Any Australian Not-For-Profit Organisation
A proposal (maximum of 600 words) to be submitted via UTS Online by Wednesday 30th August outlining why you have chosen this particular Strategic Business Unit or other organisation and your initial assessment of its strategic issues, tools/frameworks for analysing its strategic issues and your initial research to ensure that you can access relevant strategic information for the Strategic Business Unit or organisation.
You may want to identify a company that is in the industry (or a related industry) to your team scenarios project as this will help you with understanding the broader macro-environment the business operate in.
The Strategic Research Proposal asks you for your initial outline and assessment of the major strategic issues the business or organisation faces over the next 3-10 years. It also asks you to outline the strategic analysis tools/frameworks etc that you envisage being most useful for your analysis and your initial evaluation to ensure relevant strategic information is available on the Strategic Business Unit or organisation.
The maximum mark for the Strategic Research Proposal is 10% of the overall subject mark.
Strategic Issues and Recommendations Report due 18th October (25% of Overall Subject Mark).
Your individual report on the Strategic Issues faced by a particular business or organisation and your Strategic Recommendation on how to address them will be due to be submitted to the turnitin folder on Wednesday 30th August and be handed in as hard copy at class (if requested by your tutor).
You have a choice of which business or organisation you wish to do your report on, however, it is recommended that you are likely to provide a better report if you choose a Strategic Business Unit or an organisation that interests you (possibly as a future employer). A not-for-profit organisation or a government business enterprise or even a government agency can be chosen as an organisation if they are organisations that develop and implement a strategy.
If you are choosing a business, you need to choose a Strategic Business Unit that implements a business level strategy (for example, Jetstar Domestic – NOT Qantas group) and is NOT a Strategic Business Unit that implements on a national basis a global strategy (eg Apple Australia, Samsung Australia or Google Australia).
It is possible, however, to focus on a major subsidiary of a diversified company. For example, Coles Supermarkets is a wholly owned subsidiary of the diversified Westfarmers Group and Coles Supermarkets would be suitable business to assess the major strategic issues that you see that business having to address in the next 3-10 years. The Westfarmers Group would NOT be a suitable business as a focus for your report due to the wide variety of business it owns and the wide range of industries it competes in.
This is because it is difficult to properly assess in the limited time you have available the wide range of issues across a diverse and global organisation operating across many countries. You need to choose a Strategic Businss Unit that mainly operates in one country and where the strategy for operating in that country is mainly national, not global. This means that companies, such as Google and Apple are NOT suitable due to the global strategies and operations in almost every country of the world. However, some other multi-nationals, such as HSBC, may be suitable as their Australian subsidiary has a separate strategy and implementation for the Australian market.
The report allows you to demonstrate your skills at assessing which strategy analysis models and tools are most suitable for identifying and assessing the issues that the Strategic Business Unit or organisation is likely to face over the next 3-10 years, through the application of the relevant strategy analysis models and tools.
