The following work sheet has several steps (subsequent steps will follow in a separate worksheet) designed to apply what you have learned so far in chapter 2 of your textbook on you imagined organization. Those steps do not necessarily follow the same order in real life; however, they are designed to help you apply key ideas and focus your discussion to complete those activities.

At the end of the steps, you should have a good overview of the key environmental trends

and factors affecting your organization. These should guide on for example how you hire, manage, motivate, reward and lead your employees, how you manage communications internally and externally, how you control what goes on in your organization, how you structure your organization, and develop detailed plans and goals to achieve your mission and its supporting strategies.

In the box below, outline your organization. Its name, type, products/services/, industry, location, any relevant information.

Step 1: Understanding the general and specific environments (macro and micro)

• For each of these components/dimensions of the general environment, try to identify at least two major issue or trend that is of relevance to the organization you have created (macro):

Environment components	How this affects our organization (first specify the what then the how)
Economic
Socio-cultural/demographic
Political-legal
Technological
Global

• Identify who are the most important stakeholders of your selected organization (stakeholders analysis) in relation to each of the following (micro):

Who are our customers?
Who are our suppliers?
Who regulates what we do?
What interest groups have a stake in our organization?
Who are our competitors?
Who are our employees, unions and what labor market affect us?
Who are our strategic partners?

Step 2: identifying and managing desired culture

• Choose to what extent your organization wants a culture that is high or low on the

following dimensions:

Culture dimension	High/low
Stability
Innovation and risk taking
Attention to detail
Outcome orientation
People orientation
Team orientation
Aggressiveness

Are there other key values that you want to see as part of your culture?

• Given your desired culture, identify an example of the kind of language, rituals, stories

and symbols and artefacts that will help reinforce this.

Culture element	Example to promote our desired culture
Language we should use:
Symbols and artefacts, we should use:
Rituals we should use:
Stories we should tell:

Step 3: the strategic management process

• Identify your organizations mission what does it exist to do. Aim to develop a brief mission statement (but dont spend hours on this, which is what a real organization would do!)

• Select one approach for each of the 3 levels of strategy.

Level of strategy	Strategic options to choose from
Corporate what business are we in	Growth Stability Renewal
Competitive strategy how will we compete to gain and maintain a competitive advantage (or, if a not-for-profit, how will we be able to sustain our viability)	Cost leadership Differentiation Focus
Functional strategy: how each of the different parts of your organizations (sales, IT, HR, service delivery etc.) will support the competitive strategy	Control costs Provide unique value to customers Provide employee training

• Think about the effects of your choices! Do they align with your strengths and weaknesses, the opportunities, and threats you face and your desired culture?

• Insert your groups minutes/activity log below: