MARCH 2012 CONTEMPORARY STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Instructions to candidates: (please read carefully): To complete this assignment effectively you

should select an organisation that you are familiar with, either in your own country or another elsewhere. It can be any type of organisation but should be one where you have excellent access to information on it either from published secondary data sources or from links that you might have with it. Make sure you are able to gather data in the key strategic areas of your chosen organisation in order that you have sufficient to hand to tackle the set task effectively. YOUR REPORT SHOULD BE GUIDED BY THE MARKING SCHEME PRO-FORMA AVAILABLE ON THE ICM WEBSITE. You are required to produce a formal strategic report, based on your chosen case study, in no more than 4,000 words excluding diagrams, as per the task below. It will be expected that contemporary strategic management theory will underpin the report in places and where relevant. However, you do not need to reproduce this theory straight from a text (as you should assume that the examiner is knowledgeable about it) but instead should apply it directly to your chosen organisation. The report should be analytical rather than descriptive. DESCRIPTIVE TYPE REPORTS GAIN FEW OR NO MARKS! TASK You are to assume the role of senior management and prepare a strategic management REPORT in order to assist with developing the strategic future of your chosen organisation. The report should be in TWO sections and not more than 4,000 words in total. continued overleaf

SECTION ONE (Word guide 2,500 and 50% unit weighting) should cover a strategic analysis of your chosen organisations current situation where a number of strategic frameworks familiar to the unit might be utilised and applied to the organisation. You should discuss what the frameworks are suggesting about the current situation, performance and ability of your chosen organisation. Conclude this section having identified and justified THREE possible FUTURE options or strategies that your chosen organisation would need to consider. An effective answer should include several business model frameworks applied to the chosen organisation, which might include a variety of models from the following: SW-OT/PESTLE/Five-Forces/Stakeholder mapping & analysis/Strategy Clock/Seven S Structure/Value Chain/Boston matrix/Generic Strategies/Benchmarking/Balanced Scorecard/Financial Ratios etc. NO MARKS AWARDED FOR THEORY COPIED STRAIGHT FROM VARIOUS TEXTS IT MUST BE CONTEXTUALISED! SECTION TWO (Word guide 1,500 and 40% unit weighting) covers strategic choice and should build on this strategic analysis by evaluating these possible future strategies, using criteria of your choice, and highlighting the best one with your reasoned justification. You should then outline in detail how this chosen future strategy should be implemented in order for it to be sustainable and for your chosen organisation to have a successful future. An effective answer might use Suitability, Feasibility and Acceptability (SFA), External Factor Evaluation (EFE) or similar as possible criteria to evaluate the three chosen future strategies. The report should then justify the best strategy and outline, with relevant timescales (possibly with a Gantt chart), how it might be sensibly implemented for the chosen organisation and conclude with a summary. AGAIN, NO MARKS AWARDED FOR PURE THEORY NOT CONTEXTUALISED. There is an additional 10% unit weighting available for report presentation and structure, layout, grammar, spelling and referencing in Harvard format commensurate with post-graduate level study.

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