Assignment

In semester 1 you have been asked to consider what is ‘strategy’ and more specifically what is ‘business strategy’. We have emphasized the importance of considering time and space in strategic thinking and the principle of manoeuvring against an opponent or opponents. This assignment encourages you to apply strategic thinking to your essay. The ambition of the module team for you is to become strategically critical.

Task

Select a company (or organization) of your choice. Investigate this company and its history and identify its key strategic moves over a defined period of time.

You may use any published case-study or build your own case from secondary data, from any source. Always state your source material through full referencing.

Tip: Don’t try to analyse a multi-national corporate like McDonald’s, Apple, Google and attempt to analyse everything that has happened everywhere and every-when. If you use such companies….. fine, but focus your analysis on ‘parts’ of the companies’ operations.

Tip: Using a small company can be as useful as analysing a large and well known multinational.

Tip: don’t just pick the company who makes your phone or computer because it’s convenient and familiar… give the choice of company some thought.

Tip: pick a case where something strategically interesting has happened, failure is as interesting as success. If you pick a case where there has been ten years of stability, what is there to analyse?

There are 5 elements to the answer, but these don not necessarily have to be answered in discreet sections, they denote only the mark weightings.

You should:

1. Briefly identify the boundaries (strategic space) in which your analysis is taking place… for instance which markets, which industries, which strategic groups. (10%)

Reminder, Markets form the demand conditions a firm sells into, industries form the supply conditions they produce in.

2. Briefly identify the time period, or periods in which you think something strategically interesting happened. Define those periods as phases, episodes and events and argue why they are important. (5%)

Tip: use a simple timeline chart and map out chronologically the key periods, and you can then indicate which period/periods you are analysing in-depth. Clearly state the start and end point of your analysis, gives dates

Whilst parts 1 &2 carry low weighting, if you do these well, the rest of the analysis makes sense. Without this you fall fowl of the everywhere and every-when trap.

3. What were the key environmental challenges the firm was addressing? (10%)

Tip: don’t provide a complete SWOT analysis, focus on the key strategic issues, and crucially, why they are key.

Don’t struggle too much with internal factors, these are often hidden and difficult to unpick for an outsider looking in.

4. Characterize their competitive strategy drawing on models and ideas of your choice. (30%)

Tip: Think both defensive and offensive,

What was their position in relation to the market, leader or follower?

Could you use military metaphor here to describe it?

Tip: Remember strategic groups and positioning.

5. Using the principles of the Ansoff Matrix, identify the moves made, and the methods used for those moves in the chosen time and space. (45%)

The Ansoff matrix is not perfect, use it critically (see the worked example in the lecture).

Tip: Think Chess, nothing strategically interesting happens in one move. Think about ‘strategic manoeuvring’. What did A do, what did B do in response to A, then what did A do next…… and so on.

Methods can be not just used to take a product/service into a new market, but can also take parts of the value chain to different locations.

2500 words, excluding charts, tables, diagrams and bibliography.

Hand-in date December 20th

Provide all sources of data for your case as well as academic references.

You can use any amount of charts tables and diagrams to supplement your analysis. Leave these in the document, don’t hide them in an appendix. We give great credit for being able to present strategic analysis using charts, tables and diagrams. You are not limited to what we have taught you and what others have used before you. Create your own models if needed. One model may be used in more than one section, but present it once, give it a number, and refer back to it in later sections. Put another way, one worked example in a model can illustrate more than one point.

Building a case study

Draw on any sources of information to build you case, but remember that these must be referenced. There is a distinction between contextual information, (news reports, company reports, articles, video clips etc.) and academic literature, (the theory ideas, concepts…. Tools) you apply to analyse the case. These should be from good credible sources of information (books, journals).