Critically evaluate the strategic initiative. Management Essay
Individual Essay
Choose a company that is listed on the London FTSE or New York stock exchange, and that has implemented a strategic initiative successfully or unsuccessfully.
Critically evaluate the strategic initiative and its outcome using strategic management concepts and tools drawn from the first six weeks of the module, in order to explain its success or failure.
Guidance:
Your essay should reflect your ability to define, identify and critically evaluate a strategic initiative, one that has been implemented successfully or unsuccessfully in the past 10 years.
You should support your argument using at least one of the strategic concepts (and the associated tools and techniques) that were covered during the early weeks of the module during which we studied the internal and external environment, resources and capabilities, strategic purpose, organisational culture, and corporate and business level strategy.
You should demonstrate your research skills by obtaining, critically evaluating and using data and information from a range of quality sources. Critically evaluate means ‘make reasoned judgements based upon sound evidence and argument’. In-text citations and a references list, in Harvard Referencing Style, are required.
In your conclusion you should summarise your argument by integrating your research and analysis to explain in terms of strategic management theory the outcome (the success or failure) of the strategic initiative that you have chosen.
Structure:
An Introduction (about 200 words) should provide a general background to the topic at the beginning. This should be followed by the main body where you need to present your analysis and/or discussion. The essay should show evidence of reading from at least 10 sources – including books, academic journal articles, newspapers/magazines and websites. It is OK to use some sources more extensively than others. Do not include charts and graphs in the core- text of the essay. These can be included in an appendix section at the end of the essay; however you need to cite them when you refer to them in the core-text. The Conclusion (about 200 words) of the essay should summarize the analysis/discussion and provide concluding statements.
You may choose the companies used in the workshop activity for your essay. But you will be expected to conduct a detailed analysis using a wider variety of sources (see point 1 above).
Your word-count can range between 1900 words to 2100 words. That is, a maximum of 10% (+/-) is allowed. The Reference list and Appendices do not count in the word-count.
Please refer to the marking criteria carefully for further information on what will constitute a higher mark for the essay.
STRATEGIC INITIATIVE
By (Name)
The Name of the Class (Course)
Professor (Tutor)
The Name of the School (University)
The City where it is located
The Date
Strategic Initiative
Strategic initiatives are the ways through which forms translate their goals and vision into practice. These are always aligned with the top strategic primacies, and the pressure to perform them is also always very high. Strategic creativity is advanced in different ways. In most cases, the customers' and suppliers' feedback is an important tool in flashing the need for transformation. New priorities can emerge in the process from the top administration retreat or an advertising strategy plan. Some other impetus emerges from the review of technology change, viable pressure, mission statements, or restating the corporate vision. Regardless of the strategic initiative source, attaining a successful application from the early discussion phase is easily said than done. Hp Inc. is one of the companies from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that adopted a strategic initiative to translate its objectives to practice. Today, the firm is an American multinational technology company considered the leading firm in the tech industry in terms of revenue. In 2015, Hp Inc. made it public about its strategic initiative to acquire Aruba Networks, an essential provider of the next-gen network admission solutions for the mobile initiative. The acquisition of Aruba Networks by Hp Inc. is one of the successful strategic initiatives that Hp Inc has implemented over the past and benefitted from attaining its corporate mission and satisfying its vision in the tech industry.
Hp Inc and Aruba Network Acquisition
Hewlett-Packard Company Inc. (Hp Inc) provides various goods, technologies, software, resolutions, and services to specific clients and small and medium entities and administration, health, and teaching sectors worldwide. The corporate mission is to offer high-quality brands and deliver more value to the customers and earn their admiration and devotion. The business's dream is to generate technology that makes life improved for everyone and every person and the public (Meza 2016). The mission and vision of the company motivate and inspires the executives to make, invent and reinvent. Hp engages in different strategic initiatives to be able to achieve this mission and vision.
The recent strategic initiative taking place in 2015 was the acquisition of Aruba Networks. Aruba provides company mobility solutions, specializes in wireless networking access point hardware and software used by companies and institutions. Hp Inc was influenced to purchase Aruba because it would influence the networking business of Hp, such as the smartphones, tablets, and other connected devices that proliferate. Hp also noted that companies in the current era face a mobile-first world and aim to attain solutions that will help them transition their legacy investments to a new information technology model (Jelassi & Martínez-López 2020). The executives at HP believed that the integration of the two companies would allow HP to offer the most straightforward, secure networking answers to help businesses deploy their future mobile networks. HP Inc expects the deal to add to its earnings in the first full year after closing (Kumar 2019). In the strategic initiative process, Aruba continues to do business under its rand and reports to HP. The deal was considered the biggest in more than half a decade.
The acquisition of Aruba came at an exciting point for the company. The acquisition announcement closely followed the announcement that HP would split into two at the end of 2014. The place Aruba occupies in this acquisition is believed to be extraordinary and an interesting one than has ever been witnessed before. At the time of the acquisition, HP reversed integrated the networking team into Aruba. As a result, rather than integrating Aruba into an organization that already exists, it needed a different way to figure the market and innovations needed to infuse the big company with the small firm (Patrick 2018). The approach implies that Aruba has been able to take advantage of a big company's resources, such as a partner base, without the challenges of high bureaucracy that can be endemic in substantial businesses. The numbers can be used to support the success. When Aruba was acquired, the wireless business was worth $1 billion same as the wired business of HP (Steigner & Sutton 2015). Today, Aruba encompasses both wired and wireless networking and is worth #3 billion. Since the acquisition, the company has added one billion dollars financially and has positively recorded significant success and growth.
A SWOT analysis can be adopted as a strategic management tool to explore the strategic initiative by HP in the acquisition of Aruba. While the acquisition has strengthened the market position for Hewlett Packard Enterprise, strategic organizers need to comprehend the prospects as they will call for proper implementation. Contestants can improve their go-to-market plans based on the SWOT examination. While there are some threats and weaknesses identified in the acquisition, its strengths and opportunities present better power. HP can efficiently leverage the strengths and opportunities and give the market the best experiences from the collaborative efforts (Gayathri & Katragadda 2019).
Strengths
Weaknesses
* Superior access point solution through the acquisition
* Stronger network management and guest access solution
* Larger network portfolio
* Local sales coverage and support
* Wider WLAN portfolio requires simplification
* The access later solution needs a better stickiness
* There is a lack of strong networking brand within large enterprises
Opportunities
Threats
* Deployment of multiple vendors following the commoditization of the access layer switches
* Increase in demand for the network application services
* Local assets through the meridian acquisition
* Cloud-managed WLANs
* There is a need to rationalize the product support warranty
* Cisco's beneficial-selling to an enterprise that wants to purchase their access layer solution from a sole vendor
* The ownership by HP limits the aggressive approach by Aruba
On the strong access later solutions, HP started to enhance its portfolio of the WLAN by acquiring Colubris Networks and later through the acquisition of 3com. These are some of the acquisitions that became the top five WLAN vendors. However,...