mission, vision, objectives, internal capability, and the external environment we then assess strategy.

It's really not as complicated as it seems.  Just take this one topic at a time and consider how each build on what precedes it.  Let me know if you have questions.