·         Explore the risks and opportunities confronting strategic leaders in a changing world ·                   Assess the challenges facing organisations in times of economic growth and recession Critically examine a range of theoretical approaches to the evaluation of an organisation’s strategic position  

The assessment task and topic: You are required to produce a 3,000 word academic report in teams. The report will be based on either:   Tangle Teezer   OR   HayMax

This is a ‘live’ project, meaning students are required to gather and analyse data relevant to understanding and explaining the company’s current situation. Students will be directed to some background information but must stay up to date with articles, financial data and reports as it emerges. Strategic options must be forward facing, and students should not include information that is not of direct relevant to a contemporary understanding of the company’s situation. You are expected to apply a selection of strategy frameworks, models and perspectives covered on the module and from your own additional reading to conduct a situational analysis of your organisation and address the brief. A situational analysis of a private sector organisation is defined on the module as: “The use of a range of models, theories and frameworks to provide a comprehensive and rigorous analysis of an organization’s external and internal environments, with the aim of identifying key strategic issues, assessing the sources and sustainability of competitive advantage and generating strategic options.” PORTERS< PESTLE, Stakeholder analysis   You will therefore need to:

• Adopt a systematic approach to analyse and evaluate the strategies used by either Tangle Teezer OR HayMax. This should critically assess how they are building and sustaining competitive advantage in relation to what you demonstrate to be the most important factors arising within both their external and internal environments. Identify and analyse the strategic issues facing the organisation and update these to the current time (March 2017)
• Propose and justify a range of strategic options (3 is sufficient) that are clearly based on your research findings and the incorporation of relevant theory to support the view that these are legitimate options.
• Include a brief evaluation of the strategy tools, models and frameworks employed within the report (the main body of words – 3000)

    Approach to follow: The report should include a title page with names, SRNs, word count and coursework group number.

• Table of contents
• Brief introduction to the case company
• The main body of the report (with headings and subheadings structuring the analysis and evaluation of case and theory), this will include analysis that brings together information in the case and research to update it to March 2016.
  • You should structure your work according to discussion around the key strategic issues you have identified. This will require you to integrate analysis from across the external and internal environment, synthesising multiple sources of evidence and multiple theories to generate an original and comprehensive narrative about those issues you have identified. Students should expect to cover at least three key strategic issues.
• Conclusions and proposal of options
• List of references

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