UWBS038g Assessment Briefing for Students

LO1 Critically evaluate the underlying concepts and theories of strategic management and the relationship between strategy, stakeholder aspirations and governance ? LO2 Demonstrate understanding and awareness of current and emerging Economic, Political, Legal and Cultural factors and critically evaluate those which will have an impact on strategic management in an international context ? L03 Formulate business strategies in a systematic way , and develop criteria in order to evaluate and select those most likely to prove successful for a particular organisation ? LO4 Develop plans for the implementation of business strategies, presenting strategic proposals to stakeholders in a persuasive and authoritative manner. ? Assessment types 1 – Strategic Management Project 2 – Strategic Professional Development Plan Weightings 70% 30% Submitted as a Portfolio 100% ? Important requirements Mode of Working: Individual Presentation Format: Portfolio Method of Submission: Submission via electronic e-submission by 12.00 via Canvass on the due date. You are strongly urged to submit in good time as technical issues near to submission hour will not be accepted as a valid reason. Maximum file size 10MB Paper Submission to tutor if required Mark required to pass this coursework: 50% Hand in date & time See Canvass topic Date & method by which you will receive feedback 4 weeks from submission date Resit/retrieval date See Canvass topic front page. Note you must resit at the next opportunity, even if you have mitigation otherwise a fail grade will be entered you. Assessment limits (in accordance with UWBS assessment tariff) 6000 words, including references but excluding appendices Do clearly state your name, student number and supervisor when submitting work. Always keep a copy of your work. Always keep a file of working papers (containing, for instance, working notes, copied journal article and early drafts of your work, etc.) that show the development of your work and the sources you have used. You may need to show this to the tutor at some point so notes should be clear and written in English. This is an important requirement. There may be circumstances where it is difficult to arrive at a mark for your work. If this is so you may be asked to submit your file within 3 working days and possibly meet with your tutor to answer questions on your submission. Explanation of submission requirements and further guidance • Assessments are subject to a word limit to ensure consistency of approach across all modules. Your work should not exceed the limit indicated (excluding appendices). Do not feel that you have to “achieve” this word count in your work. What is important is that the work satisfies the stated learning outcomes which are articulated through the assessment criteria (see following page). • Care is taken to ensure that work has been marked correctly. Dissertations are double marked and an independent expert from outside the University on batches of work. • Your work will not be returned to you but you will receive detailed feedback explaining how your mark has been arrived at and how your work could have been improved upon. • Always use the Harvard style referencing system. The University’s Learning Information Services have produced a series of guides covering a range of topics to support your studies and develop your academic skills including a guide to Harvard referencing http://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/skills_for_learning/study_guides.aspx • Expensive or elaborate bindings and covers for submissions are not required please refer to guidelines in the dissertation resources topic on presentation. • The Business School has a policy of anonymous marking of individual assessments which applies to most modules. Avoid academic misconduct Warning: Collusion, plagiarism and cheating are very serious offences that can result in a student being expelled from the University. The Business School has a policy of actively identifying students who engage in academic misconduct of this nature and routinely applying detection techniques including the use of sophisticated software packages. • Avoid Collusion. The Business School encourages group working, however to avoid collusion always work on your own when completing individual assessments. Do not let fellow students have access to your work at any stage and do not be tempted to access the work of others. Refer to your module tutor if you do not understand or you need further guidance. • Avoid Plagiarism. You must use available and relevant literature to demonstrate your knowledge of a subject, however to avoid plagiarism you must take great care to acknowledge it properly. Plagiarism is the act of stealing someone else's work and passing it off as your own. This includes incorporating either unattributed direct quotation(s) or substantial paraphrasing from the work of another/others. For this reason it is important that you cite all the sources whose work you have drawn on and reference them fully in accordance with the Harvard referencing standard. (This includes citing any work that you may have submitted yourself previously). Extensive direct quotations in assessed work is ill advised because it represents a poor writing style, and it could lead to omission errors and a plagiarism offence could be committed accidentally. • Avoid the temptation to “commission” work or to cheat in other ways. There are temptations on the internet for you to take “short cuts”. Do not be tempted to either commission work to be completed on your behalf or search for completed past academic work. When you submit your work you will be required to sign an important declaration that the submission is your own work, any material you have used has been acknowledged and referenced, you have not allowed another student to have access to your work, the work has not been submitted previously, etc. ? Assessment Brief/ Task The detailed requirements for this task are as follows: The portfolio is comprised of the following Tasks • A Strategic Professional Development Portfolio (PDP) – 2000 words excluding action plan, appendices but including references • A Strategic Management Project- 4000 words excluding appendices but including references You will submit the PDP ahead of the final submission.Referencing and citations must adhere to Wolverhampton version of Harvard Referencing style. Do remember that the final portfolio size file Size is maximum 10MB so keep the PDP to 2-3MB maximum so that you do not have to make any adjustments later when you add it to the portfolio submission. Assessed task No 1 A Strategic Professional Development Portfolio (PDP) Professional development plans are commonly used in management. There are many ways to craft development plans as you will know, 360 degree feedback, various psychometric tests, inventories etc. You may have already done a personal development plan as part of your course (e.g. for 7MG001). This PDP is different and focuses on your development and goals as a manager – hence this is a professional development plan. The purpose is to relate the academic content of the module to your professional (managerial) goals. More specifically, in the context of this module, it is only based around the “how do you fit the design” series of tests (don’t use any other tests, inventories such as Belbin etc). To help you to reflect and craft your PDP it will be necessary to complete the “How Do You Fit the Design” self-assessment exercises included in each chapter of your textbook (Daft, 2015) and incorporate your reflection on these self-assessments into your PDP. As with the project, the PDP will be incrementally developed as soon as you begin the module over the course of the 4-5 weeks. The tests are not specifically related to the chapters content so can be taken as early as possible because they relate to how you currently are. You will craft interim components (which you may be asked to present or discuss in some form during the seminars). The PDP will have following main sections 1 – Introduction (up 500-750 words on critical evaluation of professional development plans) 2 – A critical reflection of what the self-tests are showing (circa 1500 words). Split this into 2 sub-sections. A reflection on how the various tests holistically have been informative in your understanding of you as a manager, and then something more focused on the areas for development that will be included in the action plan. The action plan too needs to show thought having gone into it. Your tutor will be looking to see how reflective and realistic it is, how realistic and appropriate the development is, and how well it is presented (ie professionally laid out etc). You are advised to have one short (8-12 months), medium (12-24 months) and long term (2 years +) goals and their development. The action plan is to be presented in a table format, with 3-4 columns for above areas. Use portrait paper format and smaller size font so that you capture everything on 1 page. Assessed task No 2 , Strategic Management Project The purpose of the strategic management project is to apply the concepts and techniques learnt in the module to the analysis of real-world situations or problems, and to critically evaluate different approaches to addressing managerial problems. Context At the managerial level, strategic organisational failures are due to a combination of failures in one or more of the 4Cs – Communication, Collaboration, Coordination, and Control. Your task is to identify a major area of weakness in a unit of your organisation (not the whole organisation). This can be either in your own department or unit, or your boss has asked you to look at another part of a business, as an internal consultant. The task has to be organisation design related and cannot be to do with corporate strategy, strategic planning, change management nor generic issues such as falling performance, falling sales etc. The lack of focus is likely to result in a failed task. The unit of analysis MUST be for a unit of the company you work for (or one you have worked in). (If your company is a large one, then focus on a strategic business unit or department. The structure will be aimed at your designation level ie supervisor, team leaders, unit head, head of strategic business unit, CEO etc. Frame the issue at your level so that you are familiar with the issues. For example if you are a supervisor it would be inappropriate for you to look at International diversification but this might be something if you are the CEO. Also this would be about corporate strategy and not part of your remit anyway for this assignment. If you are not employed currently, use your previous employer. Exceptionally if this not possible, (permission from the module leader will need to be sought) select a well-known local company that you can access to and use the same criteria. Delve down to the lowest level commensurate with your designation. Under no circumstances are you allowed to choose multinationals about which you have no connection. Doing so will result in a failed assignment. Your remit, in the form of a strategic management project will be to examine what the problem(s) is/are (you must provide evidence of this via board or team meetings, internal records etc), identify the likely causes and the reasons for it (in light of your understanding from this module) and propose a new design, approach (solution) that would overcome that strategic failure. You then justify and explain how your design will overcome the failure and put in place appropriate monitoring system to evaluate outcomes from the redesign. Also note, this module and assessment is DIFFERENT from change management and transformation literature which relates to "how" change should be undertaken, what is good practice, what to avoid, role and types of leadership ie the psychology of change. What students are looking in this module is the physiology and sociology of organisations ie design for strategic effectiveness. If you turn this into a change management assignment you will likely fail. The project is to be undertaken in a number of formative phases, culminating in a final written report. In phase 1 you will write proposal for your tutor to set the parameters and scope of the project. You will discuss this with your classmates in seminars and get feedback. In this phase you will state what the organisation is and what your designation is, what the strategic failure is. Your tutor will record all this information in a table and supply it to the module leader for approval. 2-3 pages maximum. Phase 2 will be a critical literature review. Your task will be to review research from a range of scholarly articles that relate to organisational structure design issues you are addressing. This is an opportunity to strengthen the project rigour with further theoretical insights. The core text books and supplied articles will form the backbone of the literature review but other strategy literature can supplement this too. This informs your thinking on and about the restructure before, during and after the redesign. You will have learnt from the research methods classes in the module 7MG001, a literature review is a critical discussion of the published information on your topic area. It is also a critical, evaluative synthesis, showing the relationships between various writings and how they relate to your own work. A literature review is not a simple summary of a series of articles. A good literature review will look at the research that has been done and synthesise or pull together those elements that are similar or most pertinent to the themes you have chosen. The alignment of literature to issues looked will form a key part of the grading for this part. Phase 3 will be the analysis/redesign. First you will give a pen portrait of the business unit under investigation (only write one paragraph on the company itself) by analysing your chosen unit’s internal structures and its external environment using some of the frameworks studied that you consider most relevant to your particular situation e.g. Daft’s structural dimensions, Daft’s contingency framework, Porter’s five forces model or any other model, such SWOT etc. Don’t do these just for the sake of it. These are tools to understand the business unit and not part of the analysis itself. The tools need to be relevant to the issues explored. If the issue is/are wholly internal for example it would not make sense to use porter’s 5 forces because that is about the external industry analysis. If the issues arise due to forces in the external environment or is boundary spanning than the 5 forces may be suitable or perhaps stakeholder analysis or any other similar tool but each tool needs to be pertinent to the issues of the restructure. Grading will reflect if you have not seriously thought about the tools you are using. All the tools you used must go in the appendices and NOT in the main body. Only take a paragraph or two of what each tool is showing. Remember the tools used equip you to undertake the analysis. They are not the analysis itself. Using the tools will get you some marks but on their own will not be sufficient to pass the task. Your tutor will ask you to present your findings at interim points during the seminar sessions (details will vary depending on iteration and delivery format. The presentations will not be part of the assessment. Phase 4 will the final Project Report. The final report should take the form of a maximum 4000 word business report to the organisation’s management team. A business report is a functional piece of writing usually written to communicate recommendations with the appropriate rationale, illustrations and evidence. Your report should be written in standard business English that favours ease of comprehension. In general, your sentences and paragraphs will be shorter compared to academic English. It is also acceptable to use a limited number of bullet points in your report. Use the literature review as well as the theoretical foundations given in the core text and additional readings to strengthen your arguments and move beyond subjective opinions. You are also encouraged to support your arguments and analyses with limited amount of visuals, such as charts and diagrams. NOTE: Visual must be used very sparingly. Do not include data, company charts, blank images of analytical tools or irrelevant junk. It is unlikely visuals will exceed more than 5-6 and most of these will be in the appendices. You will be heavily penalised if you turn a report that is more of an art show than a report. Business reports do not have a set number of sections, nevertheless guidelines are provided as below. Make sure you clearly delineate and label your sections with appropriate headings. As a guide, some sections that most reports tend to include are Executive Summary, Introduction, Findings, Recommendations and Conclusion. Use the Business Report Help Sheet from University of Melbourne provided for you under resources. Advice: Make it concise, to the point and convincing. Try to write with a specific audience in mind, and try as best as you can to generate a genuine buy-in from stakeholders. Suggested structure as follows: Executive summary 1 Introduction 1 1.introduction to the company 1.2 Business Case (remember to include evidence for the need to redesign) 2 Literature review (this informs your thinking on and about the restructure before, during and after 3 Analysis/Restructure Design and restructure Monitoring 4 Conclusions ? Performance descriptors Performance descriptors indicate how marks will be arrived at against each of the above criteria. The descriptors indicate the likely characteristics of work that is marked within the percentage bands indicated. Criteria 70-100% Work of an outstanding, standard 60-69% Work of a good standard. Pass 50-59% Work of a pass standard. 40-49% FAIL 0-39% FAIL PDP: An innovative, well-structured document which synthesises all 3 phases in line with above. Well-written, & well-presented. A balanced, well-structured document. The PDP may not be innovative but will be sound overall. The pdp will be well-written, well presented The pdp is cohesive, but may be hindered by insufficient synthesis and reflection. T he pdp reasonably well-written, well presented Whilst some of the characteristics of a pass have been demonstrated, the work does not address the requirements of the task brief. Structure and presentation are of a poor quality Significant failings in the pdp balance, structure or writing style. Significant flaws in reflection. Lacking in coherence, the plan is unstructured and/or badly presented. Project The project demonstrates originality, innovation and depth in the content and theory. It is reflective of a professional consultancy report. The work clearly demonstrates application of theories and provides an overwhelmingly convincing case to management. In the main the project is insightful and has an appropriate selection of content and theory in key areas identified in the brief. The work demonstrates application of theory and gives management some good insights. Key theories and ideas are included in the report in an appropriate manner although not consistently across all area. The work demonstrates basic application of theories worthy of presentation to management but has low credibility Appropriate selection of content/theories but some key aspects missed/misconstrued. Lack of theory in most areas. The work does not sufficiently demonstrate basic application through. The work is not worthy of presentation to management in its current form Does not address the assignment brief. Uses Inaccurate or inappropriate content/theory. The work does not create a link between theory and practice. The complete portfolio - Presentation and Harvard Referencing Presentation standard of the portfolio is excellent. Extensive referencing which is clear, relevant and consistently accurate using the Harvard system The bibliography is comprehensively annotated. Content is formatted for easy reading with a clear structure delineated by subheadings and paragraph structures Presentation overall of good standard with few errors in grammar and syntax. Referencing is relevant and accurate using the Harvard system. Good evidence of reading round the subject. The bibliography contains appropriate annotations. Content is formatted for easy reading with clear paragraph structures. Presentation has limitations including some errors in grammar and syntax Minor inconsistencies and inaccuracies in referencing using the Harvard system. Evidence of reading round the subject other than just set texts and websites. The bibliography contains few annotations Content may not be formatted, but still readable Presentation is poor in structure and includes errors in grammar and syntax. Referencing present having many inconsistencies and inaccuracies. Little evidence of reading other than set texts & websites The bibliography contains no annotations. No attempt to format for readability. Structure and presentation is not of an acceptable standard including faulty grammar and syntax. Referencing mainly from set text. inaccurate references or bibliography absent. Presentation is slapdash