Assessment Description

This final assessment is your opportunity to demonstrate your ability to select the most relevant theory to then apply to a current real-world strategic problem. This assessment explores the practice of "Doing". At the same time, you will need to identify the practical implementation of recommendations arising from primary research, and then reflect on what you have learned about strategy and leadership and your role as an effective manager as a result.

Your instructions are therefore as follows:

1. Choose an organisation that is presently featured in the Australian media in a negative light.
2. Identify a strategic problem that could be the cause of that negative media attention.
3. Conduct either:
a. primary qualitative or quantitative research of at least 20 participants to inform your hypothesis or
b. content analysis of a least 10 quality practical secondary sources, web forums and commentary or social media sites
c. quantitative analysis using a known data set such as ABS descriptive statistics
4. Develop a set of strategic recommendations arising from the findings your primary research.
5. Present your findings in a set of PowerPoint slides, each one accompanied by a narrative commentary using the notes page.

Some important considerations:

-Your slides must include an overview of the organisation and its strategic problem.

-The type of research you conduct - qualitative, quantitative, secondary source or mixed - is up to you. You must include a detailed methodology, justification for your choice and graphically represent your findings.

-You will not be assessed on the empirical rigour of your research but on the way in which you have explained the process you undertook, interpreted your findings and how it informed your recommendations.

-You can be creative with how you structure your slides, remembering the maxim that often

less is more so long as the notes pages contain the elaborated explanations.

-Make sure your identification of the strategic problem and your recommendations are supported by references, with each one annotated using the Harvard method.

-You are free to choose any theory, concept or model from any subject in your MBA studies. But since it is unlikely your Workshop Leader will be familiar with every possible theory, concept and model, it is essential that you dedicate at least one slide to explaining why you have chosen it and why it is relevant to your strategic problem.

-Save your slides as a PDF such that each page includes the slide and its associated notes.