Strategic Management Assignment -

Assignment Descriptions -

Part A - Strategic Management perspectives

Making sure you are selecting the work of different authors, choose any two of the articles uploaded at the Course materials. Read them till you have identified the principal ideas and the line of argument of the authors. Now, after writing a clear and clean synopsis of each article, establish a connection of their arguments, whether they agree or disagree on some or many of its parts. Please, don't use your personal experiences in this first paper to put on one side of the author's arguments or the other. If fact, you don't need to take part of the arguments. The task is just to explain and connect them clearly. This assignment is strictly academic, and is meant to focus your attention on relevant writings on strategic management usually presented in specialized journals or magazines.

For this assignment, use no more than 1000 words, excluding titles, footnotes, charts, tables and annexes. I will not receive papers exceeding this limit. Be sure to have at least 2 peer-reviewed sources for your major points.

Part B - Performance and Balance Scorecard

Now go to the Niven's book (Balanced scorecard step-by-step: maximizing performance and maintaining results) and, using your own words, explain what you understand a balanced scorecard and a balanced scorecard company are. Choose carefully your words, and make a convincing explanation of the model. Following this definition, explain why you think this work and theory is relevant for businesses, from a strategic management standpoint. I expect you to enrich the paper with your own thoughts and ideas, but not yet with your experiences. Finally, identify, if any, flaws that the book may have (incomplete arguments, outdate concepts, oversimplifications or not applicable extensions).

For this assignment, use no more than 1500 words, excluding titles, footnotes, charts, tables and annexes. I will not receive papers exceeding this limit. Be sure to have at least 2 peer-reviewed sources for your major points.

Part C - Performance and Balance Scorecard

In this paper you must combine all theories previously covered, and connect them with your present work position. If you aren't working currently, use the last one you had. After explaining what your major responsibilities are or were, tell us in what ways ideas covered by authors affected decisions you made or avoided to make lately. I expect you to show a practical understanding of how author's ideas relate with your day-to-day job. Be careful in the way you organize this paper, since a list of anecdotes will be badly graded. I am leaving freedom for each student to establish their own structure and internal organization of arguments and examples, but make sure you have any.

For this assignment, use no more than 1500 words, excluding titles, footnotes, charts, tables and annexes. I will not receive papers exceeding this limit. Be sure to have at least 2 peer-reviewed sources for your major points.

Part D - Sustained success

In this final paper you should work in one (1) predefined company, selected from the list provided below:

I expect you to comfortably manage ideas covered in the book and papers selected, applying all of them to analyze this specific organization. As a way of reference, you should be able to answer questions like the followings: what is the strategy of the company? Is it coherent? Is it doable in every market? Is it sustainable along time? What are the key success factors of the company? Is the business model aligned with the strategic formulation? Are the product portfolio and the price strategy a clear consequence of the defined strategy? In order to work on this paper, you should do some research on the web to get the needed information. Please, don't limit the sources of data to corporate and official web sites, since the web has plenty of valuable resources.

Your paper should look like the recommendation of a specialized consultant in strategic management, supporting accurate data and definitions from the company with the theoretical framework settled by the texts and authors studied. This is the task.