MNGT-E1005 - Strategy in Action, Lecture, 24.10.2023-30.11.2023

About the Group Assignments: 

There are three group assignments related to different cases that reflect the course contents. The assignments are given separately in MyCourses. Assignments are submitted as Powerpoint slideshow files in MyCourses by the deadline. The slide deck includes 10-15 slides for each assignment. This third (and final) group assignment will be presented in class.

Name the document as follows: LastnameFirstname_group(number)_#3. Remember to add the names of the team members on the front page of the slide deck.

Group assignment 3: The Future of Strategy

Situation and problem statement

Strategy has been a common aspect and even a buzzword for management for multiple decades. Use this final groupwork to explore potential future trends and developments for “strategy”. How do you envision strategy being used or changing and developing for the future? Why?

Assignment

Prepare a presentation on the future of strategy with your chosen focus. You may find reading the article by Whittington et al. (2011) useful. They discuss the past developments and aspects of future directions for strategy as a profession. You can see that the conception and approaches to strategy have changed over time due to varying drivers.

On the whole, you have considerable leeway on how you approach this topic. Note that you should base your arguments on some high-quality sources, academic or practitioner, and justify your arguments. Like in the previous assignments, you will need to choose a focus within which you analyse the future developments. Here are some examples to entice your analyses – but you are also free to choose something else:

• Consider the challenges of strategy making in the platform economy, e.g. from the perspective of the erosion of company boundaries
• Consider the impact of decentralization of authority and the move towards more self-managing organizations
• Consider the impact of technology in strategy processes; for example, the requirements for openness and challenges for confidentiality, tensions of strategy work being conducted by elites vs. increasing inclusion enabled by collaborative technologies, or the use of novel technologies such as AI, machine leanings, or tools for virtual collaboration
• Consider the environmental impact of the climate crisis and the growth of purpose-driven organizations
• There are also plenty of other relevant setting!

Presentation

Prepare a max. 10-minute presentation for Tuesday 28.11.2023. You may freely choose how you present this – the whole team or only some members present. Submit the presentation slide-set in MyCourses by 9.00 AM that day.

Note that the presentation style and format have a 20 % impact on the grade (0-2 points/10 points) – the rest is about the content. Check the business presentation rubrik for great advice on conducting effective presentations.

The potential structure of the presentation may be as follows, but this depends on your topic:

1. Present your team
2. Explicate your focus in terms of the aspects of strategy addressed
3. Explicate the relevant current trends and developments and consider how and why they impact strategy making within this focus
4. Discuss to whom this change or trend is relevant and how, and how organizations could or should prepare for this, e.g. what mindsets, capabilities or skills need to be developed?
5. End your presentation with 2-4 main take-away arguments regarding the future of strategy – must for all!

Commentator role

Your group also acts as a commentator for another presentation so prepare on the day before the session to ask questions from the group. Send out your slides on Monday 27.11. by 12.00 to the commenting group. This does not need to be the last version of your slides but one where they get a good sense of your arguments and can prepare comments and questions.

Here is the matching of the groups: 1-2; 3-4; 5-6; 7-8; 9-10; 11-12; 13-14;15-16