BUS497A Strategic Analysis Paper Guideline
The Strategic Analysis Paper is inten
BUS497A Strategic Analysis Paper Guideline
The Strategic Analysis Paper is intended to provide students with a consulting style project to address a current problem of a firm. Student teams will identify a firm that is currently grappling with a problem that is relevant to the strategic management process, conduct relevant and thorough strategic analyses, make recommendations based upon these analyses, and develop an implementation plan. Students MUST get pre-approval from the professor for their firm selection and problem addressed.
Section 7: Recommend a Course of Action (10%)
Based upon the the analyses conducted, make a recommendation for a course of action for the firm. Remember the solution must align with the external environment the firmexists within, must be consistent with the mission of the firm, must utilize existing resources/capabilities/competences that create a competitive advantage or suggest the acquisition of needed resources and capabilities, and must match the structure of the firm. The recommendation must also be consistent with other analyses performed. While you can be creative in the course of action you suggest, sound strategy leverages and aligns with the mission, structure, internal environment, and external environment.Also, be considerate of the financial position of the firm. Is your solution financially feasible?
Section 8: Develop a plan for implementation for the next few years. (10%)
Draw from your knowledge from other courses and your own experiences to say how the solution should be put into effect. Remember that implementation of strategy occurs at lower levels within an organization and the fundamental base of strategy implementation is activities.Thus, your implementation plan should describe the activities that the firm should conduct that are consistent with the course of action selected in Section 7. Think about what activities should be done and by who such as which functional area. For example, if you find a firm has a core competence in brandingthat they are underutilizing and recommend a new differentiation strategy based upon branding, use your functional knowledge to develop a list of activities that support branding. If you find that a firm has a mismatch of strategy and structure, then describe how the structure should be realigned and the activities that may shift within the structure. Alternatively you may find that corporate governance is problematic and a new CEO compensation system is in order for the firm. In summary, this is the section where you draw from and integrate your functional knowledge; the capstone experience.
References:
Be sure to provide a list of all sources used as well as cited in the paper in APA format. Minimum requirements are the firm annual report and at least 5 business press articles from quality sources. While there are no points allocated to the reference section, the inability to provide quality references and use in text citations suggests the information used in the various analyses is of poor quality throughout the paper.
No intro needed
The file provided you can use it as a reference. That paper is done differently from a different student.