Evaluate in details the impact of the pandemic on organizations
Evaluate in details the impact of the pandemic on organizations “You are a consultant who has been hired by the CEO of a substantial organization/company of your choice, when the impact of the pandemic on the organization’s operations starts to become clear. You have been tasked to critically assess the organizations strategy in light of the impending disruption. This strategy must ensure business continuity in the immediate term, and relevance and competitiveness in the post- pandemic business world. Your first action is to critically evaluate the tools you have available to you to undertake this task, and to produce a report according to the assessment brief outlined below. You have been given advice on what this report should contain and how it should be structured, and this advice is summarized in the marking rubric below. ”
Context
• The COVID19 pandemic is a global crisis that has caused worldwide business disruption on an unprecedented scale
• Many business strategies have shown weaknesses, especially in relation to the importance of digital technologies for their future operations
• For many businesses, their survival depends on whether they can rapidly pivot to meet the demands of unpredictable disruption during the pandemic whilst ensuring capacity to remain relevant in the business landscape that emerges afterwards.
• There are significant competitive advantages for those that do
• There are enormous challenges for all organizations
Assessment task
• Work on a real-world example taken from the case studies in the course, or your own choice. This can be a business, and NGO or not-for-profit.
• Discuss the challenges the organization and the sector face during the pandemic and the risks and opportunities afterwards
• Analyze how the organization is changing, or should change, to address these challenges and embrace the opportunities
• Outline the tools available to help the organization (1) create and capture value, (2) build and sustain competitive advantage, and (3) for assessing an organization’s capacity to adapt.
• Critically assess the relevance of these tools for evaluating and developing strategies to deal with both the immediate effects of the pandemic and what comes after, given the uncertainties and the need for rapid change.
• Discuss how these tools should be applied.
Describe what it is you are being asked to do, identify the company you have chosen and explain your choice, outline its strategy as presented in publicly available sources.
Background (15%)
You should choose an organization that you are already sufficiently familiar with, or that you can source the relevant information on using online resources. If you use online resources please ensure these are properly referenced and in English, so that the assessor can check
the material used. It is not intended that you contact the organization directly. Provide enough information about the organization to describe its situation prior to the pandemic in terms of competitive strengths compared with others in the sector, its strategy, and technology readiness. (5%)
Discuss the challenges the organization and the sector face as a result of the pandemic and briefly outline the extent to which these challenges reflect strengths or weaknesses in the organization’s strategy. Show how these challenges emerged as the global pandemic developed – what is your perspective on how well it is performing and why? (10%)
Critical Review of Relevant Tools and Methodologies (60%)
In this section, which could include separate subsections, you should introduce the relevant concepts, tools and approaches for developing strategy and critically discuss their appropriateness for use both during the pandemic and after. You could begin with a description of the different levels of strategy (e.g. functional, business, corporate) and how they are relevant to the organization you have selected.
Discuss the importance of the different levels of strategy to responding to the immediate impact of the pandemic, compared with post-pandemic. You might consider whether the strategy is emergent or deliberate at different stages of the organization’s response. (10%)
Following on from this, perhaps in separate sections and referring to the appropriate level of strategy, you could undertake to critically assess 2 of the following tools/approaches:
1. how the organization assesses its resources and capabilities (20%)
2. identification of core competencies (20%)
3. characterization of dynamic capabilities (20%)
4. building robustness (20%).
Your assessment should consider the relevance of these tools for evaluating and developing strategies to deal with both the immediate effects of the pandemic and what comes after, given the uncertainties and the need for rapid change.
In making your assessment you could discuss the relative importance/relevance of these topics at the different stages of the organization’s response to the pandemic (5%). You should consider the risks to the organization in the choice of approach they take (5%).
Conclusions and recommendations. (20%)
Finish up with a summary of your evaluation of the available tools and methods along with a set of recommendations. The recommendations should identify which approaches are relevant and why they are relevant (4%), and how they could be adapted and tailored during the pandemic (3%), as well as in the post-pandemic business environment (3%). Identify recommendations that the organization may wish to consider in its longer-term strategy
based on the lessons learned from the current situation and the how it might use this disruptive event to create a more resilient, efficient and profitable organization in the future (10%).
Answer preview for evaluating in details the impact of the pandemic on organizations
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