Ethics Reflection Paper
Week 1
Ethics Reflection Paper
Take the Ethics Awareness Inventory and Ethical Choices in the Workplace assessments to assess your values.
Write a paper of no more than 700 words in which you do the following:
- Explain the role of ethics and social responsibility in developing a strategic plan, considering stakeholder needs.
- Explain how your ethical perspective has evolved throughout the program.
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Knowledge Check
1. For the past 28 years, ABC, Inc. has made a significant investment of time, money, and other resources to increase the literacy rate in adult Americans. This represents which of these principles of successful collaborative social initiatives?
2.According to stakeholder theory, in a survey of over 2000 directors from over 290 U.S. companies, which of these stakeholders was perceived to be least important?
3. Which law revised and strengthened auditing and account standards?
4. Which of these is true about Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002?
5. A major consequence of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has been the
6. The most critical quality of ethical decision making is
7. Judging the appropriateness of a particular action based on a goal to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of people is what ethics approach?
8. Judging the appropriateness of a particular action based on equity, fairness, and impartiality in the distribution of rewards and costs among individuals and groups is what ethics approach used by managers?
9. A broadly framed but enduring statement of a firm’s intent is defined as the company
10. This statement of a company’s philosophy usually appears within the mission statement and specifies basic beliefs of a firm.
11. This statement presents the firm’s strategic intent that focuses the energies and resources of the company on achieving a desirable future.
12. The strategic decision makers in the firm are responsible for
13. The idea that businesses have a duty to serve society as well as the financial interest of stockholders is called
14. Which of the following strategic decision makers implement the overall strategy?
15. Which level of strategy uses a portfolio approach?
16.Of the three levels of strategy that are part of an organizations decision-making hierarchy, which level develops annual objectives and short-term strategies in such areas as production, operations, and research and development, finance and accounting, marketing, and human relations?
17. The behavioral consequences of strategic management are similar to those of
18. What do strategic managers call a flow of information through interrelated stages of analysis toward the achievement of an aim?
Week 2
Research Proposal
Write a proposal of no more than 750 words, outlining the research approach you will use for your Strategic Plan, due in Week 6. Include the following:
- How you intend to ensure the organization’s vision, mission, and people strategies and values statements are aligned with the proposed strategic plan.
- Sources you expect to use to perform an external environmental analysis
- Sources you expect to use to perform an internal environmental analysis
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Learning Team Activity
Write a paper of no more than 1,050 words that describes and evaluates an organization’s innovation strategy.
Use publicly available information, including Securities and Exchanges Commission filings.
Choose an organization that is introducing new products or services.
Select an organization according to the following criteria based on team member experience:
- Current employer
- Most recent or former employer
- Place of business patronized over a period of time and that members are familiar with
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Knowledge Check
1. A firm’s external environment is divided into various subcategories that include
2. When managers consider the general availability of credit, the level of disposable income, and the propensity of people to spend, they are considering what factors?
3. This factor considers or provides creative adaptations that can suggest possibilities for new products or for improvements in existing products or in manufacturing and marketing techniques.
4. The quasi-science of anticipating environmental and competitive changes and estimating their importance to an organizations operation refers to
5. This term refers to the relationships among human beings and other living things and the air, soil, and water that supports them.
6. Economies of scale in an industry
7. This term refers to descriptive characteristics that can be used to differentiate groups of present or potential customers.
8. This information is used to explain or predict some aspect of customer behavior with regard to a product or service. Information such as usage rate, benefits sought, and brand loyalty can provide significant aid in the design of more accurate and profitable strategies.
9. Because the quantity, quality, price, and accessibility of financial, human, and material resources are rarely ideal, assessment of suppliers and creditors is critical to an accurate evaluation of which of the firm’s external environments?
10. What Human Resource component within its operating environment is a major element of a firm’s ability to satisfy its personnel needs?
11. A firm’s access to needed personnel is affected primarily by four factors that include
12. This element of employment or labor represents the workers in their negotiations with employers through the process of collective bargaining.
13. The environment that is typically subject to much influence by the firm is
14. Which of these is a determinant of entry, according to Porter?
15. Which threat of entry creates a barrier by forcing entrants to spend heavily to overcome customer loyalty?
16. This group is considered powerful if it is not obliged to contend with other products for sale to the industry.
17. This is considered a collection of firms that offer similar products or services that customers perceive to be substitutable for one another.
18. This environment in the strategic planning process comprises factors in the competitive situation that affect a firm’s success in acquiring needed resources or in profitably marketing its goods and services.
Week 3
External and Internal Environmental Analysis
Complete the external environmental scan for your organization.
Perform an internal competitive environmental scan for your organization.
Write a summary of no more than 1,400 words that does the following:
- Identifies and analyzes the most important external environmental factor in the remote, industry, and external operating environments
- Identifies and analyzes the most important internal strengths and weaknesses of your organization: include an assessment of the organization’s resources
- Assesses the organization’s competitive position and possibilities
- Analyzes the structure of the organization and how this affects organizational performance
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Learning Team Peer Evaluation
Share drafts of the External and Internal Environmental Analysis assignment with all team members.
Provide feedback to be incorporated into each member’s paper.
Write a synopsis of no more than 350 words summarizing the team’s discussion.
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Knowledge Check
1. The structure of a simple organization
2. This structure is one in which a set of relatively autonomous units are governed by a central corporate office but where each operation has its own functional specialists who provide products or services that are different from those of other operations.
3. This type of organizational structure combines the advantages of functional specialization with the advantages of product-project specialization.
4. Twenty-first-century corporations reflect
5. Today, global means
6. This type of organization or structure is one that identifies a set of business capabilities central to high-profitability operations and then builds a virtual organization around those capabilities.
7. These are arrangements between two or more companies in which they both contribute capabilities, resources, or expertise to a joint undertaking, usually with an identity of its own, with each firm giving up overall control in return for the potential to participate in and benefit from the relationship.
8. This is an organization structure most notable for its lack of structure wherein knowledge and getting it to the right place quickly is the key reason for the organization.
9. One of the limitations of the SWOT analysis is that it can be
10. One of the limitations of SWOT analysis is that it can do this to a single strength or element of strategy.
11. Value chain analysis takes a
12. Which of the following is an example of a primary activity in the typical firm?
13. In VCA, which method of cost accounting is preferred?
14. This is an internal analysis technique wherein strategists examine customers’ needs, company offerings, and competitors’ offerings to more clearly articulate what their company’s competitive advantage is and how it differs from those of competitors.
15. The first step of this type of analysis involves a firm determining what their customers value and why they value it.
16. Once a hypothesis about competitive advantage has been developed by a firm through three circles analysis, it should be tested by
17. This is a method of comparing the way a company performs a specific activity with a competitor, potential competitor, or company doing the same thing.
18. Companies committed to this process attempt to isolate and identify where their costs or outcomes are out of line with what they identify as the best practices of competitors or other companies or organizations that undertake similar tasks.
Week 4
Strategic Choice and Evaluation
Write a paper of no more than 1,400 words that evaluates alternatives an organization must consider to realize growth.
Identify the best value discipline, generic strategy, and grand strategy for your organization.
Recommend a strategy or combination of strategies the organization should implement.
Format your paper consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Learning Team Peer Evaluation
Share drafts of the Strategic Choice and Evaluation paper assignment with all team members.
Provide feedback to be incorporated into each member’s paper.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Knowledge Check
1. Firms that enjoy higher profit margins are using which of Michael Porter’s generic strategies?
2. Which of the following companies is a good example of a low-cost leader?
3. Firms that follow this type of generic strategy can sometimes have difficulties succeeding without compromising the key attributes of a company’s products or services.
4. Which of the following is a generic strategy developed by Michael Porter?
5. Striving to create and market unique products for varied customer groups is called
6. Which of the following is a value discipline?
7. Companies that pursue this value discipline strive to produce a continuous stream of state-of-the-art products and services.
8. Which of the grand strategies is typically lowest in risk?
9. The grand strategy in which the firm directs its resources to the profitable growth of a single product, in a single market and with a single technology is termed
10. What is it called when current products are marketed, often with only cosmetic changes, to customers in related market areas?
11. The acquisition of one or more businesses operating at the same stage of the production-marketing chain is an example of
12. If a textile producer acquires a shirt manufacturer, this is called
13. For the ABC Company, the Alpha business is in a dominant market share position in a mature market. As per the BCG matrix, Alpha is a
14. Which matrix makes fine distinctions among business portfolio positions with the inclusion of high/medium/low axes?
15. Which matrix involves a framework that can help ensure that businesses’ strategies are consistent with strategies appropriate to their strategic environment?
16. Which of the following represents an operating opportunity to build value or sharing?
17. The most compelling reason companies should diversify can be found in situations when
18. The core competency must represent a major source of value to be a basis for competitive advantage. Furthermore, the core competency
Week 5
Implementation, Strategic Controls, and Contingency Plans
Write a draft of no more than 1,800 words of the strategic plan for your organization, including the following:
- Implementation plan
- Objectives
- Functional tactics
- Action items
- Milestones and a deadline
- Tasks and task ownership
- Resource allocation
- Any required organizational change management strategies that would enhance successful implementation
- Key success factors, budget, and forecasted financials, including a break-even chart
- Risk management plan, including contingency plans for identified risks
Format your plan consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Learning Team Peer Evaluation
Share drafts of the Implementation, Strategic Controls, and Contingency Plans assignment with all team members.
Provide feedback to be incorporated into each member’s paper.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Knowledge Check
1. This is concerned with tracking a strategy as it is being implemented, detecting problems or changes in its underlying premises, and making necessary adjustments.
2. Strategic surveillance must be kept
3. This, called kaizen in Japanese, is the process of relentlessly trying to find ways to improve and enhance a company’s products and processes from design through assembly, sales, and service.
4. CCC21 stands for
5. The DMAIC (define, measure, analyze, improve, and control) process is relevant to
6. This idea factor involves following demographic and other broad trends and trying to develop ideas that may be relevant and useful.
7. While these may under perform established products in mainstream markets, they often offer features or capabilities appreciated by some fringe customer group.
8. These are also referred to as crowdsourcing or open innovation.
9. Short-term objectives are usually
10. Short-term objectives assist strategy implementation by identifying measurable outcomes of action plans or functional activities, which can make feedback, correction, and evaluation
11. Discussion about and agreement on short-term objectives help raise issues and potential conflicts within an organization that usually
12. Key, routine activities that must be undertaken in each department of the organization are
13. In which type of strategy do functional tactics translate into action designed to accomplish specific short-term objectives?
14. The effort to familiarize future leaders with the skills important to the company and to develop exceptional leaders among the managers you employ is
15. Organizational culture includes important assumptions shared by members of the organization. These assumptions are often
16. Power Fund is a long-standing brokerage firm with a great history of high returns and well-managed growth. The managers at Power Fund repeatedly refer to terms like quality, growth, and reliability in the firm’s advertisements. This demonstrates managers’
17. These create differences across national boundaries that influence how people interact, read personal cues, and otherwise interrelate socially.
18. A leader’s vision should be
Week 6
Strategic Plan and Presentation
Resource: Implementation, Strategic Controls, and Contingency Plans assignment with facilitator feedback
Complete a strategic plan for your organization of no more than 3,500 words.
Update your plan to incorporate facilitator feedback from the drafts you submitted in previous weeks. Include the following:
- Table of contents
- Executive summary, with a 2-page maximum
- Company background, organizational mission, vision, and value statements
- Note. For a start-up, you should focus on the backgrounds and accomplishments of key anticipated management personnel. The goal is to convince the investor that these individuals are trustworthy and successful.
- Environmental scan
- Review of Week 4 strategies and a recommendation for the best strategy for your organization
- Implementation plan including contingency plans for identified risks
Prepare a Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation of no more than 10 slides with speaker notes. Your audience will play the board of directors or a venture capital firm. The focus is to sell your recommendations to the board or venture capital firm and obtain approval for funding your plan.
Format your plan and presentation consistent with APA guidelines.
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
Learning Team Project Selection
Resources: Strategic Plan and Presentation assignment from each team member
Review all team members’ Week 6 assignments.
Discuss each project’s strengths and weaknesses.
Write an analysis of at least 750 words including the following:
- Comparative analysis of the top 2 strategic plans
- Selection of one of the strategic plans
- Justification for the team’s selection
Click the Assignment Files tab to submit your assignment.
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