BST714 Strategic and Operational Decision-Making Assignment

BST714 Strategic and Operational Decision-Making Assignment
From industry context, through corporate strategy to operational realization

Date coursework issued:

Purpose
To give you an opportunity to obtain first-hand experience in
1. Employing strategic management concepts and analytical tools.
2. Appraising strategic choices and develop and evaluate viable strategic options.
3. Demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the salient issues in the implementation of
strategic change in the internal and external organisational environments.
4. Identifying and evaluating appropriate strategies to manage stakeholder demands.
5. Developing project plans to enable strategy implementation.
If you take this assignment seriously, you will teach yourself many basic principles on strategy, which will
stand you in good stead in many subjects, and in many walks of life.
Assessment
You will be judged on criteria given in Appendix I.
Tasks
For the sector you have been allocated (see Appendix II) you should;
1. Review the marketplace characteristics for the sector allocated by using any public domain information
available and relevant academic literature search. Select a particular case company to undertake tasks
2-4. Highlight secondary data sources that you will exploit and explain their strengths and weaknesses.
2. Highlight and evaluate the corporate strategy of the organisation selected. Is the corporate strategy
effective and is the business model appropriate for the marketplace characteristics?
3. Providing empirical evidence and analysis as appropriate, determine the order winners and market
qualifying criteria and classify the supporting operational process using the Hoekstra, and Romme
(Buy-to-Order, Make-to-Order, Assemble-to-Order, Make-to-Stock, or Ship-to-Stock) or the Lampel
and Mintzberg (Pure Standardisation, Segmented Standardisation, Customised Standardisation,
Tailored Customisation, or Pure Customisation) process categorization system. Is the supporting
operational process appropriate for that particular market? If not, what should it be?
4. Develop a change management plan to either a) realign the case company’s operations strategy or b)
improve the case company’s operations strategy, taking into account the change levers for each phase.
Is your change plan feasible in days, weeks, months or years? What are the resource implications of
your plan?
NB if the case company supports more than one market sector then describe what these are but limit your
research to just one.
Each part accounts for 25% of the total marks.
Getting help /Advice
Plan your time well – the data collection is usually the most time-consuming part of this assignment. All
tutors/lecturers on the course will not give any industry-specific help on the assignment to individual
people. You will have to show initiative and self-motivation in undertaking this assignment, which is meant
to be challenging – you are intended to show Mastery. Here are some information resources to help you get
started;
The University’s LibrarySearch can access multiple journal databases NB try different key words and
combinations.
Access the Financial Analysis Made Easy (fame) database via the University Intranet.
Use of appropriate texts, industry and analysts reports, consultancy white papers, blogs,
company/institutional websites, and quality newspapers all add value.
Note: In text referencing and bibliography – Harvard style is expected. A strong range and depth of
appropriate literature is expected. Selecting, reviewing, and applying this data to the company context in a
meaningful way is key e.g., a generic PESTLE or SWOT analysis is just that. These should be dedicated to
the organisation current situation and be evidence based.

Report format and word count?
The level of detail in your assignment may well be a trade-off between payoff and time. Whatever you
include in your assignment has to be “value adding” i.e. do not include wasteful words, figures or tables.

Title Page with student number
Summary (or Abstract) (Generally up to 300 words – not included in the word count)
Content – split into four sections as per the four tasks assigned. Each section should be 1000 words
equivalent, +/- 10%. In addition, you are encouraged to make use of tables and/or figures. Be selective
about the use of tables and figures, and ensure you explain what each table / figure means within the main
text. Any tables / figures are in addition to the 1000 words.
Reference list (Not included in the word count)
Bibliography (Not included in the word count)