Course Project Guidelines © 2014 South University Course Project Guidelines Page 2 of 5 Strategic Development and Implementation ©2014 South University 2 In the course project, you will analyse the corporate strategy of multibusiness organizations. Every week, you will analyze particular elements of a corporate strategy, culminating in an analysis of the strategy by the end of the course. This is where you put together all the work you have researched and completed in your assignments and the organizations mentioned in the course. Pay close attention to your final assignment and how you will wrap it up. The three overarching questions for this project are:  What is the business logic and rationale behind the corporate strategy?  How well do organizational decisions about formulating and implementing corporate strategy fit with that logic and rationale?  What recommendations would you make to the top management with respect to the decisions made in executing the corporate strategy? Be mindful of these questions as you complete each week’s project tasks. Having an idea of how you will answer these questions will make writing your final integrated analysis much easier. Tips for Writing Both style and substance are important in written communication. Below are a few tips on style and substance. View these tips as examples of writing found in a high-quality, comprehensive report that still permits a great deal of freedom in terms of style and scope. Your report will be complex and your conclusions derived from many hours of research, thinking, and writing. Your objective is to communicate your learning to the reader concisely. Imagine that you're writing for a group of potential investors interested in learning about your chosen organization. You want to be complete, accurate, and objective in your observations and analysis. All your conclusions should be clear and well supported. Inability to write effective business reports is one of the biggest weaknesses of managers. A well- organized report helps simplify complex subjects and shows clear thinking. To do well in this area, just recall the basics of good writing that you learned in high school and college. As your paper will cover many different subjects, you should use section and subsection headings to mark transitions from one topic to another. Transitions between paragraphs make for easy reading. Each paragraph should begin with a clear topic sentence and should stick to that topic. The complexity of your subject calls for simple sentence structure and the avoidance of jargon and unusual phrasing. Tables, charts, and figures that illustrate especially complex points or support conclusions may be included in an appendix at the end of the report. Do not use an exhibit unless you refer to it in your paper. The source of the information in an exhibit must be shown in the exhibit. Proper s ...

1. Course Project Guidelines
© 2014 South University
Course Project Guidelines

2. Page 2 of 5
Strategic Development and Implementation
©2014 South University
2
In the course project, you will analyse the corporate strategy of
multibusiness organizations. Every
week, you will analyze particular elements of a corporate
strategy, culminating in an analysis of the
strategy by the end of the course. This is where you put together
all the work you have researched and
completed in your assignments and the organizations mentioned
in the course. Pay close attention to
your final assignment and how you will wrap it up.
The three overarching questions for this project are:
strategy?
implementing corporate strategy
fit with that logic and rationale?
e to the top
management with respect to the decisions
made in executing the corporate strategy?
Be mindful of these questions as you complete each week’s
project tasks. Having an idea of how you
will answer these questions will make writing your final

3. integrated analysis much easier.
Tips for Writing
Both style and substance are important in written
communication. Below are a few tips on style and
substance. View these tips as examples of writing found in a
high-quality, comprehensive report that
still permits a great deal of freedom in terms of style and scope.
Your report will be complex and your conclusions derived from
many hours of research, thinking, and
writing. Your objective is to communicate your learning to the
reader concisely. Imagine that you're
writing for a group of potential investors interested in learning
about your chosen organization. You
want to be complete, accurate, and objective in your
observations and analysis. All your conclusions
should be clear and well supported.
Inability to write effective business reports is one of the biggest
weaknesses of managers. A well-
organized report helps simplify complex subjects and shows
clear thinking. To do well in this area, just
recall the basics of good writing that you learned in high school
and college.
As your paper will cover many different subjects, you should
use section and subsection headings to
mark transitions from one topic to another. Transitions between
paragraphs make for easy reading.
Each paragraph should begin with a clear topic sentence and

4. should stick to that topic. The complexity
of your subject calls for simple sentence structure and the
avoidance of jargon and unusual phrasing.
Tables, charts, and figures that illustrate especially complex
points or support conclusions may be
included in an appendix at the end of the report. Do not use an
exhibit unless you refer to it in your
paper. The source of the information in an exhibit must be
shown in the exhibit.
Proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar are essential. Ensure
that the final document is proofread
carefully (go beyond simply using spell-check). Be sure to use
the APA format. A poorly written report
signals to the reader that the substance is also questionable.
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The paper must not exceed 12 pages, single-sided, double-
spaced with 1-inch
margins, and use 12-point font. Do not count the executive
summary, title page,

5. table of contents, references, and appendices in the 12-page
limit.
The work described here cannot be done quickly. The time you
spend on revising
your paper will be apparent and will produce a superior report.
Suggested Outline
This outline is intended to give you an idea of the potential
scope of your project. You
will need to adjust it to suit the specifics of your selected
organization.
I. Title Page
The organization's name and your name should be highlighted
here. The
course name and number and the date should also appear on this
page.
II. Executive Summary
Begin your report by summarizing your findings in one single-
spaced page. Do

6. not include supporting evidence here. The purpose of a
summary is to stress
the highlights of the report for readers who want to know your
conclusions but
do not have the time to go through the entire report.
III. Table of Contents
Begin numbering your pages here and continue consecutive
page numbers
throughout the rest of the paper.
IV. General Analysis of the Corporate Strategy
In this section, address the first of the project's three
overarching questions.
Write a clear overview of the organizational rationale behind
the corporate
strategy. Do not discuss individual actions here. Set out the
logic that the
management uses to guide its various decisions and actions at
the corporate
level.

7. The items in this section should serve as touchstones in the
analysis of those
strategic actions in the subsequent sections. Measured against
this dominant
logic, the organization's actions, described in the following
sections, can be
judged as "consistent" or "inconsistent" with its corporate
strategy. These will
also be the comparison points for your recommend ations in
section VII. A
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4
well-argued section here will make the rationale for your
recommendations
clear to the readers of your report.
V. Formulation of the Corporate Strategy

8. This section addresses the first part of the second overarching
question. Begin your analysis of
the strategic actions undertaken while formulating its portfolio.
Do not simply put these prior
analyses together sequentially. Instead, weave the three together
into a single assessment.
Note that this is what the organization should be doing-thinking
of all three areas
simultaneously when it makes a strategic decision in any one
area.
Similarly, when you are evaluating each part's fit with the logic
and rationale
of the corporate strategy, don't merely examine individual
actions in isolation.
Emphasize the integrated assessment of the actions. In turn,
compare this
integrated perspective on each action for internal consistency
with the
corporate strategy logic you set out in section IV.
VI. Implementation of the Corporate Strategy
This section addresses the second part of the second
overarching question. You

9. will want to build on your analysis in the previous section and
address whether or
not this organization can "make it happen." If the organization
lacks the
implementation capability, even the most rational and integrated
corporate
strategy will be a failure.
In writing this part of the report, you wilI want to consider
many issues, such as
whether the strategy wiII receive the support of investors.
Pressure for
performance often forces organizations to implement suboptimal
strategies that
produce the short-term results that Wall Street wants, while
foregoing strategic
alternatives that could be more valuable in the long term.
Similarly, you should
consider the strategic leadership capabilities and the fit of the
organization's
structure, systems, and culture to its strategy. One of the
management team's
most important responsibilities is creating these complementary
alignments.

10. VII. Conclusions and Recommendations
This section is not simply a short wrap-up. Your
recommendations must
incorporate both analysis in sections V and VI and the logic that
guided the
decisions you set out in section IV. In doing this, you will want
to employ the
tools you have developed during the course, showing that you
know how to use
them and how to interpret what they indicate when applied to a
situation. Your
recommendations need to address strategic issues, not
functional ones.
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You do not have to recommend changing the corporate strategy.

11. Whether you
recommend no, few, or many changes, your recommendations
should be
backed by logical arguments supported by reliable and
comprehensive
information. Be sure to explain why your proposed alternative
is superior to the
other choices.
VIII. References
Cite sources of all information and quotes using APA format.
All reference
material used for the paper must be included in this section. All
citations must
be complete; including information such as author names, titles,
dates, volume
numbers, and page numbers. Electronic citations must include
complete
website addresses.
IX. Appendices
You can include tables, graphs, and charts in appendices, as

12. well as other
graphical exhibits. Remember that what you choose to include
reflects your
understanding of what is important. Exhibits in the appendices
can be critical in
supporting a verbal argument, or they can be trivial. Include
information and
supporting material that strengthens the body of the paper, not
those that are
merely fillers.
Weekly Project Tasks
Task 1: Corporate Strategy
Task 2: Acquisition Strategy
Task 3: International Strategy
Task 4: Cooperative Strategy and Competitive Advantage
Task 5: Final Submission—Integrated Analysis of Corporate
Strategy