Developing Strategic Management And Leadership Skills Assessment 1 Answer

Pearson BTEC Level 7

Extended Diploma in Strategic Management and Leadership

Module

Developing Strategic Management and Leadership Skills (Unit 1)

General Guidelines

The work you submit must be in your own words. If you use a quote or an illustration from somewhere you must give the source. Include a list of references at the end of your document. You must give all your sources of information. Make sure your work is clearly presented and that you use correct grammar. Wherever possible use a word processor and its “spellchecker”.

Format: Research

Notes: To be presented and referenced in a written report of 4,500 words (+/- 10%) in length (excluding appendices). Please note that we request also tables, figures and charts. Furthermore, fundamental requirements to write the assignment are to follow the scenario and task guidelines, to mention the references and to use the Harvard Referencing. Finally it is fundamental that the learner gives its opinion in third person (for an example: “it is possible to say”; “from the data acquired it is safe to say…” and so on). Failing to follow one or more of these guidelines will automatically fail your assignment.

The Purpose of this Assignment

For an organisation to be competitive both now and in the future, it is vital to understand how current thinking on leadership influences an organisation’s planning to meet current and future leadership requirements. This assignment will enable you to demonstrate an understanding of the links between strategic management, leadership and organisational direction, and the skills to be able to apply this understanding within an organisational context.

Scenario

Microsoft Corporation (MS) is an American multinational technology company with headquarters in Redmond, Washington. It develops, manufactures, licenses, supports and sells computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services. Its best known software products are the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. As of 2016, it is the world's largest software maker by revenue, and one of the world's most valuable companies. The word "Microsoft" is a portmanteau of "microcomputer" and "software". Microsoft is ranked No. 30 in the 2018 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to dominate the personal computer operating system market with MS-DOS in   the   mid-1980s,   followed by Microsoft Windows. The company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO), and subsequent rise in its share price, created three billionaires and an estimated 12,000 millionaires among Microsoft employees. Since the 1990s, it has increasingly diversified from the operating system market and has made a number of corporate acquisitions, their largest being the acquisition of LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in December 2016, followed by their acquisition of Skype Technologies for $8.5 billion in May 2011.

As of 2015, Microsoft is market-dominant in the IBM PC-compatible operating system market and the office software suite market, although it has lost the majority of the overall operating system market to Android. The company also produces a wide range of other consumer and enterprise software for desktops and servers, including Internet search (with Bing), the digital services market (through MSN), mixed reality (HoloLens), cloud computing (Azure) and software development (Visual Studio).

Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as CEO in 2000, and later envisioned a "devices and services" strategy. This began with the acquisition of Danger Inc. in 2008, entering the personal computer production market for the first time in June 2012 with the launch of the Microsoft Surface line of tablet computers; and later forming Microsoft Mobile through the acquisition of Nokia's devices and services division. Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, the company has scaled back on hardware and has instead focused on cloud computing,   a   move   that   helped   the company's shares reach its highest value since December 1999.

In 2018, Microsoft surpassed Apple as the most valuable publicly traded company in the world after being dethroned by the tech giant in 2010.

Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. It represents a series of video game consoles developed by Microsoft, with three consoles released in the sixth, seventh, and eighth generations, respectively. The brand also represents applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox Live, and the development arm by the name of Xbox Game Studios. The brand was first introduced in the United States in November 2001, with the launch of the original Xbox console.

The original device was the first video game console offered by an American company after the Atari Jaguar stopped sales in 1996. It reached over 24 million units sold as of May 2006. Microsoft's second console, the Xbox 360, was released in 2005 and has sold over 77.2 million consoles worldwide as of April 2013. The Xbox One has been released in 21 markets in total, with a Chinese