Instructions:

Strategic decisions effect business success and we see signs of these decisions around us every day but we often fail to recognise them. The decision to focus the strategy of a business on entering a new geographic market via the acquisition of a small chain of existing grocery retailers, such as Tesco in America with its Fresh-N-Easy concept or the decision to grow its UK footprint through the Express stores taking over vacant pubs in the UK, or Facebooks decision to build its portfolio of through the acquisition of Instagram, we see and interact with but often give little thought to.

This assessment task requires you to give some thought to this through the analysis of a SWOT, the generation of a two strategic options to address the critical opportunities and threats, then evaluate the two strategic options and make a recommendation for one of the two strategic option that you believe should be implemented.

Applying, not describing, theories and models outlined in the lecture series, core text book and your own wider reading and research you are to produce a 2,000 word evidence based management report suitable for submission to the board of directors of a FTSE100/Fortune500 firm.

This assessment constitutes 100% of the marks available for this module so you are strongly encouraged to attend lectures, participate and contribute to the learning, complete the required reading and take responsibility for your own learning. We are looking for you to show the development from undergraduate student to junior executive with this piece of work.

In week 8 of the lecture series students working together in small Action Learning Set Groups (maximum of 6 students per ALS group) will present and discuss the issues identified from their SWOT analyses of their chosen organisation. Participation in this activity will allow the student to test their own comprehension of the subject and critically discuss their findings of their SWOT analysis in order to evaluate the robustness and accuracy of their secondary research and application of the model.

This assignment tests the following Learning Outcomes for the module:

Analyse the external environment of an organisation and justify critical opportunities and threats appropriate to that organisation;
Analyse the strategic capability of an organisation and justify critical strengths and weaknesses linked to competitive advantage;
Develop suitable strategic choices for an organisation;

Evaluate strategic choices for an organisation, referring back to previous analysis in 1 and 2.

Recommend and justify an appropriate strategic choice for an organisation.

The Assignment Task:

Select one of the firms listed below as the case study for your assignment:

Twitter Inc. (Primary Focus: Finance&Business. Secondary Focus: HRM)
WPP Ltd. (Primary Focus: Business&Marketing. Secondary Focus: Finance&HRM)
Just Eat Ltd. (Primary Focus: Business&Marketing. Secondary Focus: Finance)
Robert Walters Ltd. (Primary Focus: HRM & Recruitment. Secondary Focus: Business Management)

During the lecture series before week 8 you are to research and prepare an outline for your chosen firm's activities along with details of macro factors; competitive factors; organisational capabilities, finances and performance and identify the firm's competitive advantage.

Your first task is to analyse your research and prepare a comprehensive SWOT analysis from the data collected and identify the critical opportunities and threats as well as the critical strengths and weaknesses linked to the firm's competitive advantage.

Your second task is to develop two strategic options for the firm based on the results of your analysis.

Your third task is to evaluate each of the strategies using an appropriate framework such as the SAFe model.

Finally you should critically justify the selection for one of your strategic choices to the board within the report.

A suggested structure for the management report is outlined below:

You have a total of 16 pages available to produce the report from front cover to completion of the recommendation. Font size no smaller than size 11 and no bigger than size 12; type face Arial or similar; single line spacing.

Front cover - A professionally prepared report with appropriate heading. Please do not put any university data other than your ID number.

Executive Introduction

Contents page

Introduction - Purpose of the report and structure.

1. SWOT analysis and critical discussion of key factors.

2. Strategic Options

3. SAFe Evaluation and analysis

4. Recommendation

Reference List - Harvard Format

Appendices - Maximum of 4 pages.