This is already the last blog, And there’s still lots work to do for me! I’m actually a little afraid that i wont be able to get everthing finished in time. But the final confrontation lecture gave me a lot of new insights, so I was really pleased that I followed that lessen!
Als the I got a nice comment of marinde and she said that I could maybe try to interview hyves! So For my emerical data I will try to do so! I think hyves is a really interestingnew fim, with a lot of grow opportunities. Maybe they already have dreams of becoming wordleading. I would like to find out!
For the essay I will not follow the structure of the Thesis we wrote, but I will focus out of i perpective (ofcourse with academical arguments)! I Not shore how I want to structure it! I will first have to find some extra articles and get started!
So, done with the challenges and all ready and fired up to start with the final report. I think it’s clear waht should be in the report. The experiences with the challenges (how odd some of them may have been) should have helped us with the report. In finding a lot of different definitions for strategy and classifying them we got an idea on how to define our question and the parts of it we where struggeling with. After consulting laymen about the word strategy and strategy management we learned (at least I did) that strategy can have a lot of different appereances for different people, and that you really need to explain how you see it so that your grandmother also knows what you are talking about. The same thing goes for the second challenge, in which we (meaning others, I missed it) learned that writing in laymens terms isn’t as easy as it looks. The fourth challenge… I’m still pondering how it helped me with this particular Quest, but I intend to find out very soon.
As for the report, with all the reading that we have done we should at least know now how you want to answer it. I took one of my interviews yesterday and it was larded with the statement how you should always put the right people in the right place. This combined with a report I’m writing about cultural differences in HRM for the third year course AHRM I think I have found a theme for my essay. Next to world leading strategies I intend to give a lot of attention to the cultural differences between the Dutch working environment and the rest of the world.
It’s gonna be a lot of work to write a good report in laymens terms, but the smile on my grandmothers face is going to make it all worth while.
KR Caspar
P.S. For those interested, I didn’t make a movie about Madame Tussauds because at the last moment the Financial department didn’t want a camera in their building, so I had to find another company quickly. A friend of mine who works at Reflex Systems was kind enough to talk his boss into it. So thank you Wouter.
Yet I experienced another eye-opener (they are wide open now) during the final confrontation lecture by Mr. Wolters.
No, the comment of Mrs. Verduyn was not really to be followed. One does not need to come up with a model to test empirically. It is a quest, and one needs to give a summary of all the important things one found. In the intro one needs to elaborate on the importance of the question. In the general part of the report one needs to discuss all the different things important in your quest, constantly trying to keep in mind that one needs to convince the reader that studying management makes sense. It is a story, beginning with the history of the theory, trying to elaborate on discussions, different view points, etc.
What I found quite interesting is that Mr. Wolters tried to emphasize the importance of th philosophy behind writing a piece like this. For example he told us, that given the state of our knowledge of management and business, he doubts whether we could still be very succesful entrepreneurs. WE know all the pitfalls, and what could go wrong. Doesn’t one needs to be a naive, enthousiastic workaholic trying to improve its product over and over, and finally come up to the situation where this guy notices, he became the CEO of a world leading company?
Another important point is that you keep in mind what the value of your info is, how reliable is the gathered info, given this particular assignment?
Good luck everyone, Iam going to drink a cup of coffee in the sun on my balcony (damn what a nice day)!
So there were a lot of questions regarding my statement about what to incorporate in the report. I wrote that some findings of other questions needed to be put in the report.
From the course manual:
Specific requirements:
• Individual assignment
• 15 to 20 pages (excl references & appendices), 12 pt Times Roman, 1.5 line spaced
• Includes findings from – relevant – Challenges
• Includes findings, overview & discussions of your own Quest-ion weblog (i.e., desk research, field research, discussions, confrontations etc.)
• Includes review of compulsory track paper (integrated in the paper, not separated from main text)
Hope this clarifies things enough. (-edit- Oh, i misread it, and it were challenges. Never mind then! my fault, sorry)
Other requirements:
- Write an essay that answers your Quest-ion satisfactory, i.e. ‘your grandmother’ knows more now.
- The essay contains a summary of your thoughts, doubts, discussions, findings etc. you encountered during your Quest.
- It should ‘prove’ that studying management makes sense, i.e. you have shown that by studying the (academic and empirical) field of management you are able to come up with a well founded, well argumented answer to the Quest-ion.
Some people did not agree with the structure being almost the same as a normal scientific article. And after reading Kristin’s post, my structure needs to be changed. Mr Wolters’s will is law, as is show multiple times before. But In my opinion, there is still a big difference between writing style and structure. The structure is to write about all the important aspects, and the writing style is for understandability. This is still my opinion. But kristin’s structure will be able to handle these goals too.
Now for the compulsory article. The choices were not really helpful in first sight. However, after reading all, I have come up with some use of one of the articles.
The miles et al article talks about 3 strategy typologies. These will be used to compare the world leading firms studied. Maybe there is a match in one type and world leading?
Plus the entrepreneurial problem, particularly in growing firms seems to be applicable in this quest.
But this article will get its fair share of attention, related to the applicability compared to other theory. I will not use theory just because it is obligatory. This would be very unprofessional.
With a group of four students we entered room 7a-11 to talk about the paper on Management Studies. We prepared three questions and discussed them. After this session we all agreed that it was a very learning lecture.
The main struggle we all had, was on how to handle the structure of the paper. Wilko discussed his structure on his last post. I think, we were all headed in that direction. Mr. Wolters said that the structure should preferably not look like that of your Bachelor Thesis, starting with the definitions, chapter 1 the theoretical part, chapter 2 empirical investigation etc. It should be more like a dissertation. We should write the paper in the ‘I’person form. With this paper we should convince the lay-person who asked us the question: ‘How can Dutch firm become world leading?’, that the answer we found is the right one (or at least close to that). You should keep in mind what a Dutch firm should do to become world leading. We should also explain during the paper why it is useful to study management. On the level we are studying, it is important to generalize (that is why this course is of strategic nature). Like I already wrote in the post after the first CL, that you should ask yourself continiously ‘why’. You are allowed to explain you are not sure about something, but you should also explain ‘why’ you are not sure and at which point you start struggling. We can use this blog and the findings of others in our paper, but we can also reflect on them. Basically, we should justify the steps we take to get an answer to our question.
I hope I gave a comprehensive summary of the CL of this afternoon that might help the other two students that were not able to join the lecture. Good luck to you all on finishing your paper.
Kristin
Ps. For Lars, Rolf and Kristel, correct me if I am wrong about the summary and feel free to comment!
So in this post I want to look for the structure of my report. Sadly I have no time to go to the confrontation lecture, because other courses really need my attention.
But if my structure is really different from others, I hope to get some comments.
A balance has to be found between an academically paper, and one that a layperson can understand. So in respect for the layperson, the language has to be in such a way, that anybody can understand what is being done in the paper.
But for structure’s sake. There is little that needs to be different in comparison with an academic paper. So the basis for my structure will be:
- Cover
- Abstract (for a layperson)
- Index
- Introduction
- Exploration of the question with definitions
- Theory
o Growth factor
o Fit theory
o Other success theories
o RBV view
o Compulsory paper (none has been really helpful yet)
- Empirical findings
o Big world leading organizations
o Small world leading organizations
o Beginning, growing markets
o Mature, stagnating markets
o Other, relevant quests.
- Analysis
- Conclusion
o Findings
- Discussion
o Limitations of the quest
o Further research
- References
In the abstract, the question will be answered for a truly layperson, and when such a person wants to have more information, it can go to the conclusion, and if that is not enough, it can read the entire research.
In this way, I hope to have covered all aspects of what is needed in the report.
The only thing that is really not yet clear to me, is how to write the paper looking at the quest. Is it okey to put my thoughts about what way the quest went the last few weeks in the paper? So is it all right if I write preliminary findings that have been adjusted, cancelled or made it in the final conclusion?
I almost overlooked the fact that the quest needs data and findings from other, relevant quests too. Hope nobody overlooks this aspect!
TRhis is my video for challenge 4. I’m jealous of Wilko’s smooth video, but I think I’ve captured the life at the office of Reflex Systems, a software and hardware ERP provider for the food industry.
I have to go now, so later this week I will elaborate on how it didn’t become Madame Tussauds.
I am planning to, when I have time for management studies, to write a chapter per day. I have made a structure for my research. It has an academic structure (I know it is for laypersons, but I will give reasons for every choice) and goes as following: introduction, methods, research progress, theory, analysis, conclusion, discussion. I already noted that I had finished the first two. These are not the definite versions. I especially need to adjust them for the laypersons.
Today I wanted to begin with the research progress. This is the ideal chance to integrate some objectives from the assignment. One of them was to integrate the weblogs. I am also in doubt if I want to integrate the compulsory article in this chapter or I would use it for the theory. I am more in favor for using it to explain the theory because it gives a good starting point to introduce the dimensions of Burton and Obel. So the article of Miles et al. gives the strategic typologies and the book of Burton and Obel goes further and describes how you can measure these typologies with dimensions. In the Research progress I am going to integrate the weblogs. So I went to search for my blogs on msquest and found several blogs. These blogs are going to be mine subject in the Research progress. I want to show in this chapter that to come at present design I had to make some adjustments and important choices. At first I made some subquestions at which I adjust later on this research. There were also a lot of different theories and my empirical research came through later on in the research. This are subjects I want to discuss in this research. The purpose is to show how I got to the design I have now.
The next blog I want to discuss mine theory, at that time I think I already wrote it.
For my empirical evidence I have interviewed Roek van Wieringen who is the owner of PPC. PPC is a company which produces models of airplanes. I have spoken with him true the telephone, to hear his success story. I will give you a short version of his story.
PPC is founded around 1950 by a milkman who was making little models of Fokker airplanes for the fun of it. One day he thought it would be nice for Fokker to give/sell these models to their customers. Fokker agreed and the company was founded.
For many years Fokker stayed the only customer. Years later, they added Boeing as a customer. But the company remained small.
The first big opportunity came when in the seventies the “duty free” was started. The travelers wanted more then only alcohol and cigarettes and that’s when all the airline companies wanted to have a small model of there planes. PPC stepped forward as only supplier of these models, and grew a lot bigger.
The company again stayed that way, sleeping, there came some competitors and on the end of the eighties PPC wasn’t mark leader any more.
That’s when Roek bought the company. He made a strategic decision by outsourcing the production and shipping to
China. Until that time the production had been in the
Netherlands. By outsourcing the production and shipping Roek could make a really sharp price for his models. He became a lot cheaper then his competitors and became mark leader again. Now a day PPC is still leader in the market of small airplane models. The production and shipping still is done in
China by over 500 employees. Roek does the administration and sales from the
Netherlands, and visits the fabric every 6 weeks to check the quality.
The key ingredients for the success PPC were:
A special new idea.
Get a company to buy this idea
A big market opportunity (Start of the duty free)
Sharp pricing by outsourcing production and shipping
I think these ingredients partly were based on luck. But at least the last decision was a strategic one….
