Assigment

This assignment brief requires you to research, examine, and evaluate a company in terms of diversification and alternative strategies, while considering the role of leadership in strategy.
Your task:

Using the company chosen , answer the following:

1. One of the most challenging decisions a company can confront is whether to diversify: the rewards and risks can be extraordinary (Markides, 1997).
a) You will critically evaluate the issues involved with diversification - related and unrelated.
b) Using Ansoff’s matrix, discuss how your chosen company has grown over the years? What do you feel were the primary strategies used? This can be a mix of diversification, growth strategies, etc.
c) Consider what alternative strategies the company could adopt to maintain competitiveness. You can use the following as a guide:
- The nature of the challenge for the company in recent times based on your assessment and decision with justification;
- An overall approach that considers how to cope with the challenges ahead and reflect on how they can support the accomplishment of the overall idea.
2. “The challenge poses a great opportunity: the greater our understanding of strategic leadership, the more we will know about the essence of strategy, how organisations undertake strategies, and why they perform the way they do.” (Finkelstein, Hambrick, Cannella Jr, 2009: 15).
a) Considering the above quote, discuss what is meant by strategic leadership and its role in strategy and,
b) Critically evaluate if it differs from other forms/definitions of leadership previously discussed in class.

3,500 words, Harvard style reference list and in text and executive summary.