Buss 5424 Strategic Thinking: Concepts and Tools

Instructions for the Management Review assignment (A1)

BUSS 5424 Strategic Thinking: Concepts and Tools

Please go over the Materials tab first, including the readings on evidence-based management and videos on research methods.  Also make sure to cover the essentials of strategic management in the relevant tabs for the first few weeks of the course and the eBook.

This short individual assignment asks you to:
(a) gather information on the industry and the organisation in which you work and
(b) document your findings in a brief executive report. 

To accomplish the broad aims of this assignment, please identify relevant primary and secondary data sources, collect relevant data, and complete the following:

Section 1: Briefly describe and evaluate (on 1 page) your organisation's values, vision, mission, and strategy.  Refer to an Appendix where you can concisely document and cite relevant details.  

Section 2: Complete an environmental analysis of the major trends in the general environment expected to affect your industry in the next 3 years (submit a table in the main report with any important supporting details in an Appendix) and briefly discuss the impact of the trends and implications for action.  If your organisation uses a different framework or tool for macro-environmental analysis, use that (you do not have to use PESTEL).  

Section 3a: Determine whether your organisation's industry is attractive or unattractive, referring to an Appendix with a detailed five-forces analysis of competition (based on Porter, 2008 eReading 03.01), also known as the Structure-Conduct-Performance, or S-C-P, framework.  Also briefly explain at the end of this section why your organisation's industry environment may become more/less attractive in the future.  

(If you work in the public sector or have any other difficulty with this section, use option 3b and/or discuss an alternative strategic analysis approach with the Course Facilitator.) 

or

Section 3b: Describe your organisation's value chain, using the VCA template.  In the eBook, VCA is covered in chapter 4.  

Section 4: Complete a Capabilities Analysis, based on eBook ch. 4 and eReading 02.01, Barney 1991.  For this section, you can use the Capabilities Analysis template or the VRIO framework (in a separate file).  Conclude this section with a brief summary of your organisation's competitive advantage and business model and implications for action.    

Section 5: Discussion of results and limitations of data sources and collection methods