Develop a creative approach for improving specific processes, and utilize inductive arguments to support the proposed solution.

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Assume you are in an organization that is experiencing difficulty competing with others within a particular industry as a result of the entry of several new competitors into the market. You have been tasked by the organization’s leader with developing a creative marketing solution.

Develop a creative approach for improving specific processes, and utilize inductive arguments to support the proposed solution. The response should include one of the following:
generalization,
analogy, or
causal argument.
Your response should be at least 200 words in length.

Analyse the resources and key competences of the organisation to identify a set of Strengths and Weaknesses and identify core competences

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Company-ASTRAZENECA

1) Carry out external analysis (business environment and industry) to identify a set of Opportunities and Threats and assess industry attractiveness. (30%)

2) Analyse the resources and key competences of the organisation to identify a set of Strengths and Weaknesses and identify core competences (key factors that may give the company its competitive advantage). (30%)

3) Evaluate the given strategy (as per chosen organisation) using SAFe criteria. (30%)

 

Identify any gaps and suggest possible improvements to formal or informal aspects of the whole entity.

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Submit an organisation/start-up map. • Identify any gaps and suggest possible improvements to formal or informal aspects of the whole entity.

Create a 15-20 page capstone paper that analyzes a business topic and provides recommendations and is supported with credible resources that demonstrate evidence-based thinking.

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Create a 15-20 page capstone paper that analyzes a business topic and provides recommendations and is supported with credible resources that demonstrate evidence-based thinking.

Identify and critically evaluate the key stakeholders and positive and negative impacts the event has on a country

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Identify and critically evaluate the key stakeholders and positive and negative impacts the event has on a country or city, also understanding of the events industry, and the impacts and legacy of events.

How do individual and group decision processes aid or impede business decision making?

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review, your research will be guided by the following three Research Questions:
1. How do individual and group decision processes aid or impede business decision making?
2. What are the newest directions in the process of strategy development and
execution?
3. How can my academic discipline, as a function within the organization, impact the
process of business strategy development and execution?
Literature Review Instructions:
 Follow the outline generated in Week 6 updated to include any feedback from your
instructor.
 Minimum of 24 pages not including introduction and conclusion
 No less than 8 pages addressing each research question
 Minimum of 18 sources not including course texts
 No less than 6 sources for each research question
 1 inch margins, Double Spaced, Maximum of 12 point font
 APA 6th ed. Format to include APA Cover Page, Abstract, Table of Contents, and

Evaluate its internal and external environment, and analyze its overall competitive environment through strategic analysis.

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Firm Analysis Group Writing Project

The business environment is extremely complicated and significantly impacted by many economic, political and societal variables. The purpose of this project is to create a simulated learning experience whereby you will have the opportunity to study many of these variables within the context of a firm and its industry environment. Hence, your group will be assigned a well-known, publicly traded firm, evaluate its internal and external environment, and analyze its overall competitive environment through strategic analysis.

Project Outline

Specifically, the following components must be part of the paper. An expanded description of the sections can be found below.

You’ll need to put these references in APA format. Visit the Penn State Library site for a guide on citing and references. When completed, please choose one member of your team to submit your reference list as a Word Document, and be sure that the document includes the names of all group members who participated.

1. Introduction 1 page

  • Introduction of the paper

2. Overview of Industry and Firm (Lesson 1) 1-2 pages

  • Summary of firm’s current profile (industry type and dynamics: who, what, where, when, how)
  • Discussion of vision and mission and recent strategies

3. External Analysis of Industry (Lesson 2) 4-5 pages

  • General environment factors with a discussion of threats and opportunities
  • Brief overview of competitors and any strategic partners
  • Industry environment analysis using Porter’s Five Forces

4. Internal Analysis of Firm (Lesson 3) 4-5 pages

  • Financial ratio analysis, VRIN analysis
    • Summary of 5 types of financial ratios can be found in Chapter 3 of your textbook and Summary of financial ratio analysis techniques can be found in the appendix to the Case Analysis Chapter.
    • All financial ratio calculations should be investigated for any trend over a period of time. Profit margin should be reviewed over a minimum of five year period.
  • Strengths: Core competencies? Resources? Capabilities?
  • Weaknesses

5. Strategic Competitive Analysis 5-6 pages

A. Firm’s Competitive Advantage (Lesson 4)

  • Does it have it? Why or why not? Use both VRIN and profitability analysis to justify your answer

B. Business Level Strategy (Lesson 5)

  • Differentiation strategy vs. price (cost leadership)

To Identify a Busi­ness-level Strategy:

  1. Determine whether the firm is pursuing:
    • Low-cost leadership
    • Broad differentiation
    • Best-cost provider
    • Focused low-cost
    • Focused differentiation
    • Stuck in the middle
  2. Support your choice with appropriate evidence from company and/or media reports. For example:
    1. Cost leadership strategy
      • List all the ways the firm is trying to cut costs.
    2. Differentiation strategy
      • Name the unique feature(s).
      • Note the price premium.
      • Highlight marketing and/or R&D.
    3. Focus strategy
      • Identify the market niche.
      • Show how the firm understands the niche better than anyone else; how it is likely to provide both cost and differentiation advantages.
    4. Best cost
      • Discuss the relationship between price and product features.

To Evaluate a Business-level Strategy:

  1. Implementation
    • Determine whether the firm has appropriately implemented its chosen strategy.
    • Is it ‘stuck in the middle’? Discuss how the business strategy may be ineffective.
      • Examine revenue and profits in comparison to their competition.
    • Pay particular attention to organization structure and controls.
    • NOTE: This is the hardest information to obtain about a company and is often missing.

C. Corporate Level Strategy (Lessons 6 and 7)

  • How diversified is the company? (Hint: 5 choices from single business to unrelated diversification).
  • How has the company grown (or contracted) over the last decade? (Hint: 3 choices – Concentration, Integration, and Diversification).
  • Assess the success/failure of their corporate strategy.

To Identify a Corporate-level Strategy

  1. Consider both the breakdown of revenues and the similarities in the primary activities of the value chains across lines of business. Then classify the strategy as:
    • concentration (either pure concentration or via market development or product development)
    • integration
    • diversification (related diversification or unrelated diversification)
    • vertical or horizontal integration
    • international
  2. Support your choice with appropriate evi­dence about revenues and primary activities in the value chains.

To Evaluate a Corporate-level Strategy

  1. Determine whether value is added using company and/or media sources. The ways that corporate-level strategies can add value are:
    1. vertical integration
      1. market power
        1. build entry barriers
        2. increase firm’s bargaining power over suppliers
        3. increase firm’s bargaining power over buyers
          • through clout/leverage
          • by protecting a differentiated feature, like product quality or proprietary technology
          • related diversification
        4. pooled negotiating power
        5. multipoint competition
      2. economies of scope
        • leveraged/transferred core competencies or distinctive competencies (esp. intangible resources)
        • shared activities (esp. tangible resources)
    2. horizontal integration
    3. unrelated diversification
      1. acquisition and restructuring
      2. portfolio management
      3. parenting
        • implementation
  2. Determine whether the firm has appropriately implemented its chosen strategy. Pay particular attention to organization structure and controls.
  3. Verify that value was added for stockholders by examining shareholder returns. Examine such factors as:
    • cumulative total return
    • increase in stock price
    • market/book value
    • EPS
    • dividend payout ratio
    • P/E

D. International Strategy (Lesson 8)

  • What international strategy is the firm using? Note: International expansion is a part of the international level strategy.

6. Recommendations 2-3 pages

  • Suggest at least 3 specific recommendations for the firm including a brief action plan for each recommendation.
  • Advantages and disadvantages of each recommendation

 

Produce a career development plan using APUS resources, services, and networking opportunities.

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Produce a career development plan using APUS resources, services, and networking opportunities.

Conduct a career search for a position of choice or search other post­graduate choices to share in the discussion.

Argue the importance of civic and social responsibility as it applies to student’s discipline or career choice.

Prompt:

Create a presentation that covers the following in detail:

3-5-7 year plan for your career development–give a timeline of your goals–be sure they are S.M.A.R.T goals! S.M.A.R.T goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and timely. See link for more details about S.M.A.R.T goals.
Needs/Plans for further learning/professional development–what do you anticipate needing and how will you acquire it?
Incorporation of service/giving back in your future career aspirations-provide argument for why this is/is not important to your career plans
Instructions:

Your design should be aesthetically pleasing, easy to read and should not include too much text/data on the slides themselves. Be sure to include additional information the “Notes” section of the slides to support your recommendations and elaborate on your suggestions. Your “Notes” should support your recommendations with references and citations from your readings and a minimum of five other sources such as career sites, Bureau of Labor Statistics, etc.

Develop a PowerPoint presentation with a minimum of 8-10 slides.
Your presentation should include a reference page on the final slide in APA format.

Utilize the “Speaker Notes” section to expand upon the bullet points in your slides.

How has the Talent Management Process incorporated internal and external changes / trends?

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Looking at an organisation that you are familiar with provide applied critical assessment of the recruitment and selection procedure being used as part of the larger Talent Management process.

Provide background information on your organisation, outlining the HR function and its responsibilities.
Outline and assess the full Talent Management process used within the organisation.
What HR planning has taken place within your organisation? Is this sufficient?
How has the Talent Management Process incorporated internal and external changes / trends?
Looking at your analysis and best practice what recommendations if any would you make for improvement within your organisation?

(Draw on your learning from Unit 1 – 4 and brainstorming activity in unit 1 to make use of frameworks, theories and best practice to support your ideas).

Word Count: 2,000 words (The report is 2,000 words and then the reflective statement is an additional 200 words. See below for details of reflective statement.)

The learning outcomes for this assignment are:
Contextualise HRM within your organisational setting.
Apply relevant legislation
Demonstrate an understanding of the HR process, Planning and Talent Management.
Suggested Reading
Critical discussion

Additional information on writing critically can be found at: Read more about how to write critically

Presentation format
Your response will be in the form of a written Report. This should be presented using Informative Headers, Harvard Referencing and a 3rd person writing style.

At the end of the report under the header Reflective Statement have a look at the journey that you have undertaken over the last 4 weeks and in completion of this assignment.

Reflect on:

Key learning points – what are they? and how will this aid you in your organisation / future career?
Learning journey – look at your time management; use of resources and the process you undertook in completion of the assessment.
Development areas if any for future units / modules / assessment activities.
The word count for this section is 200 words and is weighted at 5% of the MMA grade
This element can be written using a 1st person writing style. Read more about academic reflection.

Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
We take academic integrity very seriously. Academic integrity means acting with fairness and honesty, giving credit to others where you are referring to their ideas or research and respecting the work of others. Plagiarism is defined as: ‘Using or copying the work of others (whether written, printed or in any other form) without proper acknowledgement’. Before you finalise your assignment take time to check that all your statements are backed up with supporting evidence, that all sources you use – whether referring to their ideas, quoting directly or paraphrasing – are correctly referenced in the text. Correct use of referencing acknowledges the academic whose work has informed yours, enables the reader to find the sources you have used and demonstrates your ability to find and analyse relevant information.

Failure to properly acknowledge the work of others is an academic offence and may result in your work incurring a penalty or, in the most serious cases, you being removed from the course for academic dishonesty.

If you are unsure about referencing or plagiarism there are useful resources available in the Study Skills Hub which is accessible from the menu on the left hand side. If you are still experiencing difficulties with academic integrity then you can contact the Study Skills Team for individualised support studyskills-kol@kaplan.com

Please note, a word count penalty applies to this assessment.

If your assessment exceeds the word count limit or range by more than 10% then your awarded grade will be reduced by 10% grade points. For more information please see the word count penalties information.

Not meeting the word count

There is no grade reduction applied if your assignment does not meet the word count range or limit, but to maximise your opportunity to achieve the highest grade possible, you should aim to meet the word count or range as closely as possible.

Turnitin Originality Check
Before submitting your assignment, it is important to check the originality of your work by submitting your assignment to Turnitin.

By submitting your assignment to this tool you will receive an originality report which can be used to check that you have not included other authors work without correct citation. It is important to note that submitting your work to the Turnitin Originality Check tool does not count as a submission of your final work. You must still submit your assignment below.

Submission Instructions:
Submit your saved document below before the end of Unit 4
After the deadline, the submission page will be locked
If you need to apply for Late Submission, please complete the late submission of coursework form

Explain what type of performance evaluation system you would use to evaluate factory workers. Justify why you believe this is the right system to use.

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Comparative systems and absolute systems are two types of systems that can be used to evaluate employee performance and competencies. As discussed in Chapter 5, there are advantages and disadvantages associated with these systems.

As the newly hired HR Director for a large manufacturing organization, which makes parts for cell phones, you have been informed that the current performance evaluation system that is utilized is almost nonexistent. In fact, it has been almost three years since employees have been assessed. You have been asked by upper level management to do the following:

Explain what type of performance evaluation system you would use to evaluate factory workers. Justify why you believe this is the right system to use.
Based upon the selected system, what assessment method would you utilize? Justify why you believe that this is a quality assessment method.
Explain how the selected system and method are aligned with or different than performance management practices in the manufacturing industry.
Your well-written paper should meet the following requirements:

Be 4-5 pages in length, which does not include the title page, abstract, or required reference page, which are never a part of the content minimum requirements.
Use Saudi Electronic University academic writing standards and APA style guidelines.
Support your submission with course material concepts, principles, and theories from the textbook and at least two scholarly, peer-reviewed journal articles.
Review the grading rubric to see how you will be graded for this assignment.