Human Resource Management

Tutorial 3 - Solutions

Group Activity

1. With three or four other students, form a strategic management group for your college or university. Your assignment is to develop the outline of a strategic plan for the college or university. This should include such things as mission and vision statements, strategic goals, and corporate, competitive, and functional strategies. In preparing your plan, make sure to show the main strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats the college faces, and which prompted you to develop your particular strategic plans. Look for students to prepare a well-developed mission and vision statement, making sure that they are clearly differentiated from each other with the vision being future focused, articulating the desired state, with the mission supporting the vision, describing “who we are, what we do, and where we are headed.” Use this exercise as an opportunity to discuss the problems that may be created by not clearly defining the mission, vision, as well as the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. (LO 3.2; AACSB: Analytic Skills; Learning Outcome: Describe the process and tools of strategic HRM)

Discussion Questions

1. Give an example of hierarchical planning in an organization. (LO 3.2; AACSB: Reflective Thinking Skills; Learning Outcome: Describe the process and tools of strategic HRM)

Top management approves a long-tem or strategic plan. Then each department, working with top management, creates its own budgets and other plans to fit and contribute to the company’s long-term plan.  

2. What is the difference between a strategy, a vision, and a mission? Give one example of each. (LO 3.2; AACSB: Reflective Thinking Skills; Learning Outcome: Describe the process and tools of strategic HRM)

A strategy identifies a course of action to get the company from where it is today to where it wants to be tomorrow. One example of a company’s strategy given in the text is Dell...