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MGT3324 Strategic Management
Individual Report (60% of the final grade)
Assignment brief
Individual report based on the strategic analysis of a given organisation. The assignment
addresses module learning outcomes 1- 5.
Present the results of a detailed strategic analysis of your given company to determine
the strategic fit between its operating environment and its capabilities and resources.
Requirements
• The report should be written in PowerPoint
• Length: 12 slides (+/- 1); not including cover page and tables of contents and
references
• Based on research using recommended sources of information and appropriate
supplementary sources
• For multi-business firms, you are allowed to focus on one specific business.
Components & weighting
Grading criteria Weighting
1 Depth and breadth of research
• use of appropriate information from recommended sources
• use of current (to the extent possible), reliable and valid
supplementary sources of information
• evaluation of relevant and significant information
10%
2 External environment of the firm
• general business environment
• analysis of the firm’s industry
o market structure analysis
o industry attractiveness
o drivers of change in the industry (optional)
10%
3 Competitor analysis (including firm’s strategic group)
Analysis of the firm
• recent firm performance, including
o financial and marketing performance
• capabilities and resources
• identification and evaluation of the business-level strategy
• corporate-level strategy of the firm
50%
4 Conclusion: strategic fit/strategic position 10%
5 Presentation – look & feel of the report
• visually attractive with an appropriate mix of text and visual forms of
data presentation
• meticulously referenced
• written to a professional standard
20%
2
Guidance
You are strongly advised to treat the components identified above as hints and cues about
what to research rather than as a checklist for the assignment. Depending on your firm,
some topics or factors might be more important than others. It is expected that your
report will show an ability to focus on what is important and appropriate for Level 6, i.e.
final year.
For multi-business firms, choose one business as the focus of your report. Choose the
business for which there is most information in the university’s databases.
Pre-work: Research
§ Start your research using the sources of information introduced in the research
workshop (check week 6 seminar in My Learning).
§ Use appropriate supplementary sources to fill in missing details and to bring your
research up-to-date.
o Appropriate supplementary sources were also identified in the research
workshop
o All sources of information should be current (to the extent possible), reliable
and valid.
Suggested key structure of the coursework:
1 Introduction
§ Define and briefly introduce the industry and company of this report
§ Explain the purpose of this report
§ Briefly introduce the key findings of this report
2 General business environments of the firm (Macro analysis)
§ PESTLE
Note that,
§ You may use information from your group presentation
§ Make sure you update and improve it; contextualise it for your company, and select
those parts which help with the analysis of your company
§ Avoid the temptation to make lists
§ Avoid taking a fill-in-the-blanks approach
§ Evaluate the information you collected and discuss the implications for your
company
3 Industry environment analysis of the firm
§ Nature and key facts of this industry
§ Market structure of this industry
§ Attractiveness analysis (Five forces)
3
Note that,
§ You may use information from your group presentation
§ Make sure you update and improve it; contextualise it for your company, and select
those parts which help with the analysis of your company
§ Avoid the temptation to make lists
§ Avoid taking a fill-in-the-blanks approach
§ Integrate the general and industry-level information to show analytical skills and the
ability to interpret information.
4 Competitor Analysis
§ Identify the key competitors of your company (strategic group analysis if necessary)
§ Compare the companies on critical dimensions such as products/services,
positioning; strategies; key resources; strength and weaknesses, etc.
§ where possible, assess higher value subjects/questions: for example, does the firm
have a distinctive value proposition? Does it currently have a first-mover advantage
for any product or business? Does it benefit from breakthrough innovation in any
area?
5 Analysis of the firm
§ 5.1 Financial Analysis: Recent firm performance should cover the past three to five
years
o financial performance could include profitability, productivity or efficiency
ratios (as appropriate for your firm)
o DO NOT use revenue, net profit, or total assets et al. They are not comparable
across companies.
o identify trends and explain anomalies (can you link them to other sections of
the report?)
o contextualise firm financial performance (compare to the industry average or
at least two key competitors). Charts or graphs are preferrable.
o marketing performance could include an evaluation of the brand(s) and other
marketing metrics available, such as customer loyalty/customer churn rate,
return on advertising spend, customer acquisition costs, and average lifetime
value of the customer, amongst others
o base marketing and financial analysis on publicly available information (it is
understood that you might not have the information to calculate/analyse all
marketing and financial metrics).
§ 5.2 Resources and Capabilities Analyses: Use an appropriate technique to evaluate
the firm’s key capabilities and competitive resources
o Identify the key resources and capabilities of this company
o Evaluate which of these resources and capabilities might be the basis of
competitive advantage by using the VRIO framework
o list-making and assertions are not appropriate; this section should show an
ability to apply a suitable technique of analysis
4
§ 5.3 Basis of competition (Business-level strategy)
o identify and evaluate your firm’s basis of competition, i.e. its business-level
strategy. Note that you need to keep consistent with your conclusions from
5.2.
o assess whether the firm’s strategy is supported by its capabilities and
resources; whether it is competitive within the firm’s strategic group;
whether the firm can separate itself from its rivals.
§ 5.4 Corporate-level strategy
o assess the degree of diversification in the firm’s businesses; are they
appropriate given its capabilities and resources? What benefits has the
company received from these diversification activities?
o what type of internationalisation strategy does the firm follow? Is it
appropriate given its capabilities and resources? Can you compare its strategy
to those of its main rivals?
o How has the firm grown in recent years, through acquisitions, mergers, or
organically?
o Has the firm adopted any cooperative strategies? For what purpose? How
successfully? Are there any links to its capabilities and resources?
6 Conclusion
§ You need to interpret the results of your analysis and make some judgments about
o whether the firm has achieved a strategic fit between its external and
competitive environments and its capabilities and resources.
o What is the firm’s strategic position?
Presentation – look & feel of the report
§ Think carefully about how best to convey the information you want to present: can it
be made into a diagram, a graph, a chart?
§ Remember: this is a report, not a presentation. You are not making slides; you are
creating dashboards of information so that your reader can absorb high-quality
information quickly.
§ Use text where appropriate but avoid ‘death by bullet points’
§ Be exceedingly careful about in-text citations (and their correct format)
§ Make sure all sources used are in your table of references (in the correct format)
§ Edit and proofread your report (several times)
§ Create a professional looking colour theme for your report (it is preferable to use
your own rather than a pre-formatted one)
§ Think about margins, the look of the page, choice of fonts and font sizes, headings
and subheadings, white spaces and alignments of shapes and boxes.
§ The report is written in PowerPoint so that you can integrate graphics and text more
easily than in Word.
