IDENTIFYING STRATEGIC PROBLEMS AND PROPOSING SOLUTIONS

IDENTIFYING STRATEGIC PROBLEMS AND PROPOSING SOLUTIONS

This assignment is due at the end of Term 1 and should be submitted via ELE by 15:00 on Friday 14^th December 2018. You will need to choose ONE of the four set topics and write a 1,800 word white paper on the subject. Your word count allowance does not include any executive summary or references and is subject to +/- 10%. If you exceed this allowance, then the team will stop marking at this point – so any additional content will not be assessed and will not count towards your final grade. Your work should be referenced using the APA format.

Purpose: Being able to take a critical view of the tools, techniques and theories used in Strategic Management is an important skill, both from an academic viewpoint, but also as a strategy practitioner. Many consultancies and firms offering business services, such as Bain, McKinsey, BCG, AT Kearney, Deloitte, Strategy&, and EY, see themselves as “thought leaders” in the sector and produce white papers and discussion documents with new ideas and modified models which they develop and test with their clients. So, being able to explain core concepts in strategy and then suggest how they can be applied effectively or changed to fit new contexts and situations is a valuable skill.[unique_solution]

This assignment involves identifying a strategic problem and proposing a solution or solutions to that problem. You will see that each chapter of the textbook contains a key debate section with brief coverage of a disputed topic in the field. Many of the lectures will also take a critical approach to the topic covered, presenting arguments for and against a particular approach or theory. These resources, along with discussions in your workshop group should provide you with plenty of basic material to draw on when you write your own white paper. More in-depth arguments can be found in the readings for each of the topics, or through your own research into your chosen title.

There will be four topics/titles you can choose from for your white paper. These will be posted to ELE with specific reading lists at the beginning of term 1.

What is a “white paper”?: White papers were originally a form of government document

aimed at policy makers. The paper had to help them understand a particular issue – so was

educational in nature – but also outlined options for tackling the issue highlighted – so was

solutions focused .One of the earliest examples is Winston Churchill’s white paper on

Palestine from 1922 (you can access the text from this at

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1922.asp ) which gives a succinct summary of the

issue and proposes a solution (all in 1,956 words!).

More recently the format has been used by commercial organisations to educate and sell solutions to their customers. White papers will often form a crucial part of content marketing approaches on company websites and the internet. By gaining experience of producing this sort of content you will have an advantage over students who have only produced academic essays and dissertations.

There are a number of different definitions for commercial white papers: Gordon Graham

(2013:12) states; “A white paper is a persuasive essay that uses facts and logic to promote a certain product, service or a solution to a problem”, Michael A Stelzner (2007:2) defines them as, “a persuasive document that usually describes problems and how to solve them”, and Jonathan Kantor (2009:11), gives them the following attributes, “a document between six and twelve pages whose purpose is to educate, inform, and convince a reader through accurate identification of existing problems and the presentation of beneficial solutions that

solve those challenges.” For the purposes of this assignment we would like you to focus on the problem/solution aspect of the white paper.

Apart from the books listed in the reference section below, these are some further helpful resources on commercial white papers:

http://www.thatwhitepaperguy.com/white-paper-faq-frequently-asked-questions/

http://www.greatwriting.com/whitepaper.pdf

https://marketeer.kapost.com/white-paper-examples/

http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/g.w.m.rauterberg/lecturenotes/Eight-Rules-for-Writing-Great-White-Papers.pdf

You should spend some time looking at each of these sites – although they do offer a range of different approaches there are also many common themes – such as the need to think about your audience and write in an engaging and accessible style. Some of the advice is aimed at practicing managers (e.g. getting a professional writer to write your white paper – clearly you can’t do this as the paper must be your own work!) – so, you should pick out what you feel is relevant to this assignment. If you find it difficult to reconcile the differences, then we have provided clear advice below – however, the team felt it was important you had a diverse set of views about this format, since this is what you will encounter in practice.

How to tackle the assignment: As you will have seen there are a number of different types of white paper – we want you to produce a white paper aimed at creating “thought leadership” in your particular topic – so you should avoid a hard sell approach or a style of writing that reads like a product brochure or advertising copy.

Some experts advise that a good white paper should be educational and practical. Others state that it should be similar to a trade publication article. So, we are not looking for an academic paper, nor are we looking for a sales pitch – but something in between. One of the sites listed above suggests that Business Week or Harvard Business Review articles provide the right tone to emulate. You should aim your white paper at managers with some knowledge of strategy – so you can assume that your audience is knowledgeable and has an understanding of the basic concepts in each topic, but will need more detail and explanation of the newer ideas you cover and any wider reading you use to support your argument. Your white paper should be convincing but also factual and supported with good evidence both from theoretical sources, such as journal articles and from practical sources such as real-world examples and case studies.

One way to structure your white paper is as follows:

• Define the issue/problem, explaining why it is of concern to strategic managers. What is the nature and extent of the issue?

• Propose two or three solutions to this issue or problem with specific examples and sources to support each solution

• Recommend one or more of the solutions giving a good justification for why managers should follow your advice

Identification and explanation of problem: Many strategic managers are facing increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments and are finding that some of the traditional strategy tools and concepts are of limited use. For these managers newer ideas and techniques are proving more relevant in the current climate. However, some managers find the classic theories are still applicable and have stood the test of time,

for them some of the most recent ideas seem to be dangerous fads. Your initial task will be to identify where the issues are in the topic you have chosen – are the traditional tools broken and in need of replacement? Or should managers be returning to the principles of strategic management in this area. Is an incremental change called for with better application of frameworks or modifications to existing techniques? Or is a radical and revolutionary approach the only answer?

Specific use of module literature: Each of the topics will have a reading list of suitable articles. There will also be at least one lecture on the topic and some reading from the textbook. For some of the topics there will be content from the workshops you can use too. All these resources will help you to explain the topic and outline the problem/issue under discussion. They will also give you some potential solutions for the issue/problem being covered. The module team will expect you to make use of this literature because this enables us to assess what you have learnt from the curriculum. However, you are welcome to include additional relevant sources and examples from your own wider reading – but please make sure you have covered the module literature in sufficient detail too.

Coherence of argument/strength of solution: In order for the advice you give to be credible, your paper will need to be logical and provide good insight into the topic you have chosen. This is not an opinion piece but should be tightly argued, well organised, educational and informative. It should provide the reader with the essential information they need about the topic and offer some plausible solutions.

Wider reading: Each of the topics under discussion has been written about extensively in academic journals and the quality business press. We recognise that the reading list we give you is only likely to scratch the surface of each topic – so we are more than happy for you to bring in new material once you have used the set texts. However, you should ensure that you make use of robust, credible and reliable sources – so think about the publication and author you are citing. What standing do they have in the field of strategic management or business journalism? Why should a strategic manager value the points they put forward? How current is their paper or article? This can be just as applicable in the case of internet sources, such as blogs and e-zines.

In terms of how we will assess your work, the breakdown of the marks for the white paper will be as follows:

You should also refer to the generic mark scheme for final year undergraduate (NQF Level

• work in the University’s TQA manual http://admin.exeter.ac.uk/academic/tls/tqa/Part%208/8T%20Generic%20Assessment%20Cri pdf

What will an excellent white paper look like?

An excellent white paper will demonstrate highly detailed knowledge of the concepts under discussion and will show an understanding of the key issue/problem at the heart of the white paper topic. The paper will be logically structured and the evidence used to support different points in the debate will be judiciously selected and will include both theoretical and practical content. Key contradictions and limitations in the arguments and supporting evidence will be highlighted and some attempt will be made to explain them. The white paper will contain strong conclusions which flow from the main body of the work. There will be effective synthesis of a number of ideas and critical coverage of more than one viewpoint. Wider reading will be clearly demonstrated. The paper will be well presented and accurately referenced.

Please note: In the past students did not gain the grade they expected because they did not use the literature from the module on their chosen topic. While we want you to demonstrate your wider reading we also want you to engage with the materials we have selected for the module – so you should ensure you include these in your white paper.

References:

Graham, G. (2013). White papers for dummies. John Wiley & Sons. Hoboken NY Kantor, J. (2009) Crafting White Paper 2.0, Lulu Publishing

Stelzner, M. (2007) Writing White Papers, WhitePaperSource Publishing. Poway CA.