Strategic Management
This document provides you with an overview of the relevant assessment items for this subject: Assessment 1: Individual Written Essay
Marks: 20%
Length: 2,000 words (MAXIMUM excl. references)
This is an INDIVIDUAL assignment. It has been designed to give you an opportunity to earn marks during the earlier part of the trimester. You are asked to write and submit a short, scholarly essay, using an academic essay format, on the following topic:
“Using the Tesla OR retail case as an example, how does strategic management enable firms to understand, prepare, and adapt to environmental turbulence?”
The purpose of this assignment is to help you gain a deeper understanding of the nature, impact and implications for every organisation of change. You are expected to draw on a minimum of six (6) peer reviewed journal articles (see http://www.abdc.edu.au/pages/abdc-journal-quality-list-2013.html for a complete list of journal rankings) and other sources (e.g., books; business press articles) as required to underpin your arguments presented in this essay.
Process
1. Undertake wide-ranging reading to ensure that you have a proper grasp of what ‘environmental turbulence’ means. Ensure that your reading enables you to address the issue of what such turbulent environments mean for organisations’ ability to adapt and achieve above-average returns.
2. Evaluate the literature and the research to determine what theories/models enable you to assess and evaluate discontinuous change.
3. Either
a. Find and describe one example of a company that has dramatically (positively or negatively) been impacted by the changes in retail as described in the case (NOTE: you may choose an Australian or international retailer).
4. Critically evaluate the literature and the responses observed from the company (see point 5) to identify effective strategic responses to such discontinuous change situations.
5. Consider how CEOs and other key strategy players might practically make appropriate strategic responses to discontinuous changes.
Output
The output of the process is the production of an essay in academic style that fully addresses the issues and answers the question. It is important that you adhere to academic conventions of citation and referencing. Please ensure that your reference list is formatted according to the latest APA guidelines (http://www.apastyle.org/).
1. A brief overview of your key arguments and conclusions (50 words).
2. Introduction to the topic of your essay and what the essay will cover.
3. Body of essay:
o • Outline the concept of environmental turbulence and how each dimension of environmental turbulence is concretely manifested in the case;
o • Which concrete (macro-environmental) issues play a role in your case?
o • Discuss how your chosen organisation is dealing/has dealt with environmental turbulence;
Provide concrete examples for each dimension.
4. Conclusions and implications.
5. References (at least 6 scholarly references formatted in proper APA style).
The forms containing the criteria used to mark this assessment are provided as an appendix to this document.
Some additional points to note for this assessment:
• Remember that it is necessary to explain and/or justify the points that you make, and that unsubstantiated assertions provide no credibility to your discussion or analysis.
• Note: You do not need to summarise the case, but mention the key aspects within your writing where appropriate.
• You are expected to consult academic journals and texts for material to support your discussion in this assignment. At least six (6) of these sources must be used in your discussion and cited correctly within your text and in the References List. These sources should be additional to your prescribed text. Your Reference List should be indicative of the sources you actually cite in presenting this assignment. Please see the NBS Student Manual for additional information on correct forms of citation.
• Dot points should be used very, very sparingly, if at all. Dot points are a communication tool for presenting summary information and rarely progress discussion or argument. Your assessment requires integrated discussion and/or argument, not presentation of summary information.
