Step 1: Organize Your Work

Student Expectations For this project, you will be creating a situation audit of your own organization. You will prepare to conduct your audit over the next 12 steps of this project, during which you will review various aspects of your organization, including its mission, goals, and values. You will be given the opportunity to submit different parts of your audit for instructor feedback prior to submitting your final situation audit. Read the full description of the final deliverable and the steps to completion.Students are expected to find the information required to address the specific questions they are required to answer at each step of the project. The primary purpose of Project 2 is for students to demonstrate they understand and can apply the key MBA concepts and course materials found throughout Project 2 to their particular organization. Project 2 is not complete until the key MBA concepts and course materials provided within each step have been applied, as applicable, to the student’s organization.

It is the student’s obligation to demonstrate (1) an understanding of the organization selected for analysis and (2) explain, apply, and integrate the key MBA concepts found in provided course materials to their organization. Examples of how the MBA concepts and course materials apply to an organization are expected. All sources used should be properly (APA) cited in-text and listed in a reference section.

Final Deliverable Instructions: A Situation Audit and Preliminary Analysis of Key Factors

Your boss has tasked you with preparing a situation audit that presents an overview of your organization (or an approved alternative). In this report, you’ll focus on analyzing several key internal factors that, taken together, provide a portrait of your organization. The information you will rely on for this report must be publicly available or available for review by faculty, as necessary.

Format Requirements

Use the Situation Audit Template provided below. Your Situation Audit report will be 18 to 22 double-spaced pages, excluding a required cover page, a brief executive summary, and a list of references. See Executive Summaries for guidance on writing this section. You may also use appendices for helpful supplementary information, but these will not be included in the page limit for this report. Use APA formatting for in-text citations and references.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY

As you proceed through the steps to completion, be sure to read the materials provided in the embedded links—all are related to your project work. Cite any ideas you use from these materials in all course work you submit. By giving credit to the ideas of others in your work, you will build credibility in the minds of your readers and make your original thoughts stand out.

“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

—Sir Isaac Newton

Now that you have a better understanding of the project requirements, follow these guidelines:

• Read over these brief guidelines about conducting research on your organization. Discuss with your instructor any limiting factors you may encounter as you write this report. After you’ve discussed these issues with your instructor, if you believe it’s best for you to research an organization other than your own, please read this information about using an outside organization.
• If necessary, schedule any meetings in advance with your organization’s personnel to obtain the necessary information.
• Use the step-by-step Situation Audit Template as your outline and guide for the entire report, start to finish.

Step 2: Establish Key Organizational Facts

To start, write a brief overview description creating an organizational fact sheet of your organization, including the following information:

Typically, such overviews in a report of this size are no more than one page (approximately 250 to 300 words).Remember to apply the perspective of an outside consultant to your analysis. Be as objective as possible. Also, consider the audience for this report: key stakeholders including, board members, new employees, and anyone else who would benefit from this overview.

Step 3: Identify Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals

Now that you’ve identified the key facts about your organization, turn your attention to your organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals. Taken together, these elements can help drive organizational decisions, positively impact employee performance, and influence many of the other organizational components you’ll be examining for this report.The mission, vision, values, and goals should be reviewed periodically to determine whether adjustments are needed in light of key environmental factors or changes in the organization’s performance or capacity.Follow the steps below to analyze your organization’s mission, vision, values, and goals:

Step 4: Analyze Organizational Strategy and Objectives

While it is important to have a clearly defined and well-understood mission, along with key goals, vision, and values, success is unlikely without corresponding actions guided by an organizational strategy with measurable objectives.Your audit should include a brief overview of your organization’s strategy. Remember, this report will be used in part to orient new employees to the company, so you don’t need to conduct a detailed analysis. You will, however, have a chance to do a more thorough examination of these elements in future projects.Follow the guidelines below while working on this part of your report:

When analyzing your organization’s strategy and objectives and their implications for performance, it is useful to consider critics of strategic planning who point out that very successful ventures sometimes result from a series of unintended or unexpected activities. Therefore, you will also want to be on the lookout for evidence that some of the successes realized by your organization may not be the result of a rational strategic planning process.Next, proceed to Step 5, where you will examine strategy types and competitive advantage.

Step 5: Identify Strategy Types and Competitive Advantage

Now that you have reviewed your organization’s strategy and objectives, it is time to critically analyze the type or types of strategies your organization may be using, and include that analysis in your audit.

Business Unit and Corporate Strategies

First, review the major types of organizational strategies. Then, figure out which apply to your organization.

Competitive Advantage

Even if your organization is successfully implementing its strategic and financial objectives, its activities may not be contributing to competitive advantage.Try to identify what your organization’s sources of competitive advantage are (if any) and present a preliminary assessment of the relative value of these advantages. You will have an opportunity to examine competitive advantage in greater depth later in your MBA program.Also, see if you can identify your organization’s core competencies and reach any supportable conclusions about whether they are used to achieve competitive advantage, and how.After your review of strategy types and competitive advantage, continue to Step 6, which examines organizational size and structure.