business Policies strategies

Assignment Objectives 1

Understand strategic planning terminology, concepts, theories and models.

1200-1500 words.

There are a number of well-known strategic planning models. To bring your team up to speed on the evolution of strategic planning itself, write a white paper of 1,200–1,500 words that addresses the following specific models of strategic planning:

•Michael Porter's Five Forces

•Adrian Slywotzky's Value Migration

•W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne's Blue Ocean Strategy

Using the Web resources provided and any others that you find, address the following in your white paper:

•Discuss the premise underlying each of the three models of strategic planning and the advantages that each brings to the process.

•Discuss how to apply or implement strategic planning using each of the methods.

•Discuss the pros and cons of each strategic planning method.

Select 1 of the models, and respond to the following questions:

•What methods could be used to ensure continuous process improvement in the organization from a production and operations management perspective?

•From a business finance or accounting perspective, how would you analyze the business and measure the effectiveness of your strategy so that you can make the best decisions for the organization?

•As a leader, how would you help the organizational structure and culture adapt to the changes that would result from this strategy (e.g., how you would empower teams, resolve conflicts, and motivate employees to support the changes from this strategy)?

•From a marketing perspective, what effect will the strategy have on your marketing plan; product differentiation, positioning, life cycle, and portfolio; and Internet or retail marketing to your customers?

•What human resource management changes will be necessary because of the strategy? Address each of the functions of human resources, including staffing, training and development, performance management, compensation, and employee relations.

Assignment Objectives 2

Develop the capacity to think strategically about a company, its business model and position within the industry, and the attainment of a competitive advantage.

Acquire skills in conducting strategy, developing strategic options, analyzing action alternatives, making strategic decisions, and effective policy and strategy implementation

Write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

You plan to hold a weekly breakfast meeting with your team of strategic planners to practice how to conduct a SWOTT analysis. For the upcoming week's breakfast meeting, you told your team that they should be prepared to conduct a SWOTT analysis of an organization in the consumer electronics industry.

Conduct a brief SWOTT analysis on any real organization in the consumer electronics industry. Provide a short introduction of the organization you chose, and describe the organization’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and trends.

•Strengths: The internal and external characteristics of a company that are stronger than its competitors.

•Weaknesses: The internal and external characteristics of a company that are weaker than its competitors.

•Opportunities: The issues internal and external to a company that can affect the company and its competitors in a favorable way.

•Threats: The issues internal and external to a company that can affect the company and its competitors in an unfavorable way.

•Trends: The internal and external patterns in the organization, market, or industry.

Assignment Objectives 14

Develop the capacity to think strategically about a company, its business model and position within the industry, and the attainment of a competitive advantage.

Acquire skills in conducting strategy, developing strategic options, analyzing action alternatives, making strategic decisions, and effective policy and strategy implementation .

Write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas:

You know that your team will be travelling to all of the different divisions of the corporation to assist in that division’s strategic planning. You want to impress on the group of strategic planners the importance of the concept of competitive advantage, and why it is important to conduct an industry analysis. For this week's meeting, you told your team that they should be prepared to discuss an industry analysis of the digital music distribution industry and competitive advantage. Complete the following:

•Identify the major competitors in the digital music distribution industry, and describe their sources of competitive advantage.

•Discuss at least 3 current issues that this industry faces (they could be favorable or unfavorable to the industry).

•Which of the major competitors has the strongest competitive advantage and ability to overcome the barriers presented by the current issues identified, and why?

Assignment Objectives 4

Understand strategic planning terminology, concepts, theories and models.

Develop the capacity to think strategically about a company, its business model and position within the industry, and the attainment of a competitive advantage.

Acquire skills in conducting strategy, developing strategic options, analyzing action alternatives, making strategic decisions, and effective policy and strategy implementation

Primary Task Response: The Discussion Board assignment for this week will be a review of the Key Assignment Outline from other students.

Note: The Key Assignment is listed in the Phase 5 Individual Project task description.

Your first task is to post your outline to the discussion area so that other students will be able to review your work. Attach your document to your main discussion post, and include any notes that you feel are appropriate in the post. The purpose of this assignment is to help improve the quality of your Key Assignment.

Assignment Objectives 5

Understand strategic planning terminology, concepts, theories and models.

Develop the capacity to think strategically about a company, its business model and position within the industry, and the attainment of a competitive advantage.

Acquire skills in conducting strategy, developing strategic options, analyzing action alternatives, making strategic decisions, and effective policy and strategy implementation.

Develop the ability to manage the organizational process by which policies and strategies are formed.

Enhance the ability to create results-oriented action plans and effective business policy

400-600

Summative Discussion Board

Review and reflect on the knowledge you have gained from this course. Based on your review and reflection, write at least three paragraphs on the following:

•What were the most compelling topics learned in this course?

•How did participating in discussions help your understanding of the subject matter? Is anything still unclear that could be clarified?

•What approaches could have yielded additional valuable information?

Assignment Objectives 5 individual Project

Understand strategic planning terminology, concepts, theories and models.

Develop the capacity to think strategically about a company, its business model and position within the industry, and the attainment of a competitive advantage.

Acquire skills in conducting strategy, developing strategic options, analyzing action alternatives, making strategic decisions, and effective policy and strategy implementation.

Develop the ability to manage the organizational process by which policies and strategies are formed.

Enhance the ability to create results-oriented action plans and effective business policy.

Key Assignment 1,000- 1,250

You have just been hired to the HBY company as its new Vice President of Strategic Planning. The corporation is a conglomerate with divisions in the film industry, theme park industry, digital music distribution industry, and mass merchandiser industry. The corporation has seen lackluster performance in recent years because its competitors seem to have a more effective strategy, and, at the same time, business and economic conditions have changed appreciably from what they were five years earlier.

Given the multibillion dollar size of the corporation and the fact that it is a conglomerate with a very diverse portfolio of companies in varying industries, the CEO whom you report to has already given you permission to hire a staff of recent MBAs to assist your efforts. You recently completed the interviewing and hired four people with minimal real business experience.

In coming months, you and your team will be creating a completely new—and, presumably, more effective—strategic plan. You plan to begin by holding a kick-off meeting with your team.

Deliverable Length: 1,000–1,250 words

To feel confident that all of the employees in your strategic planning team understand all that you have taught them, you require each to prepare a streamlined version of the key elements of a strategic plan. You require each employee to prepare the following sections of a strategic plan for any one of the corporation's four divisions:

•Mission and Vision statements (simply copying from an existing real company is unacceptable)

•SMART Goals and Objectives

•Industry analysis

•SWOTT analysis

•A perceptual map ◦Choose any criteria that you think are important to plot.

◦Explain why you picked the criteria.

The 4 corporate industries that each employee can pick from are the following:

•Film industry

•Theme park industry

•Mass merchandiser industry

•Digital music distributor industry

Your task is to create a plan, following the same parameters, that will be the sample standard your employees' submission should match.