Assignment 1:

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, "Where is strategy at from the perspective of management scholars?"

To undertake this assignment you will need to view information found on the web sites of four online management journals. Each of the journals offers access to at least the table of contents of the most recent issue as well as brief summaries of each article. These journals include,

Harvard Business Review http://hbr.org/magazine
MIT Sloan Management Review
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/smr/
Knowledge@Wharton
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/
Ivey Business Journal
http://www.iveybusinessjournal.com/
Please answer the following questions:

• For each of the online journals noted above, please examine the latest issue and identify four ideas or issues that appear to be relevant to the field of strategy. Please summarize each of the issues in two or three sentences.

• Are there any common ideas that are being discussed in articles across two or more of the journals? If so what are they?

• In your own words, and using no less than 250 words to do so, please comment on how each of these journals is different from the others in the types of insight that they offer.

Assignment 2:

To undertake this assignment you will need to view information found on the Web sites of a number of management consulting firms. In many instances these firms have a publishing vehicle. These include:

McKinsey & Co. (www.mckinseyquarterly.com)
Bain & Company (www.bain.com/publications)
Accenture (www.accenture.com/us-en/outlook)
Monitor (www.monitor.com)

The Boston Consulting Group (www.bcgperspectives.com)

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, "Where is strategy at from the perspective of management consultants?"

Please answer the following questions.

• For each of the five management consulting firms noted above, please identify four ideas or issues that they are actively selling to potential clients. Focus your efforts on identifying North American issues. Summarize each in two or three sentences.

• Are there any common ideas that are being highlighted across two or more of the firms? If so what are they?

• In your own words, and using no less than 250 words to do so, please comment on how each of these journals is different from the others in the types of insight that they offer.

Assignment 3:

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, "How might managers undertake a PEST assessment for their company?"

In order to do so, please identify a country that it operates in or that is of interest to you. You should base your responses to the following questions on your analysis of the company that you have chosen for this course along with a specific country of your choosing.

Please answer the following questions:

• Identify five political factors (as well as the online sources of information ) facing the company.

• Identify five economic factors (as well as the online sources of information) facing the company.

• Identify five social factors (as well as the online sources of information ) facing the company.

• Identify five technology factors (as well as the online sources of information) facing the company.

• In your opinion which four of these factors are most pertinent to the company and why?

Assignment 4:

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, "How do companies make money?"

In order to complete this assignment you will be using the AIEIS video interview database.

How to get access to AIEIS video database: (click to open/close)

First, go to the web site of the Acadia International Executive Insight Series (AIEIS)http://amcms.acadiau.ca and access

Busi 4913 Online CI for Business Strategy -> Online CI for Business Strategy Collection

View and listen to at least ten of the responses as they discuss the business models of their company.

Second, read the description for "business model" noted on the Wikipedia web site. Many different models are suggested. Once you have undertaken these two tasks, please do the following:

• Match 10 interview responses with business models noted on the Wikipedia web sitehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_models. Your response should include at least 4 business models. More than one interview response may correspond with a particular business model.

• For each of the ten matches, please summarize the model in one or two sentences, quote a sentence from the video database interview that leads to suggest the match and identify the speaker as well as his or her company.

Assignment 5:

This assignment seeks to help you understand the answer to a broader concern and that is, "What is strategy?"

In order to complete this assignment, please undertake two tasks.

First, read Don Hambrick's paper entitled, "Are you sure you have a strategy?" He suggests that strategy as it related to companies should be thought of in terms of arenas, vehicles, differentiators staging, and economic logic.
Second, glance at the list of Online Information Sources provided to you as part of this course.

Please complete the following tasks:

• In two paragraphs and in your own words, explain Hambrick's notion of strategy as well as the five strategy elements.

• Using the company that you have chosen for the course as an example, please define each element (arena, vehicles, differentiators, staging and economic logic) using online information sources. Each element should be defined in this manner in one separate paragraph. In other words,

o What is the Arena for this company?
o What are the Vehicles for this company?
o What are the Differentiators for this company?
o What are the Staging elements for this company?
o What is the Economic Logic that drives the activities of this company?