Module Title: Strategic Management (BIM) (AEF) (MET)

Assessment Instructions This essay is to be based on the application of ideas from the Resource Based View literature to the organisation in the case study that you can access through the Assignment Tab on Blackboard - which takes you to Harvard Business Publishing. The case study is ‘Zara: Fast Fashion’ and the organisation is Zara. You MUST utilise the case we have made available from the link on Blackboard. Please follow the instructions on Blackboard for how to access the case – you will not be charged as UWE has pre-paid this case for you.

Q. Drawing on the Resource Based View literature, evaluate whether and how Zara generates sustainable competitive advantage.

You need to explore the Resource Based View (RBV) literature discussing theoretical concepts within the area and look at how Zara’s strategy can be understood by drawing on these ideas. You are of course permitted to draw on other areas of the strategy literature, provided that they support an argument based on the RBV.

This assessment task requires you to both discuss the appropriate theoretical area and, drawing on evidence from the case study provided, to apply these theoretical ideas to the ‘real world’ example. The key to doing well is to demonstrate that you can discuss the theoretical ideas and apply these in an analysis of an organisation as you have been doing in the seminars.

Please note that your assignment MUST be written around the evidence in the case study provided. There is no need to do any additional research on Zara, and we are not interested in what Zara is doing now. All evidence drawn from the case study must be appropriately referenced, as should all of the academic ideas that you draw on. We regard the case study as 'common knowledge' for this assignment so you are only required to reference evidence drawn from the case study by page number and use the prefix 'Z' to indicate it is the Zara case. For example if you cite evidence from page 10, you will reference it as (Z10). You do not need to put the case study details in your references list as, again, it is assumed to be common knowledge for this assignment. You must however fully reference all other sources.

Assignment Learning Objective: To demonstrate your ability to apply concepts from the module to an organisation or firm, to undertake a theoretically informed analysis and to draw conclusions that link the topic of study to the objective of sustaining competitive advantage. For this essay you will be required to independently investigate the academic literature on the topic and apply your knowledge of this literature to the organisation.

Word Limit To complete this assignment you must produce a 1500 (+/- 10%) word academic essay (the word count excludes the reference list and in-text citations).

Referencing: Please ensure you adhere to the principles of good academic practice and ensure you use the UWE Harvard system to reference your work. Failure to properly reference your work to original source material can be grounds for the assessment offence of plagiarism and may result in failure of the assessment or have more serious implications.