MGT604 Stakeholder Meeting Simulation and White Paper Preliminary Outline Sample

MGT604 Strategic Management

STAKEHOLDER MEETING SIMULATION AND WHITE PAPER PRELIMINARY OUTLINE 

Assessment Task

This is an individual assessment with a component of the work to be conducted in stakeholder groups allocated by the lecturer.

In your stakeholder group, you are required to:

• Meet, discuss and agree on three strategy options

• Apply strategy concepts in your stakeholder meeting discussions to identify options.

• Produce a teamwork log Individually, you are required to produce a white paper:

• Nominate the preferred strategy option and apply a strategy framework/s

• Discuss the implications specifically relating to your part of the business

• Include the team log in your paper’s appendix

Please refer to the Task Instructions for details on how to complete this task.

Instructions

You are required to perform a simulated stakeholder meeting to discuss the scenario below. Students will be assigned a role to play in the simulated stakeholder meeting. Roles will be assigned to ensure each group has one of each of the stakeholders.

To do this assessment, it is necessary for you to know the responsibilities and interests of the stakeholder that you are assigned to be. To assist you with this knowledge, each stakeholder’s general scope of responsibilities is described below. It is suggested that you take some time to research more about each stakeholder’s responsibilities so that you can contribute effectively to the meetings and write your white paper.

The white paper is to be completed individually by each member of the team reflecting the impact of the proposed strategy on their particular part of the business and should be completed to the professional standard that would be required if the scenario were real.

Stakeholders Description and Interests

a) General Manager (GM) of the company

The GM has the final accountability to the CEO. The GM takes responsibility of the of the
company’s successes and failures of the company. The GM brings together the different functions in the company (HR, Finance, Operations, etc.) and the interests of all the stakeholders. A key issue for the GM is to maximise shareholder value and the long-term sustainability of the company.

b) General Manager of key supplier

Obviously, the GM of the supplier has the same responsibilities in his company as the GM of the case company below. The supplier is in the business of supplying goods and services which the case company requires. The successes and failures of the supplier company are linked to the successes and failures of the case company.

c) Union official

General responsibility of the Union official is to represent the interest of workers. It also includes conflict resolution between the employer and the workers and bargaining of behalf of workers. It goes without saying that the workers would want the company to be financially sustainable while they receive appropriate remuneration.

d) Operations manager (OM)

The general responsibilities of the OM are to ensure that productions of goods and services is running efficiently. Therefore, the role includes both planning and implementing production/manufacturing schedules including material and energy inputs among other things. The OM understands the feasibility of attaining certain production levels and quality of products/services.

e) Senior finance manager (SFM)

The general responsibilities of the finance manager are to ensure that the company is financially sound. Therefore, the finance manager plans the long and short-term allocation of resources as well as produce financial reports. For example, the SFM would be interested in issues such as risk, capital availability, likely timing and amount of returns, etc.

Solution

Introduction

According to the MBA Assignment Expert, Primary challenge for Pro-Go is lack of demand due to high use of smartphone. This report presents use of cost leadership and differentiation strategy for controlling cost of production and I am playing role of general manager (GM) in this strategy development. 

Aim

This report aims to evaluate usability of cost leadership and differentiation strategy for maintaining profitability of Pro-go. 

Discussion

Stakeholders’ deliverables 

GMis responsiblefor managing costs of research and development as well as other resources necessary to meet strategicobjectives of business (Hossain&Sarkar, 2021). During stakeholder discussion, threepotential strategies for strategicgrowth of Pro-Go have been identified, including cost leadership and differentiation, raising capital for R&D, and limiting target market. Short-term goal that can be considered by this organisation as per challenge faced is to incorporate new specifications, and reducing overall cost of production can be considered as a long-term goal. 
3Box model 

Table 1: 3 Box model
(Source: Business Standard, 2022)

Cost leadership and differentiation: cost leadership strategy allows for limiting costs of production through availability of cheap resources and materials, and it ensures highly competitive gains in business against competitors (Henry, 2020). Thus, both differentiationscan enhance customer interest as well as manage cost of production. 

Raising capital and investing in R&D: Investing in research and development leads to an opportunity to incorporate customers' needs into product specifications (DinçerHasan&Yuksel, 2020),. This can empower customer engagement. 

Limiting target market: It is necessary to understand stakeholders’attitudes while implementing a change in organisation (Chan et al., 2019). Thus, considering a limited target market will provide a limited scope of change to retain customer involvement. 

Among above three strategies considering costleadership and differentiation will provide benefits of extended market share through a reduction in price. Differentiation strategy allows for reducing competition associated with pricing and provides unique product specifications (Brenes et al., 2020). However, application of cost leadership will require repeated market research to identify competitors moves (Harvard Business review, 2022). 

Short term issue- As cost leadership is implemented thus, it will limit use of budget for research and development; therefore, incorporating specific differences in design and specification as part of diversificationwill bechallengingfor GM as short-term issue. 

Long term issue- Developing plan to use limited budget for implementing changes required will belong term challengefor GM. 

Conclusion

Thus, it can be concluded that based on three-boxmodel, this organisation is needed to focus on reducing costs of resources and raw materials for preparing video camera as well as changing some of its specifications. These goals can be achievedthrough cost leadership and differentiation. Hovered these two strategies contradict each other leading to challengesfor general manager to manage costs while applying changes. 

References

Brenes, E. R., Ciravegna, L., & Acuña Joseph. (2020). Differentiation strategies in agribusiness - a configurational approach. Journal of Business Research, 119, 522–539. https://lesa.on.worldcat.org/oclc/8649505717

Business Standard (2022) The Three-Box Solution is about being a leader in 2025, not 2016: Vijay Govindarajan, https://www.business-standard.com/article/management/the-three-box-solution-is-about-being-a-leader-in-2025-not-2016-vijay-govindarajan-116041000618_1.html

Chan, A. M. S., Bambacas, M., & Patrickson, M. (2019). Identification of stakeholders in an organisational change process (Ser. Sage knowledge. cases). SAGE Publications: SAGE Business Cases Originals. https://lesa.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1089147337

Dinçer Hasan, & Yuksel, S. (Eds.). (2020). Handbook of research on decision-making techniques in financial marketing (Ser. Advances in marketing, customer relationship management, and e-services (amcremes) book series). Business Science Reference, an imprint of IGI Global. https://lesa.on.worldcat.org/oclc/1122682213

Harvard Business review (2022) Strategies for Staying Cost Competitive,https://hbr.org/1984/01/strategies-for-staying-cost-competitive

Henry, C. (2020). Leadership and strategy in the news. Strategy & Leadership, 48(6), 59–63. https://lesa.on.worldcat.org/oclc/8848325282

Hossain, M., & Sarkar, S. (2021). Frugal entrepreneurship: profiting with inclusive growth. Ieee Transactions on Engineering Management, Pp(99).https://lesa.on.worldcat.org/oclc/9537661814