Purpose of this assignment
Students will examined on the different types of organisations (including for profit and not for profit), their size and scope (for instance, micro, SME, transnational and global) and how they operate.
Students will be expected to explore the relationships that organisations have with their various stakeholders and how the wider external environments influence and shape business decision-making.
Part 1 (READ, CHOOSE, NARROW DOWN, DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN, ANALYSE, BE CRITICAL)
You will need to identify minimum of TWO organisations as your case study, one from the public sector and another from the private organisation. You will research both organisations extensively for the purpose of this assignment.
Your Tasks
a) You are to provide information into the background of each organisation (e.g. legal status, year established, product/services offered) and describe the purpose of each of the two chosen organisations.
b) Explain about the size (e.g. number of employees, gross annual turnover, market share etc.) and their scope of operations (e.g. national/international coverage, extent of their product portfolio or service provision). [This will enable you to achieve criteria P1 and P2]
To achieve merit (M1) you will need to analyse how the structure, size and scope of your two selected organisations link to the business objectives (please specify them) and the organisation structure.
Using the two chosen organisations
c) Explain how the relationship between organisational functions such as HR, Finance, Marketing/Sales, Production etc. are linked to
I. The organisation's objectives
II. The organisation structure
[This will enable you to achieve criterion P3]
To achieve merit (M2) you will need to analyse the advantages and disadvantages of interrelationships between organisational functions and the impact that can have upon organisational structure
To achieve distinction (D1) linking a, b and c you will need to provide a critical analysis of the complexities of different type of business structures and the interrelationships of the different organisational functions with specific reference to your selected case studies.
Part 2 (INVESTIGATE IN MORE DEPTH, DESCRIBE, IDENTIFY, EXPLAIN, ANALYSE, APPLY AND CRITICALLY EVALUATE)
a) You will now need to investigate the chosen case study even further by looking at various recent (past year)
sources of information about the organisation, e.g. news bulletins, documentaries, consumer reviews and reports, stakeholder interviews, conduct own interview, youtube clips, blog articles, academic articles etc. You will need to have approximately around 1500 words worth of information about the organisation, which you will then need to actively use and reference in order to develop a report with three sections:
Section 1: Identify some positive and negative impacts of the macro environment on the business operations, supported by specific examples.
Section 2: Conduct an internal and external analysis to identify its core strengths and weaknesses. Section 3: Explain how these strengths and weaknesses are linked to the external macro factors. [This will enable you to achieve criteria P4, P5 and P6]
To achieve merit (M3) you will need to apply appropriately the PESTLE model to support a detailed analysis of the macro environment within one of the selected organisation.
To achieve merit (M4) you will need to apply appropriately SWOT/TOWS analysis and justify how they influence decision-making.
You will be able to achieve distinction (D2) if you critically evaluate the impacts that both macro and micro factors have upon business objectives and decision-making.