Strategic Analysis and Plan - Australia Assignments

Assignment 3 Feedback Form: Strategic Analysis and Plan

Unit code: JNB739 Unit title: Strategic Management Assignment: 3 Southwest Airlines (Textbook case)

Assessment criteria	High Distinction*	Distinction*	Credit*	Pass*	Fail*
1.0 Depth & breadth of knowledge demonstrated	Most concepts clearly explained Evidence of wide reading and independent research	Main concepts covered and clearly explained Range of resources used with discrimination	Main concepts covered but some not clearly explained Reasonable use of some quality resources	A number of important concepts overlooked or insufficiently described Limited use of some quality resources	Majority of key concepts not addressed or misunderstood Little/no evidence of use of resources
2. Quality of thinking in evidence
2.1. Application of theory to solve problems/issues	Most theory applied with precision	Most theory competently applied	Some important theory inappropriately applied	Limited application of theory	Little or no relevant theory applied
2.2 Depth of analysis &/or evaluation; relevance to the question	Identifies the significance of all relevant factors clearly linking the parts of the strategic plan Critically & comprehensively evaluates evidence, experiences, practice	Identifies most factors & their significance clearly linking the parts of the strategic plan To good depth, evaluates core evidence, experience, practice	Identifies most factors but some significance/interrelationships of the strategic plan ignored Good evaluation of evidence, experience, practice	Overlooks a number of important factors &/or inter-relationships of the strategic plan Reasonable evaluation of evidence, experience, practice	Most factors and their inter-relationships of the strategic plan overlooked Little attempt to evaluate evidence, experience, practice
3. Quality of communication
3.1 Logical structure & organisation Work needed on material for Appendices	Organisational methods effectively used to facilitate understanding Very clear & coherent flow of ideas	Mostly organised to facilitate understanding Mostly clear & logical	Generally organised to facilitate understanding  Basically clear and logical	Reasonable organisation Some aspects unclear/illogical	Organisation ineffective Generally illogical & unclear
3.2 Clarity & succinctness of writing	Crystal clear, precise & appropriate Technically error-free	Mostly very clear & appropriate Mostly technically, error-free	Occasionally unclear or inappropriate Some technical errors	Sometimes unclear &/or inappropriate Numerous technical errors	Frequently unclear &/or inappropriate Technically deficient to the point of distraction
4. Conformance to referencing standards and MLM formatting guidelines
4.1 Presentation, style & formatting	Exemplary presentation, style and format	Very good presentation, style and format	Basic presentation, style and format (see notes below)	Some or limited presentation, style and format	Insufficient presentation, style and format
4.2. Referencing	Faultless application of the UTAS Harvard reference style Sources acknowledged professionally	Using UTAS Harvard reference style with very few errors Sources in the main acknowledged professionally	Using UTAS Harvard reference style applied with few errors Sources in the main acknowledged professionally	Using UTAS Harvard reference style applied with many errors Some lapses in acknowledging sources	Sources poorly acknowledged, incorrect and, or inconsistent reference style

Please note that the criteria listed above are not necessarily of equal weighting, nor are they all-inclusive; they give an indication of your performance.

Assessor comments below

Sharma,

Firstly, well done on completing this individually. I have taken this into consideration.

Overall, this paper identifies and covers key areas of formulation. The issues raised are managed reasonably well. It was certainly a different paper and I enjoyed the change – Southwest Airlines is an interesting company, who a transparent and unique in their management philosophy.

Regarding layout and presentation, the document is satisfactorily presented but could use some ‘polish’. Referencing was handled competently. Note: Appendices needed to be numbered and addressed in the content of your paper, so the reader is not searching for them.

Note: the exam includes questions using this assignment as your base. Consider the following in readiness for the examination and please contact me if you have any:

The SWOT analysis focussed on key concepts and was reasonably comprehensive. I understand that as you were not employed you had both challenges and opportunities – I took this into consideration. The case gave you a great head-start. The key issues were certainly relevant and mostly well covered. My main concern in this section was that you did not focus clearly on staff – this is unusual given that the values in the Appendix were clearly staff focused.

The list of key strategic issues was overall quite well done but you did tend to drift into strategies (mainly) This will work out well for you in the examination as you have done much of the thinking 😊.

Your discussion of the Mission, Vision and Values was interesting. Whilst I agree on keeping the current strategic corporate intent, the justification was ‘light-on’ – it would have been improved by linking clearly to the unit content.

Conventional writing/practice suggests that goals are broad statements of what we want to achieve. Whilst companies have their own approaches that obviously work for them, goals and objectives are generally considered to be the ‘what’ (they often start with a verb) and strategies are the ‘how’ to achieve the goals and objectives.

I was looking for a nice list as presented in Module 5 but we can work with what we have… Your list currently focused on key result areas – so that is good. You missed out people/staff – they execute your plan. You will need to select one of these goals upon which to write SMART objectives in the examination. We can work to rewrite/select this to make it more manageable for writing a set of objectives in the exam.

Any of your goal areas will work for the exam but the goals would be better if we were to slightly rewrite together before the exam 😊. Please feel free to discuss the goal to use in the examination. I would be most happy to assist you.

So, in general you seem to have grasped some the concepts required reasonably well. Refer to the General Comments attached and the comments marked-up on your paper for further feedback.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me. I look forward to working with you on this paper moving towards the exam.

Kind regards

Allison James

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