BUS499 Strategic Management Paper
GLO-BUS Paper (drop box directions)
You will individually write a 7-8 page paper (not including cover page, reference page, or tables/graphs) covering your company’s performance, strategy, and operation as a concluding or wind-up exercise for the Glo-Bus simulation. The paper is an excellent way to debrief your experience and explore “lessons learned”. This should be a paper that discusses the company you have created in the simulation and all that you have learned and should be detailed enough for the reader to know the specific points about strategy and its effects on the company.
PLEASE NOTE: The paper must adhere to APA style guidelines, should be well organized, double-spaced, and include 12-point font. The paper should contain an introduction, conclusion, headings, smooth transitions from one topic to the next, tables/graphs, cover page, reference page, and include a minimum of 3 references from the course. Proofread your paper, making sure to use proper spelling, grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure.
The paper is due at the end of Module 6 and should be submitted in the “GLO-BUS Final Paper” Assignment submission box. See the attached document for detailed guidelines.
BUS499 Strategic Management Paper
Separate document attached to assignment and posted on the course template
Company Paper Guidelines.doc
The paper should be 7-8 pages in length, not including appendices. You should use tables and graphs where applicable. You will submit this paper through the drop box.
Guidelines – these are only guidelines for each of the categories you will be evaluated on with the grading rubric.
Introduction: The purpose of the assignment is described comprehensively, delivering all relevant information necessary for full understanding of the assignment by the audience.
The Current Situation (2 page): Include the history, development, and growth of the Company/Industry. Apply Porter’s five force model to the industry in which your simulation company is based. (intensity of rivalry among existing firms, threat of entry, pressure from substitutes, the bargaining power of buyers, and the bargaining power of suppliers.) In addition, apply the four classes of macro-environmental forces: (political-legal, economic, social, and technological.)
BUS499 Strategic Management Paper
SWOT (1-2 page): Based on your decisions in the simulation, what are the strengths and weaknesses of your simulation company? (e.g. if you have made product quality your focus, you must have positioned your company to have a strength in that area). What do you think are the opportunities and threats the company faces in its industry? How do they position themselves in the market?
Strategies (1-2 pages): Some things to consider in your submission are: On the corporate level, which corporate profile do you think your company is operating under? What strategic alternative (growth, stability, or retrenchment) is your company using? Assess the business level strategies (Porter’s Seven (7) Generic Business Strategy typologies) being pursued by your company. On the Functional level, which functional activities does your company coordinate together? Is there consistency among the functions? Why or why not?
BUS499 Strategic Management Paper
Simulation Rounds (2 pages): Discuss what changes you made in the simulation rounds for year 6 through 10 and the results of those changes based upon your knowledge and positioning of your simulation company. Include specific data and decisions. What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? Some things you should report specific data and decisions on:
- Trends in the company’s annual total revenues
- Trends in the company’s annual earnings per share (EPS)
- Trends in the company’s annual return on equity investment (ROE)
- Trends in the company’s annual credit rating
- Trends in the company’s year-end stock price
- Trends in the company’s annual image rating
Include tables and charts to help illustrate this section. When you launch the Decisions and Reports program, there is a Performance Summary containing bar graphs showing your company’s performance on each of the above six performance indicators. To create charts showing your company’s trends for these six measures, simply click on the “Copy to Clipboard” button under each of the bar charts for the final year of the simulation and paste in your Word document. If you wish to create additional performance graphs, you can do so, but the above indicators tell an adequate story about your company’s historical performance. APA.