EDSLIONS/weekly discussions/Strategic Management Assignment 2

This Page is for discussing issues on Strategic Management by the LIONS group of UNISA MBL Programme.

Kago and Hove, kindly go to the discussion page

= Statement of Work (SoW)=

Members
Members for this Lions Strategic Mangement (SM) sub-team are:
 * 1) Kago,
 * 2) Taurai, and
 * 3) Victor

Assignment
Group assignment 2 (100 marks) Due date: 11/08/2009

Use appropriate methods to analyse the CASE : OfficeMax and the office supply industry.

Having heard of your growing prowess in matters of strategic analysis, senior executives at OfficeMax have retained your services to provide analysis and advice to the company’s CEO and Board of Directors regarding the possible merger of its two largest competitors.

You have been asked to prepare a report that will include:


 * a) A detailed analysis of the company and the industry 	(30 marks)
 * b) Your recommendations on appropriate strategic interventions that the organisation should implement in order to counteract the threat of the merger of its two largest competitors (60 marks)

Your recommendations must include:

i) A focus on the entrepreneurial process, intrapreneurship, innovation and creativity. (20 marks)

ii) An organisation design that will facilitate effective monitoring and control of divisions, stores and management performance, without sacrificing the independence and creativity of individual managers. (20 marks)

iii) The strategic implementation process together with the controls that should be in place to support the monitoring of the implementation of your recommendations. (20 marks)

Presentation 	(10 marks)

Please support your recommendations with the conceptual and analytical tools presented in the course. You are expected to provide the company with a report that is thorough and thoughtfully prepared, and that reflects a strong grasp and application of the tools and concepts of industry and competitive analysis and company situation analysis, and the formulation of strategies, their implementation, monitoring and control. Your method of referencing must consistently follow the Harvard method.

Recommended length: Main assignment – 20 pages, 1,5 spacing.

Appendices can be used to highlight additional information.

I have not specified a maximum length. Please be careful to ensure that the report is not unnecessarily long or tedious merely because you feel that a long report would be a good one. I will mark the content and not the length. Answers that are too long, with a lot of “padding”, will result in the assignment being marked down. Conversely, answers that are too short and lacking in detail and reasoning will also earn poor marks.