HRBUS86/202/0/2016

Tutorial Letter 202/0/2016

HRBUS86 – Research Project in

Financial Management

Year module

Department of Finance, Risk Management &

Banking

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:
This tutorial letter contains the suggested solution for assignment 4.
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Dear HRBUS86 Student

The purpose of this tutorial letter is to give you guidelines for answering assignment 4.

GUIDELINES FOR ANSWERING ASSIGNMENT 04

The aim of this assignment was to assess your ability to summarise articles and apply your
academic writing skills. Your task was to analyse two academic articles and provide two separate
summaries. Furthermore, the aim of this task was to test your ability to identify the relevant
aspects in the articles and to base your review on these aspects. The template and the necessary
requirements were provided to you. However, the following explanations and the model answers
are guidelines on how you should have addressed the articles.

Introduction
In the introduction, you were expected to provide a brief discussion on the focus of the study or
area of research.

Problem/Area of inquiry
The most important consideration is your ability to identify the research problem (knowledge claim/
gap) or research question/s in the article.

Literature Review/Theory
In this section, you were expected to present the literature review with headings/sub-headings
were necessary. You were required to summarise ideas and discussions from the articles and also
integrate key arguments presented by the authors.

Research Methodology
It was important for you to discuss the research design used in the study. Emphasis could have
also been placed on data collection and information relating to the sample. Essentially, you were
required to provide a brief summary on the methodology used by the author. This will depend on
the information provided by the author.

Research Findings
This section required you to highlight and discuss the results of the study. The most important
consideration is your ability to identify the main findings from the study. This can be achieved
through the examination of results and/or the discussion section.

Conclusion
In this section, you were supposed to round of the article and highlight the implications of the
research. The conclusion should be based on your entire review of the article/study and should not
be a repetition of the conclusion that appears in the article.

No reference list was required as can be seen on the template. In-text referencing is always
required.

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PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING:

• In many cases only article 1 was marked due to a problem some students encountered with
article 2.

• I trust you have found a way through the library to find articles as you are going to need that
skill to complete this module. You should not be paying for any article.

• The guidelines and template for assignment 4 indicated the approximate length of each
section. Many assignments were much too long.

• A reference list was not asked.

• The main problem identified was that some of you used too much of your own
interpretations instead of just summarizing the facts in the article. You can find most of these
types of summaries in the abstracts of articles.

MODEL ANSWERS FOR ARTICLE REVIEWS

Please note that the following reviews are not prescriptive but simply serve as guidelines:

Model Answer for Review of Article 1

Title

Company Vision, Mission, Environment and Strategies on Performance of The Global System
for Mobile-Telecommunication Industry in Nigeria

Introduction

The article highlighted the importance of strategic management within the organisations.
Strategic management is concerned with measuring and evaluating why success may turn into
a failure and how failing organisations can regain success (Adebisi, 2011). Hitt and Ireland
(1999) opine that the organisations face external environments that are highly turbulent and
complex, that threaten the organisations’ success. The important lesson in these is to identify
the opportunities and threats from these environments and align the organisation’s strategy to
accomplish strategic competitiveness. The study was conducted in all Global System for Mobile-
Telecommunications (GSM) players in the Nigeria Telecommunication industry, in Nigeria.

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Problem/ area of inquiry

There was no definite problem statement, so you needed to find the problem. (Although they
are related, the problem is not the research question or the objectives.)

There was no significant improvement or development in Nigeria’s telecommunication sector.

The provision of the telecommunication services was very poor in Nigeria before the GSM. The
study evaluates and assesses how a company can create and sustain a competitive advantage
and implement broad generic strategies. The study measures the extent of adoption and
implementation of a strategic management process in the GSM sector. The study further
measures the impacts of strategy implementation on organisational performance. Lastly, the
study looks at the extent to which the organisational vision and objectives are achieved.

Literature review/theory

The literature review defines the strategy and the strategic management and further highlights
the importance of strategic vision, strategic mission and strategy analysis and choices.
According to Oghojafor (2002) strategy is a plan or an intention designed by the owners to
achieve a particular vision and mission. While the strategic management includes
understanding the strategic position of an organisation, strategic choice for future and managing
strategy in action over a long term. Strategic management is basically concerned with the future
direction and survival of the organisation (Ergenti, 1969; Anderson, 1995).

Strategic vision

According to Evans and Lindsay (2002) vision describes where the organisation is heading and
what it intends to be; it is the statement of the future that must be clearly defined for the long-
term direction for its management and employees. Thompson, Gamble and Strickland (2006)
hold that vision is a road map showing route a company is intends to take in developing and
strengthening its business. The strategy can be divided into two major components; core
ideology and envisioned future. The core ideology entails the appealing characteristics of the
organisation that remains unchangeable, while the envisioned future consist of two components
of 10-30 years of bold goals and a clear description of what it will be like to accomplish that
goals.
The organisation that has a vision has the benefits such as shared sense of purpose, originality
uniqueness, ability for risk taking and experimentation, long-term thinking, integrity and benefit
for people (Parikh and Neubauer, 1993).

Strategic mission

According to Johnson, Scholes and Whittington (2008) mission is an overriding purpose in line
with the values or expectations of stakeholders. The mission of the organisation is what the
organisation is and why it exists. Mission is an expression of the overall purpose of the
organisation aligned to its values and expectations of the major stakeholders. Thompson,
Gamble and Strickland (2006) argues that strategic vision is more concerned with where we are
going and why, while the mission deals with a company’s current scope and purpose, who we
are, what we do and why we are here.

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Strategy analysis and choices

Strategic analysis involves the assessment of the organisation’s operating environment both
internal and external and the influences on their success. The strategic management has a
major principle of understanding the current position of the organisation, where it is intending to
go and how it will get there by conducting external and internal audit known as strength,
weaknesses, opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis.

Research methodology

The study collected data from two organisations in Nigeria (MTN and AIRTEL). These are the
two biggest companies in Nigeria’ telecommunication sector. A questionnaire was used to
collect data, the questionnaire was divided into two sections, part 1 comprised of the bio data
information and part 2 comprised of the closed ended questions that used the Likert scale of 1-5
to rate the responses provided in each questions. One hundred questionnaires were
administered in each organisation and a total of 119 questionnaires were received from the
organisation representing 60% respond rate.

Research findings

The results reveal that the sample was able to narrate their organisation’s vision and mission
correctly. This signifies that, the members of these organisations have a good understanding of
the directional focus of the organisation. The results further show that both organisations
carefully blended strategies together with their competencies to pursue better performance. The
findings also indicates that both organisations have an understanding of formulating and
selecting their strategic choice and the mode of implementations. This study also reveals that
strategic management has positive impact and role to play in organisational performance.
I was found that the market share (MS) and total asset (TA) which are the elements that
determine a company’s strategic position and core competencies have positive relationship with
earnings before interest and tax (EBIT).

Conclusion

Strategic management is significantly important for organisation; it has benefits for employees,
the employer and the stakeholders in communicating the current and future intentions of the
organisation. The study concludes that if the strategic management is applied it will lead to an
enhanced organisational performance that results in a sustainable competitive advantage. The
study has discovered the low customer satisfactions as compared to the success of both
organisations. The study suggests that research on customer satisfaction be conducted since
strategic management applications and implication is expected to improve customer
satisfaction. The study also presented some important recommendations for both organisations.

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Model Answer for Review of Article 2

Title

The frontier and evolution of the strategic management theory A scientometric analysis of
Strategic Management Journal, 2001-2012.

Introduction

The article focussed on the strategic management theory and outlined the three important
stages in the developing process. These stages includes; classic strategic theory, competitive
strategic theory and resource-based view theory. The article further attempt to identify the
direction where the management theory is going.

Problem/area of inquiry

This paper focussed on describing the new trend of the strategic management field in the 21st
century (Bowman, Singh and Thomas, 2001). The paper further explores the direction of
strategic management theory involution in the future.
The problem pertains to the perception that strategic management development lacks
systematical summary as well as the progress of the research of strategic management in the
twenty-first century.

Literature review/theory

The literature review on strategic management was conducted, and the articles were reviewed
to identify and analyse the words frequencies in the literature. The literature identified two
important basic theories of strategic management; the agency theory and the resource based
theory promoted by Teece (Jensen and Meckling, 1976).

The literature review reveals three forms of immanent power in the evolution process if the
strategic management theory:

• A new theory built is used by others or borrowed in other fields with a great effect.
• A framework is built that the creators and others use
• They do not build their own theories, but use other theories scientifically and make them
energetic and lively.

In the strategic management development process, research has also reveals the importance of
formation of network organisation, the evolution of enterprise network and transfer of internal
knowledge, the influence of network instructions and network organisation strategy as the
intense topics of strategic management theory (Rothaermel and Deeds, 2004; Rosenkopf and
Nerkar, 2001; Zaheer and Bell, 2005 and Khanna and Rivkin, 2001).

Research methodology

The paper used scientometrics analysis to explore the features of documents and the
knowledge structure and developing properties of its subjects (Yue, 2008). The word frequency,
co-occurrence analysis of the keywords, co-citation analysis technology of authors and
quotation and multivariate statistical analysis were used to discover the developing stats of
strategic management theory subject. The paper also used the Science Citation Index (SCI) to
retrieve publications of journal.
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Research findings

The findings show that the strategic management research focuses on the following theories
and academic thoughts: knowledge-based view, network organization research and dynamic
capability are the mainstream; besides, strategy risk, the stakeholders analysis of strategy
management, corporate reputation and strategic concept also attract the attention of
researchers; Barney, Teece and Porter have made significant contributions to strategy
management research since the twenty-first century. (Taken from the abstract. You could just
have written this in your own words.)

Conclusion

The research concluded that the interpretation of a knowledge-based view regarding an issue
will surpass the industry localizationism theory, and possibly the resource-based view, and
become the main model in the field of strategic management.
The paper further concluded that the enterprise development lies in the whole social system as
individuality and the social responsibility an enterprise will become the starting point of strategic
management. In conclusion, the study three important aspects of change: to know the nature of
the strategic management; to synthesize strategic management theory, and to melt the
knowledge background.

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The following rubric was used as a guideline to assess your assignment. Look at the
“ABOVE AVERAGE TO EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE” section to guide you in future:
Content and Insight
POOR PERFORMANCE
0 - 7 out of 15
• Unable to identify pertinent
information, poor or no
discussion of pertinent
information, no logical flow
and unity, poor integration of
information, poor academic
style of writing, no ability to
paraphrase information/
copies information directly
from article
• ability to paraphrase
• Difficult to follow
Structure and Editing
POOR PERFORMANCE
0 - 5 out of 10
• No logical flow of information,
No use of headings, sub-
headings, No paragraphs
used, discussion of different
ideas in a paragraph
• Errors are frequent, making
understanding difficult
• Limited vocabulary, words
often incorrect or incorrectly
used
• Numerous spelling,
grammatical, sentence
construction, punctuation
and language errors. Spell
check not used
• Referencing requirements not
met/ poor quality
8
AVERAGE PERFORMANCE
8 - 11 out of 15
• Shows some ability to identify
pertinent information and key
points, a satisfactory
discussion of pertinent
information, some attempts to
establish a logical flow and
unity, attempts have been
made to integrate information,
satisfactory academic style of
writing, demonstrates the
• Not always easy to follow
AVERAGE PERFORMANCE
6 – 7 out of 10
• Logical flow of information
has been established,
headings and/or sub-
headings have been used,
some use of paragraphs
used, discusses some main
ideas in a paragraph to a
certain extent
• Few spelling, grammatical,
sentence construction,
punctuation and language
errors which do not affect
the meaning of information
• Have some knowledge on
how to reference in-text/ few
referencing errors
TOTAL FOR REVIEW 1: ___/25
HRBUS86/202/0/2016
ABOVE AVERAGE TO
EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE
12 - 15 out of 15
• An excellent/ good ability to
identify pertinent information
and key points, a good
discussion of pertinent
information, establishes a
logical flow and unity, a good
attempt to integrate
information, excellent
academic style of writing,
excellent skills in
paraphrasing
• Easy to follow
TOTAL: /15
ABOVE AVERAGE TO
EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE
8 – 10 out of 10
• Demonstrates a good
ability to present
information logical,
headings and/or sub-
headings have been
used, Good use of
paragraphs used,
discusses some main
ideas in a paragraph to a
certain extent
• Minimum or few spelling,
grammatical, sentence
construction, punctuation
and language errors
• Referencing is correct
TOTAL: /10
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Assessment Rubric for Article Review 2

Content and Insight
POOR PERFORMANCE AVERAGE PERFORMANCE ABOVE AVERAGE TO EXCELLENT
PERFORMANCE
0 - 7 out of 15 8 - 11 out of 15 12 - 15 out of 15
Unable to identify pertinent Shows some ability to identify An excellent/ good ability to
information, poor or no pertinent information and key identify pertinent information and
discussion of pertinent points, a satisfactory discussion key points, a good discussion of
information, no logical flow and of pertinent information, some pertinent information, establishes
unity, poor integration of attempts to establish a logical a logical flow and unity, a good
information, poor academic style flow and unity, attempts have attempt to integrate information,
of writing, no ability to been made to integrate excellent academic style of
paraphrase information/ copies information, satisfactory writing, excellent skills in
information directly from article academic style of writing, paraphrasing
Difficult to follow demonstrates the ability to Easy to follow
paraphrase
Not always easy to follow
TOTAL: /15

Structure and Editing

POOR PERFORMANCE AVERAGE PERFORMANCE ABOVE AVERAGE TO EXCELLENT
PERFORMANCE
0 - 5 out of 10 6 – 7 out of 10 8 – 10 out of 10
No logical flow of information, No Logical flow of information has Demonstrates a good abiity
use of headings, sub-headings, been established, headings to present information
No paragraphs used, discussion and/or subheadings have been logical, headings and/or
of different ideas in a paragraph used, some use of paragraphs subheadings have been
Errors are frequent, making used, discusses some main used, Good use of
understanding difficult ideas in a paragraph to a paragraphs used, discusses
Limited vocabulary, words often certain extent some main ideas in a
incorrect or incorrectly used Few spelling, grammatical, paragraph to a certain extent
Numerous spelling, sentence construction, Minimum or few spelling,
grammatical, sentence punctuation and language grammatical, sentence
construction, punctuation and errors which do not affect the construction, punctuation and
language errors. Spell check meaning of information language errors
not used Have some knowledge on how Referencing is correct
Referencing requirements not to reference in-text/ few
met/ poor quality referencing errors

TOTAL: / 10
TOTAL FOR REVIEW 2: ___ / 25

Overall Score (Review 1 + Review 2) = _____/25 + _____/25 = _____/50 Marks

Percentage: _____________%

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Prof J Chisasa
Coordinator: BCom Honours Degree