Summative Assessment
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summative_assignment_2016.docxUnit Assessment
Summative Assessment
The Strategic Management unit is assessed by a written assignment and an examination.
1. Individual coursework assignment (50% of the mark for the unit)
Assignment Brief
To complete this assignment you must produce a 1500 word research essay analysing an organisation of your choice. The word count excludes the bibliography.
This assessment task is a research essay to see how well you can apply the concepts of the module to a 'real-life' organisation. What you need to do early on is to select an organisation - either domestic or international - for detailed analysis. The organisation may be of any size.
Having selected an organisation your task is to identify the key strategic issues facing that organisation as it seeks to generate and sustain competitive advantage. Those issues will be both internal and external and may include issues such as innovation, supply chain management, low-cost production, strategic alliances, the creation and protection of key resources and capabilities, the threat of new entrants and substitutes and so on. We would expect most organisations to have to focus on more than one key strategic issue and these issues are normally linked, for example, the threat of new entrants may be forcing a firm to diversify or to reduce the cost of its operations.
The expectation is that the essay is based on secondary research, information drawn from newspapers, websites and journal articles. If you do undertake primary research i.e. talking directly to the organisation (e.g. through interviews with organisational members) then it is your responsibility to maintain appropriate levels of confidentiality.
Selecting an Organisation
Your first task is to select the organisation you will study. You may choose from any sector of the economy and from any country. The only conditions are that it must exist and be currently trading, it must have enough history for you to be able to analyse its current situation, and you may not choose any of the organisations that are the subject of cases studied in class. Be very wary also of choosing a case you might have studied in another unit, such as marketing, as the focus of your analysis is likely to be based in that subject and not in strategy.
It makes sense to choose an organisation that provides enough public information for you to carry out your analysis, such as annual reports and an informative website. It might also make sense if the organisation is well known enough that stories are published in the business and general press (e.g. The Financial Times, The Economist, or specialist papers like The Third Sector, which reports on charities in the UK). You might want to think beyond the usual suspects of car manufacturers, airlines, phone and computer companies and major retail outlets. In past years, students have investigated a wide range of less obvious organisations including: Bristol Zoo, Little Chef, Greenpeace, Foxconn, Yeo Valley, and ITV. The most important thing, however, is to identify an organisation that has a strategic issue it has to deal with – the more clearly identifiable this is, the better. Falling demand or increased competition because of the recession will be something that affects many organisations, but falling demand or increased competition because of, for example, disruptive technologies, poor management, or a major image problem is more likely to need a specific strategic response and so will help focus your analysis and recommendations. Similarly, an organisation might be in possession of a resource or capability advantage that it could exploit in a new market, but for some reason is not doing so.
Be wary of choosing large corporations with many divisions operating in several markets and with several competitive positions; it is difficult to carry out any useful analysis at this level. It may be possible to pick a division of a bigger firm which has had enough published about them but do check this out before committing yourself, and you should know that in past years such choices have typically been less successful. The problem with most corporate groups is that their accounts are consolidated so you would be unable to carry out the all-important resource analysis, and web pages and so on do not provide sufficient divisional information so it is difficult to get market, competitor and competitive advantage data. If in doubt, consult your class tutor.
Formative Feedback
To help you prepare your assignment I allow you to hand in a draft of your assignment which we will review and provide feed-back. You will NOT get a formal mark at this point, simply written feed-back which you can then reflect on when writing the final version. You do not have to provide a draft if you do not want to. If you do take up the opportunity of handing in a draft of the assignment at the point of final marking you will not receive additional feed-back only a mark. Those students who did not hand-in a draft will receive both feed-back and a final mark on their work. If you choose to change the organisation you wish to study as a result of the draft feed-back I will not provide an additional draft feed-back opportunity, nor will you receive feed-back on the final version of the assignment.
Drafts of your assignment should be handed to the PG office on the Thursday 27th October at no later than 4.00pm. They will then be returned to you with comments by Thursday 24th November. The final hand-in date is on Thursday 15th December no later than 4.00pm. Please note we do not put draft assignments through Turnitin only the final submissions.
Assignment Learning Objective
To analyse an organisation (selected by yourself) using a range of theoretical frameworks from the module, and to draw conclusions as to how it can be analysed using relevant concepts, frameworks and research from the module.
Assignment Output Style
Essays are a form of academic writing that require you to follow the general structure of - introduction, body paragraphs and conclusion. An essay is written in whole sentences and paragraphs. If you do not use essay format you will lose marks. Essays do not necessarily need headings, though these are often useful for guiding the reader. Please avoid using appendices – the inclusion of any essential figures and tables in the body of the assignment is preferred.
The purpose of an essay as an assignment task is to demonstrate your understanding of the topic and your ability to sustain an extended argument. For a research essay you will be required to independently investigate the academic literature on the topic and apply your knowledge of this literature to the organisation chosen.
Referencing
Harvard style referencing is required for assignments in this module. If you submit a poorly referenced essay you will lose marks.
Hand-in Date and Time
