Step 1: Organize Your Work

Student Expectations

Students are expected to find the information required to address the specific questions they are required to answer at each step of the project. The primary purpose of Project 2 is for students to demonstrate they understand and can apply the key MBA concepts and course materials found throughout Project 2 to their particular organization. Project 2 is not complete until the key MBA concepts and course materials provided within each step have been applied, as applicable, to the student’s organization.

It is the student’s obligation to demonstrate (1) an understanding of the organization selected for analysis and (2) explain, apply, and integrate the key MBA concepts found in provided course materials to  their organization.  Examples of how the MBA concepts and course materials apply to an  organization are expected. All sources used should be properly (APA) cited in-text and listed in a reference section.

Final Deliverable Instructions: A Situation Audit and Preliminary Analysis of Key Factors

Your boss has tasked you with preparing a situation audit that presents an overview of your organization (or an approved alternative). In this report, you’ll focus on analyzing several key internal factors that, taken together, provide a portrait of your organization. The information you will rely on for this report must be publicly available or available for review by faculty, as necessary.

Format Requirements

Use the Situation Audit Template provided below. Your Situation Audit report will be 18 to 22 double-spaced pages, excluding a required cover page, a brief executive summary, and a list of references. See Executive Summaries for guidance on writing this section. You may also use appendices for helpful supplementary information, but these will not be included in the page limit for this report. Use APA formatting for in-text citations and references.

Academic Integrity

As you proceed through the steps to completion, be sure to read the materials provided in the embedded links—all are related to your project work. Cite any ideas you use from these materials in all course work you submit. By giving credit to the ideas of others in your work, you will build credibility in the minds of your readers and make your original thoughts stand out.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

                                                                   —Sir Isaac Newton

Now that you have a better understanding of the project requirements, follow these guidelines:

• Read over these brief guidelines about conducting research on your organization. Discuss with your instructor any limiting factors you may encounter as you write this report. After you’ve discussed these issues with your instructor, if you believe it’s best for you to research an organization other than your own, please read this information about using an outside organization.
• If necessary, schedule any meetings in advance with your organization’s personnel to obtain the necessary information.
• Use the step-by-step Situation Audit Template as your outline and guide for the entire report, start to finish.

Next, proceed to Step 2, where you will write an overview description of your organization.

Step 2: Establish Key Organizational Facts

To start, write a brief overview description creating an organizational fact sheet of your organization, including the following information:

• when it was established and by whom
• legal forms of organization and tax status
• its current CEO
• its industry or industries
• its size
• its general purpose

Typically, such overviews in a report of this size are no more than one page (approximately 250 to 300 words).

Remember to apply the perspective of an outside consultant to your analysis. Be as objective as possible. Also, consider the audience for this report: key stakeholders including, board members, new employees, and anyone else who would benefit from this overview.

When you have finished your overview description, proceed to Step 3, where you will identify the mission, vision, values, and goals of your organization.

Step 3: Identify Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals

Now that you’ve identified the key facts about your organization, turn your attention to your organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals. Taken together, these elements can help drive organizational decisions, positively impact employee performance, and influence many of the other organizational components you’ll be examining for this report.

The mission, vision, values, and goals should be reviewed periodically to determine whether adjustments are needed in light of key environmental factors or changes in the organization’s performance or capacity.

Follow the steps below to analyze your organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals:

• Find your organization’s mission and look at whether and how it has changed over time. If it has changed, what process changed it?
• Analyze the extent to which your organization’s mission (1) is well understood, (2) continues to inform key decisions, and (3) is well aligned with what the organization is actually doing.
• If your organization does not have a formal mission statement, read deducing a mission.
• Analyze your organization’s vision and core values. Consider whether the vision and core values are in alignment with and supportive of the organization’s mission. Are the vision and core values widely understood and accepted within the organization?
• If you cannot find formal statements about your organization’s vision or core values, read Deducing Vision and Core Values.
• Next, determine whether your organization practices strategic goal setting. Analyze whether these goals are explained clearly and whether they make sense given the organization’s mission, vision, and values. In other words, look for alignment of mission, mission, values, and goals.

When you have completed Step 3, submit your organizational overview and fact sheet and your organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals for review and feedback in the dropbox located in the last step of this project. Then proceed to Step 4.

Step 4: Analyze Organizational Strategy and Objectives

While it is important to have a clearly defined and well-understood mission, along with key goals, vision, and values, success is unlikely without corresponding actions guided by an organizational strategy with measurable objectives.

Your audit should include a brief overview of your organization’s strategy. Remember, this report will be used in part to orient new employees to the company, so you don’t need to conduct a detailed analysis. You will, however, have a chance to do a more thorough examination of these elements in future projects.

Follow the guidelines below while working on this part of your report:

• Find and analyze your organization’s organizational strategy. For publicly traded companies, this should be relatively easy to locate, whichmay not be true for the organization where you work.
• If possible, confirm the process used in creating, reviewing, and revising these objectives, as well as who contributes and how.
• Include a preliminary evaluation of success in achieving objectives.
• Cite the tools and methods you used to reach your conclusions, such as the balanced scorecard and key performance indicators (KPIs).

When analyzing your organization’s strategy and objectives and their implications for performance, it is useful to consider critics of strategic planning who point out that very successful ventures sometimes result from a series of unintended or unexpected activities. Therefore, you will also want to be on the lookout for evidence that some of the successes realized by your organization may not be the result of a rational strategic planning process.

Next, proceed to Step 5, where you will examine strategy types and competitive advantage.

Step 5: Identify Strategy Types and Competitive Advantage

Now that you have reviewed your organization’s strategy and objectives, it is time to critically analyze the type or types of strategies your organization may be using, and include that analysis in your audit.

Business Unit and Corporate Strategies

First, review the major types of organizational strategies. Then, figure out which apply to your organization.

Competitive Advantage

Even if your organization is successfully implementing its strategic and financial objectives, its activities may not be contributing to competitive advantage.

Try to identify what your organization’s sources of competitive advantage are (if any) and present a preliminary assessment of the relative value of these advantages. You will have an opportunity to examine competitive advantage in greater depth later in your MBA program.

Also, see if you can identify your organization’s core competencies and reach any supportable conclusions about whether they are used to achieve competitive advantage, and how.

After your review of strategy types and competitive advantage, continue to Step 6, which examines organizational size and structure.

Step 7: Analyze Critical Resources

Now that you’ve examined your organization’s big picture—MVGOs, size, and structure—you’re going to analyze the critical resources of your organization for inclusion in your report.

Critical Resources

As you analyze your organization’s critical resources, follow the guidelines below:

• Consider whether your organization has the critical resources needed to accomplish its MVGOs, whether these are being used effectively, and whether they are being leveraged for competitive advantage.
• Read about resource-based theory and resource dependency theory to learn more about how and why certain resources may serve as a source of strength for an organization.
• Consider whether your organization has valuable, rare, inimitable, and nonsubstitutable (VRIN) resources (characteristics of resources) that it can use toward a competitive advantage, and whether these are sufficient given the market or markets in which your organization is operating.

Types of Critical Resources

Briefly explain the relevance of resource-based theory and resource dependency theory to an organization’s critical resources; then analyze and discuss two or three highlights that pertain to your organization’s human, financial, technological, and physical resources. Integrate, as appropriate, the VRIN characteristics (valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable) in your discussion of the four critical resources listed below. Each critical resource should be discussed separately.

• human resources
• financial resources
• technology resources
• buildings and equipment (physical resources)
• other types of resources you consider important (e.g., information)

When Step 7 is complete, prepare your findings for inclusion in the final report. Then proceed to Step 8.

Step 8: Examine Leadership, Governance, and Management

Now it’s time to shift your focus to the organization’s leadership. Management styles, leadership styles, and governance structures can have an immense impact on the daily experience of employees at all levels. Leadership can also positively or negatively affect the execution of all the elements you’ve studied thus far: strategy, resource allocation, competitive advantage, etc.

Read the resources below and prepare a summary and analysis of how each principle applies to your organization. (If you believe one of these topics is not relevant for your organization, you may be able to skip it. Before making this decision, consult with your professor):

• management and leadership styles and effectiveness
• management control systems
• organizational leadership
• governance

When you have completed Steps 7 and 8, submit them for feedback in the drop box located in the last step of this project. Then proceed to Step 9, where you will review the elements of a SWOT analysis.

Step 9: Evaluate Strengths and Weaknesses

An analysis evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, known as a SWOT analysis, is an important task when analyzing an organization’s situation, especially when the information is intended for use in strategy development and related decision making.

For the purposes of this report, however, your interest is in internal organizational factors, and you will therefore focus on strengths and weaknesses.

Review the elements of a SWOT analysis, concentrating on the S and W portions.

Then use the results of your analyses in Steps 2 through 8 to help identify the strengths and weaknesses of your organization.

When Step 9 is complete, prepare your findings for inclusion in your final report. Then proceed to Step 10.

Step 10: Explore Capacity for Learning and Change

The last step before working on all your conclusions and recommendations for this report is to examine your organization’s capacity to learn and change. Learning organizations are organizations that systematically measure their performance against sound criteria and metrics and then take concrete actions to change and make improvements.

However, organizations—and people—vary considerably in their ability to decide upon, implement, and manage change. Therefore, managing change is extremely important and often goes hand-in-hand with the desire to improve organizational performance.

Think about your organization’s attempts to improve its performance in key areas. If the organization has tried to make changes in key areas, were the attempts a success or a failure? Explain the reasons you associate with the organization’s success in making changes or the organization’s failure to succeed.  (If you cannot identify any attempts by your organization to make changes, think of a key area in your organization that could be improved and briefly explain the reasons you think your organization would succeed or fail if an attempt to make changes in that area was launched.)   

For further guidance, read these resources on organizational change and learning organizations.

When Step 10 is complete, prepare your findings for inclusion in your final report. Then proceed to Step 11.

Step 11: Form Conclusions and Recommendations

It’s time to wrap everything up. You will now finalize your situation audit report by making recommendations based on the conclusions and research that you’ve done.

In priority order, with one (1) being the highest rank, list and explain, in no more than a few sentences for each conclusion, your report’s 3 to 5 most important conclusions. Follow each conclusion with a specific recommendation that is expressed in no more than a few sentences.      

Once discussed with senior management, these recommendations and conclusions may form the basis of future strategic plans and objectives for your organization.