Each student must choose one MNC and develop a max 2.000-word Strategic Report based on the requirements in the following document. The Title, Abstract, Table of contents, Bibliography and Appendices are excluded from the word count.

You are required to develop a Professional Strategic Analysis Report addressing the four specific tasks set out in the assessment brief. Your report should be 2.000 words, excluding Title, Abstract, Table of contents, Bibliography and Appendices.

You are required to develop a comprehensive strategic management analysis of a multinational corporation of your choice. You need to conduct independent research focusing on the key developments inside and outside your case organization. The study should not go back in time beyond 5 years.

It is requested for the sake of coherence to scope your work according to one Strategic Business Unit (SBU) of the MNC. For example, if you choose Nestle as the MNC (parenting Company), you need to narrow your research to one of the 2,000 companies owned by Nestle. This SBU could be "Kit Kat" or "Buitoni", for exmple. Depending on the chosen SBU, the strategic issues, corporate, business and operational strategies will be different.

You can choose, for example, one of the following Multinational Corporations:

• Intel Corporation

• Infosys

• Volkswagen

• Airbus

• Unilever

• Nestle

Task 1: Strategic Issues

Critically discuss and evaluate the impact of strategic changes in the strategic position of the SBU of your choice by analyzing the external and internal environment (including changes in organizational resources, competences, capabilities, leadership, culture and other internal aspects) of the case study organization during the period identified for your research.

The strategic issues you will identify should be relevant and have an impact on the revenue of the company, as well as on its market share, its brand-image, etc. The strategic issues can be different depending on the geographic scope of the company. You need to reference the information found in relevant literature and articles and link them to the current situation of the company.

You can focus your effort on 3 elements (external and/or internal), which had a significantly impact on how the company operates. Use graphs, figures, etc. to support the facts that these issues do have an impact on how the company operates.

Task 2: Three Level of Strategy Analysis (LO 3)

Critically evaluate how well the organization responded to the external and internal challenges over the period concerned. Part of your critical reflection and evaluation could be a discussion of whether the strategy of your case organization is prescriptive and/or emergent.

This evaluation should include considerations pertaining to the strategy implementation of the organization and an evaluation of its successes and failures. Your considerations should be supported by analysis and evaluation of the key performance indicators for the period studied i.e., from the end of the case study to present.

There should be a thorough explanation of how the parenting company and the SBU have articulated their effort to develop the corporate, business, and operational level strategies. In this section, the critical success factors to be attained should be presented and discussed. The analysis of the value chain of the company using Porters Value Chain framework is important to present the assets and resources which have been leveraged or acquired to meet the critical success factors.

Make sure that the strategy developed by the company meets the challenges set by the strategic issues you have discussed in the first task.

Task 3: VRIO/VRIN and SAFe

Critically discuss and evaluate the basis and sustainability of the competitive advantage of your case organization. You are to use a range of theoretical frameworks to develop a critical discussion about the basis of the competitive advantage of the case organization and how it changed over the period studied. Students are also to conclude how sustainable the competitive advantage of the case organization going forward.

You will need to identify the elements which the company has developed after implementing the successful strategy. These elements must be tested according to the VRIO/VRIN to assess whether these elements are sustainable competitive advantage or not. The strategy itself needs to be discussed according to the SAFe test to ensure its sustainability.

Make sure that you are discussing the competitive advantages and strategy discussed in your second task

Task 4: Recommendations

You are required to thoroughly develop a range of strategic options for the organization to ensure its long- term success. This task needs to be specific and relevant to the organizational context studied. Predict the results and be convincing in developing a clear success path.

You will be constrained by the number of words for this task so please narrow down your analysis to only one proposal, so you are able to develop the three level of strategies which would be based on a vision that you have identified. Your analysis must be factual and possible as you need to use either use existing resources of the company or explain why the company should decide to develop a partnership.