Westminster International College Module Title : Strategic Management – SM. Programme : MBA Part Time Groups : 44, 46 Module Period : 31 March 2017. Lecturer : Mervyn Sookun, Adjunct Professor Date of Completion and Submission : 11th May 2017 Submission Method : Online via Turnitin Assessment Type : Individual Written Assignment Assignment Question : As a strategy consultant you have been invited by the board of directors of a company based, within a well defined industry sector, to advise them on the possibility of changing the strategy of their company. In particular they are keen to redesign their strategy along the lines of the much publicized blue ocean strategy and also consider the possibility of developing a global strategy. Required: Task 1 Carry out a full analysis of the industry or sector in which the company is currently operating. Drawing on relevant models and using appropriate company data, critically appraise its current strategy. (1500 words) Task 2 Critically discuss the ways in which the company could shift its strategy from "red ocean" to "blue ocean". (2000 words) Task 3 Identify and discuss the key implementation challenges. (500 words) Marking Scheme • The assignment assessment criteria and mark allocation are as follows : Task 1 • Application of tools (PESTEL, five forces, strategic mapping) to analyze competitive data. 40% Task 2 • Application of relevant models and key conclusions. 50% Task 3 • Implementation Challenges. 10% General Guidelines • The submission of your work assessment should be organized and clearly structured in a report format. • Maximum word length allowed is 4000 words, excluding words in charts & tables and in the appendixes section of your assignment. • This assignment is worth 100% of the final assessment of the module. • Student is required to submit a type-written document in Microsoft Word format with Times New Roman font type, size 12 and line spacing 1.5. • Indicate the sources of information and literature review by including all the necessary citations and references adopting the Harvard Referencing System. • Students who have been found to have committed acts of Plagiarism are automatically considered to have failed the entire semester. If found to have breached the regulation for the second time, you will be asked to leave the course. • Plagiarism involves taking someone else’s words, thoughts, ideas or essays from online essay banks and trying to pass them off as your own. It is a form of cheating which is taken very seriously. Notes on Plagiarism & Harvard Referencing Plagiarism Plagiarism is passing off the work of others as your own. This constitutes academic theft and is a serious matter which is penalized in assignment marking. Plagiarism is the submission of an item of assessment containing elements of work produced by another person(s) in such a way that it could be assumed to be the student’s own work. Examples of plagiarism are: • the verbatim copying of another person’s work without acknowledgement • the close paraphrasing of another person’s work by simply changing a few words or altering the order of presentation without acknowledgement • the unacknowledged quotation of phrases from another person’s work and/or the presentation of another person’s idea(s) as one’s own. It also includes self-plagiarism' (which occurs where, for example, you submit work that you have presented for assessment on a previous occasion). And the submission of material from 'essay banks' (even if the authors of such material appear to be giving you permission to use it in this way) Copying or close paraphrasing with occasional acknowledgement of the source may also be deemed to be plagiarism is the absence of quotation marks implies that the phraseology is the student’s own. Plagiarised work may belong to another student or be from a published source such as a book, report, journal or material available on the internet. Additional Examples of plagiarism include: • directly copying from written work, physical work, performances, recorded work or images, without saying where this is from; • using information from the internet or electronic media (such as DVDs and CDs) which belongs to someone else, and presenting it as your own; • rewording someone else’s work, without referencing them; and • handing in something for assessment which has been produced by another student or person. It is important that you do not plagiarise – intentionally or unintentionally – because the work of others and their ideas are their own. There are benefits to producing original ideas in terms of awards, prizes, qualifications, reputation and so on. To use someone else’s work, words, images, ideas or discoveries is a form of theft. Collusion Collusion is similar to plagiarism as it is an attempt to present another’s work as your own. In plagiarism the original owner of the work is not aware you are using it, in collusion two or more people may be involved in trying to produce one piece of work to benefit one individual, or plagiarising another person’s work. Examples of collusion include: • agreeing with others to cheat; • getting someone else to produce part or all of your work; • copying the work of another person (with their permission); • submitting work from essay banks; • paying someone to produce work for you; and • Allowing another student to copy your own work. Harvard Referencing The structure of a citation under the Harvard referencing system is the author’s surname, year of publication, and page number or range, in parentheses, as illustrated in the Smith example near the top of this article. • The page number or page range is omitted if the entire work is cited. The author’s surname is omitted if it appears in the text. Thus we may say : “Jones (2001) revolutionized the field of trauma surgery.” • Two or three authors are cited using “and” or “&” : (Deane, Smith, and Jones, 1991) or (Deane, Smith & Jones, 1991). More than three authors are cited using et al. (Deane et al. 1992). • An unknown date is cited as no date (Deane n.d.). A reference to a reprint is cited with the original publication date in square brackets (Marx [1867] 1967, p. 90). • If an author published two books in 2005, the year of the first (in the alphabetic order of the references) is cited and referenced as 2005a, the second as 2005b. • A citation is placed wherever appropriate in or after the sentence. If it is at the end of a sentence, it is placed before the period, but a citation for an entire block quote immediately follows the period at the end of the block since the citation is not an actual part of the quotation itself. • Complete citations are provided in alphabetical order in a section following the text, usually designated as “Works cited” or “References”. The difference between a “works cited” or “references” list and a bibliography is that a bibliography may include works not directly cited in the text. • All citations are in the same font as the main text. Examples Examples of book references are : • Smith, J. (2005a). Dutch Citing Practices. The Hague: Holland Research Foundation. • Smith, J. (2005b). Harvard Referencing. London: Jolly Good Publishing. In giving the city of publication, an internationally well-known city (such as London, The Hague, or New York) is referenced as the city alone. If the city is not internationally well known, the country (or state and country if in the U.S.) are given. An example of a journal reference : • Smith, John Maynard. “The origin of altruism,” Nature 393, 1998, pp. 639-40. An example of a journal reference : • Bowcott, Owen. “Street Protest”, The Guardian, October 18, 2005, accessed February 7, 2006.