Corporate Hospitality Company Case Study Report

Report format:

Assessment brief(s)

Assessment: case study report – (Intercontinental hotel) You are to select a Corporate Hospitality Company for a a.

The task is to address steps ‘a’ to ‘c’.

Steps:

  1. a) The report is to focus on three-specific issues namely:
  • Strategic Analysis;
  • Strategic Choice;
  • Strategic Implementation/evaluation.
  1. b) Business strategy should be viewed from:
  • a historical perspective;
  • current strategies;
  • strategies for incremental and/or discontinuous change;
  1. c) The report is to incorporate themes purported by the following academics: Prahalad (2010, p.32) observed that ‘…most executives believe it’s tough to identify breakthrough opportunities’. Prahalad continued to elaborate by commenting ‘…several are pretty obvious; Peter Drucker once said that the best opportunities are “visible, but not seen” (Prahalad 2009, 2010). Conversely, ‘the nature and extent of competences required by a firm to perform competitively is not static (Turner and Crawford 1995, p.243). Notably, ‘…at any future time… [a firm] …will need a set of competences appropriate and relevant to the strategy, operations and circumstances of that time’ (Turner and Crawford 1995, p.243); and moreover, by giving a clear strategic focus to the challenges of innovation and disruptive technologies (e.g. Christensen, Raynor and MacDonald, 2015).

The report needs to be supported; using reliable data (i.e. theory is to be compared with practice). Research needs to go beyond the above cited papers.

Please note: your grade may be subject to critical defence.

REPORT WRITING

Section Outline Title Page Should include:

  • Title of report
  • Organisation or person for whom the report is intended
  • Authors

Executive Summary:

Usually 1 or 2 paragraphs briefly summarizing:

  • What the report was investigating
  • Your main conclusions

Sometimes it also includes your investigation/research methods and the report recommendations (note: for your assessment recommendations will be required).

The executive summary should be on a separate page. It is written when you have finished writing the report.

Everything in the executive summary must already be in the body of the report.

Table of Content:

This should be on a separate page and include headings of the sections of your report and page numbers.

Introduction:

An introduction is obligatory.

The purpose of the introduction is to introduce the topic and make the report easier to read and understand. Typically, it may be from one paragraph long to a page or two. In writing the introduction, you must not assume that the reader has read the executive summary.

Key points to observe:

  • Introduce the topic clearly and concisely
  • Explain the aims of the report
  • Set the report context and give some background behind the topic
  • Orientate the reader and indicates what approach or attitude you are going to take
  • Give an overview of the structure of the report, e.g., Firstly, this report examines… The second section deals with… Lastly…

Research Method(s):

If you used special methods to investigate the topic you may want to provide details of these here, e.g., how you conducted a survey, a description of special equipment, statistical tests used.

Discussion:

The bulk of your report will consist of the presentation of the findings of your research and a discussion of them. Sometimes, depending on the nature of the topic, the findings will be presented first in a separate section to the discussion. The ideas should be presented in a logical and clear manner: one idea should flow on naturally from the previous one.

Notably, each paragraph should have a separate idea and the first sentence of the paragraph should introduce that idea. It will make it easier to read if you divide your discussion into separate sections with headings.

Structure

Think of the discussion as centring around 6 major processes:

  • describe
  • report
  • criticise
  • compare
  • analyse
  • interpret

A major cause of poor academic writing (and therefore poor marks) is spending too much time on the first two processes. Make sure you adopt a critical/analytical/interpretive approach, be concise and stick to your topic.

Throughout the body of your report, quote the source of your information in brackets. A recommended style of citing authors is the Harvard System.

Note: footnotes are not recommended in many disciplines today.

Conclusion:

A conclusion is obligatory. It pulls together the different strands of your research as well as stating what conclusions you have drawn as a result of your research. Recommendations:

Simple reports may not have recommendations but many business reports will. These should be listed in point format and are usually recommendations for action on the part of the company or organisation that has commissioned the report.

Note: Recommendations will be compulsory for this assignment.

Appendices:

This includes material which would interrupt the flow of the discussion if placed in the body of the report

Assignment Notes:

  1. a) Referencing of published sources using APA 6th format (http://hud.libguides.com/referencing/guides);
  2. b) Be structured under the headings: tile page, executive summary, table of content, introduction, discussion, conclusion, recommendations, references/ bibliography, appendices;
  3. c) Use Times Roman font size 12;
  4. d) Have 1.5 spacing between lines;
  5. e) Include page numbers in the bottom right corner;
  6. f) Be no more than 2500 words;
  7. g) Be written in clear English and free from spelling and grammatical errors;
  8. h) Have a facing page giving: programme, class, module, name of lecturer, title of work, word count, due date of work and name;
  9. i) For marking criteria, please see page 11 – below
  10. j) The report is to be electronically submitted to: turnitin.