You will be required to undertake a detailed evaluation of an existing small or medium sized enterprise SME of your choice

Assignment Brief

Module Title:

Managing and Leading SMEs

Module Code:

Assignment No/Title:

Real Life Case Study-individual Report

Assessment Weighting:

50%

Submission Date:

Feedback Target Date:

15 days after submission

Module Co-ordinator/

Tutor:

Word count

2,000

Submission Instructions:

This assignment is to be submitted electronically

1. This assignment must be submitted electronically by 2 pm on the submission date
2. To submit electronically you must upload your work to the e-submission area within the respective module on Moodle.
3. Multiple drafts can be submitted up to the submission date.
4. Please remember you must leave at least 24 hours between submissions if you make changes to your work. Each submission will overwrite the previous one until the due date and time has passed.
5. You are reminded of the University’s regulations on cheating and plagiarism. In submitting your assignment, you are acknowledging that you have read and understood these regulations.
6. You are reminded that it is your responsibility to keep an electronic copy of your assignment for future reference.
7. Your citation needs to follow the Harvard style referencing.

The Assignment Tasks

Real Life Case Study-Individual Report

The assessment consists of a formative and a summative element.

1.  Formative Assessment
2.  Summative Assessment

• The formative task is there to help you complete the summative assessment task successfully. 
• The formative process is important because it will help you address the task more fully and therefore contributes to your learning and understanding of  how to manage and small and medium enterprise and help you develop your business development & planning skills in relation to SMEs.

• This task is an individual piece of work. This assignment is designed to give students some exposure to Secondary data analysis. This will hopefully encourage students to carefully ground their work in the experiences of real-life entrepreneurs or small business owners.  As always though, this is an academic piece of work, and as such it is expected that students will engage actively with the academic literature in this area.

• You will be required to undertake a detailed evaluation of an existing small or medium sized enterprise SME of your choice (SME; to be agreed with your tutor in advance).
• The SME can be any business that conforms to the definition of an SME.
• You should critically evaluate the small and medium sized business start-up process and then design a growth/development strategy for the business.
• You will present your findings in a report and make clear and costed recommendations

• During  the evaluation and analysis of your chosen SME, you should try to determine the following during the research:

1) The SME Background and SME start-up processes.

2) The business concept and any sources of competitive advantage (including any use of e-commerce if appropriate)

3) The current level of demand and the competitive environment

4) Conduct a SWOT analysis for your SME and  identify the current growth and development strategy

5) Managing and running small and medium enterprise:

a) Suggest a suitable leadership style/styles that entrepreneur/ small business owner could use to take the company through its next stage of growth and development. Give reasons using suitable theory/theories and at least one journal article that talks about leadership for entrepreneurs.

b) Suggest a suitable organisational culture type that entrepreneur/ small business owner could use to take the company through its next stage of growth and development. Give reasons using suitable theory/theories and at least one journal article that talks about leadership and organisational culture .

6) Your proposal for the future growth/development strategy for the SME

• You should make use of all available sources and current thinking on SMEs should be central to your analysis and illustrated with reference to current articles from relevant journals and from broadsheet newspapers (e.g. Financial Times ). Use should be made of the library’s electronic databases such as Science direct, Emerald, etc. 
• You should apply theoretical concepts and models relating to the entrepreneurial process and to the various stages of growth and development of the business
• Once you have done your research you will need to write your report in which you will present your findings and your recommendations for the future growth and development for the business. 

You are advised to adopt the following structure for the report:

• Title page: Include module title, the names of the SME discussed, student ID number and the total word count (excluding bibliography)
• Contents page
• Introduction: this should include some background on the SME and entrepreneur(s), and SME start-up processes. The business concept and any sources of competitive advantage. You may wish to include details such as the type of business, size, how long it has been trading, etc. Students should also give a brief account here of the research process (focusing primarily on the  Secondary data collection). 
• Findings: here the results of the research need to be presented. This should include  the evaluation and analysis of the current competitive environment. The SWOT analysis and the SMEs current growth and development strategy. Suggestion  of  suitable leadership style(s) and organisational culture typology that entrepreneur/ small business owner could use to take the company through its next stage of growth and development. Students are also expected to consistently support their work with reference to appropriate sources (cited in accordance with the Harvard referencing convention).
• Conclusions: this should follow logically on from the findings and provide a concise summary of them.  No new information should be presented here.
• Recommendations: here students should present their proposals for the future growth and development of their SMEs.  Work should be supported with reference to appropriate sources.
• References and Bibliography: you should be discerning about your sources of information and ensure that all references conform to the Harvard convention.

Mark Distribution :

1. 
   3.    Assessment Checklist

 The Assessment checklist is designed to monitor your weekly progression during seminar classes in order to help you complete the summative assessment task successfully.

Assessment Criteria:

Each task is being marked according to the following rubric: -