Instructions

Course Project Task 5 Final Submission

Note: This course has major project assignments that will be due in Week 3 and 5. It will take more than a week’s effort to adequately complete them. Plan time to start the research and other work for those assignments earlier than the week in which they are due.

Throughout this course, you have been analyzing the different facets of two organizations’ (GE and Alibaba) strategic development and implementation. This week you will pull all of these elements together, including the material you read this week about strategic leadership. This is a critical exercise as the final written work in the MBA capstone course.

Although we broke up the topics we studied about corporate strategy into manageable chunks, remember that in reality business firms function and compete as integrated wholes. The various elements of business and corporate strategy we discussed and analyzed create value for shareholders when they complement one another. In particular, the logic of business strategy in general must be congruent with the particular firm’s overall strategies.

Develop an integrated analysis of the corporate strategy of your current workplace organization, a previous employer, or an organization you would like to work for. Reach out to your instructor early in the week (or earlier in the course) if you need assistance identifying a suitable organization for your final study.

You should review the Course Project Guidelines document in the Supplemental Material below for more detail as needed.  The following summary of the major sections of the paper should help you focus your project:

• Executive Summary—1-page synthesis of major ideas in the paper. What is the organization? What is its corporate strategy? What are one or two important pieces of rationale for having that strategy? What are one or two brief examples of how that strategy is (or isn’t) accurately implemented? What are one or two important recommendations you can make to the organization about the strategic development and implementation of its corporate strategy. Remember, the executive summary is a brief review that someone can read and get a quick snapshot of key points in your paper.
• General Analysis of Corporate Strategy—1–2-page analysis of the organization’s corporate strategy. What is the corporate strategy? What is the rationale that management uses to guide its decisions and actions at the corporate level? What is the business logic and reasoning behind the formulation of that strategy?
• Formulation of Corporate Strategy—1–2-page assessment of appropriateness and congruence of the various elements of the corporate strategy. Does each part fit with the logic and rationale of the overall corporate strategy? Is there internal consistency in how the corporate strategy is formulated?
• Implementation of Corporate Strategy—2–3-page evaluation of decisions and actions actually made by management and of its ability to make those decisions consistent with the stated corporate strategy. Are the organization’s decisions and actions consistent with or inconsistent with its corporate strategy? Does it possess the resources and capability to follow its corporate strategy (i.e., “make it happen”)? Does alignment exist between its strategy and its leadership, structure, systems, and culture?
• Conclusions and Recommendations—1–2-page justification of consultant-type recommendations to the organization. Does the organization need to change its corporate strategy? Does it need to address congruence among the corporate strategy elements? Does it need to address how decisions and actions are made and implemented? Provide clear research, rationale, and appropriate examples to support your conclusions and recommendations.

Note: APA does not generally use an executive summary. However, consulting reports often do contain an executive summary. For purposes of this assignment, present the executive summary as the introduction paragraphs of your APA paper. Because the executive summary reflects information from the body of your paper, you will likely need to complete those sections before completing the executive summary.

Submission Details:

Name your document MBA6999_W5_LastName_FirstInitial

Course Project Guidelines

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Course Project Guidelines

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In the course project, you will analyse the corporate strategy of multibusiness organizations. Every
week, you will analyze particular elements of a corporate strategy, culminating in an analysis of the
strategy by the end of the course. This is where you put together all the work you have researched and
completed in your assignments and the organizations mentioned in the course. Pay close attention to
your final assignment and how you will wrap it up.

The three overarching questions for this project are:

 What is the business logic and rationale behind the corporate strategy?

 How well do organizational decisions about formulating and implementing corporate strategy
fit with that logic and rationale?

 What recommendations would you make to the top management with respect to the decisions
made in executing the corporate strategy?

Be mindful of these questions as you complete each week’s project tasks. Having an idea of how you
will answer these questions will make writing your final integrated analysis much easier.

Tips for Writing

Both style and substance are important in written communication. Below are a few tips on style and
substance. View these tips as examples of writing found in a high-quality, comprehensive report that
still permits a great deal of freedom in terms of style and scope.

Your report will be complex and your conclusions derived from many hours of research, thinking, and
writing. Your objective is to communicate your learning to the reader concisely. Imagine that you’re
writing for a group of potential investors interested in learning about your chosen organization. You
want to be complete, accurate, and objective in your observations and analysis. All your conclusions
should be clear and well supported.

Inability to write effective business reports is one of the biggest weaknesses of managers. A well-
organized report helps simplify complex subjects and shows clear thinking. To do well in this area, just
recall the basics of good writing that you learned in high school and college.

As your paper will cover many different subjects, you should use section and subsection headings to
mark transitions from one topic to another. Transitions between paragraphs make for easy reading.
Each paragraph should begin with a clear topic sentence and should stick to that topic. The complexity
of your subject calls for simple sentence structure and the avoidance of jargon and unusual phrasing.

Tables, charts, and figures that illustrate especially complex points or support conclusions may be
included in an appendix at the end of the report. Do not use an exhibit unless you refer to it in your
paper. The source of the information in an exhibit must be shown in the exhibit.

Proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar are essential. Ensure that the final document is proofread
carefully (go beyond simply using spell-check). Be sure to use the APA format. A poorly written report
signals to the reader that the substance is also questionable.

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The paper must not exceed 12 pages, single-sided, double-spaced with 1-inch

margins, and use 12-point font. Do not count the executive summary, title page,

table of contents, references, and appendices in the 12-page limit.

The work described here cannot be done quickly. The time you spend on revising

your paper will be apparent and will produce a superior report.

Suggested Outline

This outline is intended to give you an idea of the potential scope of your project. You

will need to adjust it to suit the specifics of your selected organization.

I. Title Page

The organization’s name and your name should be highlighted here. The

course name and number and the date should also appear on this page.

II. Executive Summary

Begin your report by summarizing your findings in one single-spaced page. Do

not include supporting evidence here. The purpose of a summary is to stress

the highlights of the report for readers who want to know your conclusions but

do not have the time to go through the entire report.

III. Table of Contents

Begin numbering your pages here and continue consecutive page numbers

throughout the rest of the paper.

IV. General Analysis of the Corporate Strategy

In this section, address the first of the project’s three overarching questions.

Write a clear overview of the organizational rationale behind the corporate

strategy. Do not discuss individual actions here. Set out the logic that the

management uses to guide its various decisions and actions at the corporate

level.

The items in this section should serve as touchstones in the analysis of those

strategic actions in the subsequent sections. Measured against this dominant

logic, the organization’s actions, described in the following sections, can be

judged as “consistent” or “inconsistent” with its corporate strategy. These will

also be the comparison points for your recommendations in section VII. A

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well-argued section here will make the rationale for your recommendations

clear to the readers of your report.

V. Formulation of the Corporate Strategy

This section addresses the first part of the second overarching question. Begin your analysis of

the strategic actions undertaken while formulating its portfolio. Do not simply put these prior

analyses together sequentially. Instead, weave the three together into a single assessment.

Note that this is what the organization should be doing-thinking of all three areas

simultaneously when it makes a strategic decision in any one area.

Similarly, when you are evaluating each part’s fit with the logic and rationale

of the corporate strategy, don’t merely examine individual actions in isolation.

Emphasize the integrated assessment of the actions. In turn, compare this

integrated perspective on each action for internal consistency with the

corporate strategy logic you set out in section IV.

VI. Implementation of the Corporate Strategy

This section addresses the second part of the second overarching question. You

will want to build on your analysis in the previous section and address whether or

not this organization can “make it happen.” If the organization lacks the

implementation capability, even the most rational and integrated corporate

strategy will be a failure.

In writing this part of the report, you wilI want to consider many issues, such as

whether the strategy wiII receive the support of investors. Pressure for

performance often forces organizations to implement suboptimal strategies that

produce the short-term results that Wall Street wants, while foregoing strategic

alternatives that could be more valuable in the long term. Similarly, you should

consider the strategic leadership capabilities and the fit of the organization’s

structure, systems, and culture to its strategy. One of the management team’s

most important responsibilities is creating these complementary alignments.

VII. Conclusions and Recommendations

This section is not simply a short wrap-up. Your recommendations must

incorporate both analysis in sections V and VI and the logic that guided the

decisions you set out in section IV. In doing this, you will want to employ the

tools you have developed during the course, showing that you know how to use

them and how to interpret what they indicate when applied to a situation. Your

recommendations need to address strategic issues, not functional ones.

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You do not have to recommend changing the corporate strategy. Whether you

recommend no, few, or many changes, your recommendations should be

backed by logical arguments supported by reliable and comprehensive

information. Be sure to explain why your proposed alternative is superior to the

other choices.

VIII. References

Cite sources of all information and quotes using APA format. All reference

material used for the paper must be included in this section. All citations must

be complete; including information such as author names, titles, dates, volume

numbers, and page numbers. Electronic citations must include complete

website addresses.

IX. Appendices

You can include tables, graphs, and charts in appendices, as well as other

graphical exhibits. Remember that what you choose to include reflects your

understanding of what is important. Exhibits in the appendices can be critical in

supporting a verbal argument, or they can be trivial. Include information and

supporting material that strengthens the body of the paper, not those that are

merely fillers.

Weekly Project Tasks

Task 1: Corporate Strategy

Task 2: Acquisition Strategy

Task 3: International Strategy

Task 4: Cooperative Strategy and Competitive Advantage

Task 5: Final Submission—Integrated Analysis of Corporate Strategy