Fall

08
16

Strategic Management

Reflective Portfolio
Pratik Shrestha
The essay reflects upon 8 weeks of my learning outcomes studying
Strategic Management, attending the Online Test and what I am looking
forward to further.
Word count: 876

University Of West London

I have been a student at University of west London for

5 semesters (2 and a half years), and over the course
of studying Im currently on my final year. Strategic
management played a very important role during the
whole

course.

Myself

being

from

family

of

businessmen and wanting to follow the same legacy.

The module got me one step closer in succeeding as
an entrepreneur. Personally our intense group work
and the gaming simulation has helped me a lot. The
specific task for each group mate and the amount of
planning and teamwork that had been put into the
project was intense and quite frankly developed my
organizational, analytical and communication skills.
The

first

week

sharpening our

of

the

module

analytical

we

skills by

looked

into

identifying a

company and evaluating there key issues analysing

various

information.

Overall,

just

to

develop

knowledge of the framework and a basic idea for

Strategic

management

process

and

its

basic

terminologies such as Mission and Vision, which also

included

internal

and

external

analysis

of

an

organization. I also remember we played a quiz at the

end of the seminar which was quite interesting and
helped conclude the lecture.

In the two weeks that followed we talked about

corporate finance, their ethics and corporate social
responsibility. I think the highlight of the third week
was when we got to debate in the seminar over
various companies and researched which company
follows which academic approach and school of
thought with critical views. This week was very helpful
though being a tiny bit of an overload. We had three
broad topics to discuss and go through which was very
knowledgeable. We got to learn who runs the company
and who are all the decision makers. As well as,
getting to learn about a companys responsibility
towards the environment and the society. Corporate
governance was typically a broader topic with getting
to know the internal facts about how a company
makes it key decisions in par with its vision and
mission statements. After concluding CSR in week 3
we carried on to Competitive advantage, which is a
part of the Situation analysis under External analysis.
Overall I was able to explain the different approaches
on competitive advantage i.e. The Guerrilla view, The
I/O perspective and The RBV approach. Also I learned
how to describe the driving forces, implications, and
the

critical

success

factors

of

the

business

environment. At the end of the lecture we got to know

about our online test, which would be held on week 5

and also got to learn a little overview of internal and

external analysis, which was covered the next week.
During week 4,5,6 and 7 we learned more in-depth
about external and internal analysis. In the first week
we learned how to do an external analysis of an
organizations business environment and also explain
its benefits and challenges, relevant to our group
project. Hence, for doing so we used two different
tools i.e. PESTLE analysis and Porter 5 forces analysis.
With the help of these tools I could identify the key
drivers and valuable market segments in the macro
environment of the organization. The most important
learning

from

the

week

was

identifying

the

Opportunities and threats of the macro environment

and the whole industry. Completing the week we
moved forward to internal analysis. This week after we
analysed the microenvironment of the company. This
included analysing the strengths and weaknesses of
the company using various tools such as Value chain
analysis, Audits and Capabilities assessment profile.
They proved to be very important for myself to
analyse the core competencies and also capabilities of
an organization and how to critically analyse them. I
definitely know this is going to be very helpful with my
group work and also the near future.

During these weeks our tutor and module leader also

pleasantly surprised us with a simulation game where
we had to take part in managing our own firms in
groups of 3-4. Within my firm we were 3 people
(Myself, Danny and Sohaib). Our companys name was
Luxco, which was a chocolate firm that produced high
quality chocolates for special occasions and premium
events. During the first few weeks we established our
firm and its vision and strategic plans. The next 2
weeks we reflected upon our operational decisions and
also what the market demanded. Luxco managed to
score massively as we started off with 20th position
during the second week to finish in the top 10 ranking
firms out of 60 competitors. (Picture for reference).
This was an amazing method to dive into the virtual
realms of business. We got to experience what its
actually like to manage a whole firm and also got to
implement all the knowledge we received during the
course of our studies.
The entire module has been very interestiting so far
and practical to be utilised during our further career.
Till now I am able to critically analyse a case study
situation of a companys ethics and approach. Do an
internal and external analysis following Swot analysis
factoring all the micro and macro environment. I am
looking forward to be able to prepare a complete
strategic plan and be able to formulate the business

report

properly

with appropriate
strategy

recommendations.