Critically apply strategic management and organisational development theories, concepts and techniques in order to determine the future strategic direction of an organisation;
The Business Environment
Assignment Brief:
Clear statement of the work that students are expected to undertake:
Choosing an organisation “NOTTING HILL GENESIS” -A Housing Association with which you are familiar (ideally the organisation for which you work) and using strategic management and organisational development theories write a report that:
· Identifies the key factors in your organisation’s current operating environment and evaluate their impact on your chosen organisation;
· Critically analyses the organisation’s current strategic position;
· Identifies and evaluates two strategic options before stating your preferred strategic option:
· Critically analyses the key principles of successful change programmes that underpin the effective implementation of your chosen strategic option.
Further Information:
This assignment assess the whole module. It has been designed to provide you with an opportunity to not only develop your understanding of strategic management and organisational development but also your ability for critical evaluation and report writing. It assesses the following learning outcomes:
a. Critically apply strategic management and organisational development theories, concepts and techniques in order to determine the future strategic direction of an organisation;
b. Critically evaluate and appraise the interaction of strategic and organisational development theories in relation to the creation of successful organisations in complex environments;
c. Critically analyse information, identify solutions, demonstrate judgement and communicate findings;
d. Demonstrate the capacity for independent, evidence based thinking and decision making.
Assessment Criteria/Mark Scheme:
Referencing Style:
APA 6th edition or Harvard Northumbria
Size of the submission:
The word limit for your report is 4,000 words. The word limit can be exceeded by up to 10% without penalty 4,400 words in total. Once the 10% limit has been reached the marker will stop and assess the work marked against the assessment criteria. Tables and diagrams do not count towards the word limit.
However, they need to be used judiciously and not as a mechanism to extend the word limit. By this I mean that tables cannot be created to include text that would normally be outside of a table; tables etc must be integrated into the overall discussion; and they must not be used excessively.
As a guide the word limit should be allocated in your assignment to reflect the weighting in the assessment criteria above.
Assignment weighting:
This assignment is worth 100% of the module marks for PE7003
Academic Integrity Statement
Organisation Chosen: “Notting hill Genesis”- A Housing Association in the UK
1) Critical analysis of the operating environment of your chosen organisation using appropriate strategic management theory (30%)
2) Critical analysis of the organisation’s current strategic position using appropriate strategic management theory (15%);
3) Identification and evaluation, using an appropriate model, of two appropriate strategic options. Using the evaluation to justify a final single option choice. (15%);
4) Critical analysis of the principles of successful change programmes that underpin effective strategic implementation using appropriate strategic management and organisational development theory to apply the chosen option (30%)
5) Well-structured and argued report that shows evidence of wide reading of academic sources (beyond the module paper and core texts) that are integrated into the report and correctly referenced (10%)
Planning is one of the fundamentals of modern life. We all practice it to a greater or lesser extent. In our personal lives we plan holidays, careers, the acquisition of assets (e.g. cars, consumer goods, houses); sometimes we do detailed planning with budgets, on other occasions we do it fairly informally, simply ‘work things out in our heads’.
But however we do it, planning, essentially, is the ‘organisation of a series of actions to achieve a specified outcome’.
In work environments, where we typically refer to it as ‘business planning’, we adopt a generally much more systematic, disciplined approach. We plan projects, plan and develop new products and services, new initiatives and programmes. We also draw up plans for change, for doing things differently, doing things better.
We also discuss, draft and then implement short, medium and longer-term plans as to where, organisationally, we want to get to, what we want to achieve.
In essence such plans are organisational ‘route maps’ to get us from ‘where we are at now’ to ‘where we want to get to’ at some defined point, or points, in the future.
They are also the essence of what, today, we call strategic planning, something that has, since the early 1960s, grown steadily to become one of the essentials of modern business and organisational life.
Planning in Business Environments
Management theorist Henri Fayol (1841-1925) whose work still endures today (see section 5c) included planning amongst what he said were the prime responsibilities of management:
He described planning as: ‘examining the future, deciding what needs to be done and developing a plan of action’.
“Strategic planning helps determine the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, matching its resources to its changing environment and, in particular, its markets, customers and clients, so as to meet stakeholder expectations.“ Johnson and Scholes, 1993
Strategic planning is a systematic process of envisioning a desired future, and translating this vision into broadly defined goals or objectives and a sequence of steps to achieve them. In contrast to long-term planning (which begins withthe current status and lays down a path to meet estimated future needs), strategic planning begins with the desired-end and works backward to the current status.
At every stage of long-range planning the planner asks, “What must be done here to reach the next (higher) stage?” At every stage of strategic-planning the planner asks, “What must be done at the previous (lower) stage to reach here?” Also, in contrast to tactical planning (which focuses at achieving narrowly defined interim objectives with predetermined means), strategic planning looks at the wider picture and is flexible in choice of its means.