I have to pick a topic for my term paper. We’ve been told to do this early, so all the good ones aren’t gone, but my brain still thinks it’s in the grace period between courses where it can shut off and concentrate on naught but NBA playoffs and snickerdoodles. Maybe y’all can help? Here’s the direction the prof gave us:
Any topic in the area of strategic leadership and change is potentially acceptable for the paper. I suggest you pick a topic: (1) of personal interest and whose mastery is likely to make a positive difference to your career; (2) for which academic research material is accessible in reasonable quantity (perhaps through our library); and (3) narrow enough to be do-able within imposed time and space limitations. Acceptable topics include, but are not limited to:
- alternative cost leadership (or differentiation) approaches and their performance implications in your industry;
- alternative customer-centric strategies and their implications for your company’s performance;
- personnel diversity, organisation strategy, and organisation performance;
- reward systems, behaviours, and organisation performance;
- dimensions and performance implications of the your company’s organisation culture;
- why and how your company should become a better learning organisation;
- alternative large-scale change strategies and their implications for your company.
Any ideas? The only one I’ve had so far involved distilling and bottling my monstrous apathy and releasing it into the water supply of our competitors, but the ROI on that…not good.
[tags]mba, term paper, strategy[/tags]
Skirl | Dan Dickinson 
I find the areas of “reward systems, behaviours, and organisation performance”, “dimensions and performance implications of the your company’s organisation culture”, and “alternative customer-centric strategies and their implications for your company’s performance” to be the most interesting.
The first because (like many management areas) it’s often ruled by fads. And – I think somewhat unwisely – by external market conditions. It’s always seemed to me to be counterproductive to cut back on reward systems when poor performance requires general expenditure belt-tightening, for example, yet this is commonly done.
The second because I believe that 99% of all org structures contain massive inefficiency and encourage silo-ing.
The third because I’ve spent the last 10 years of my career in customer operations.
First point: I agree. Not just reward systems, but *many* expenditures with intangible benefits. Intangible doesn’t mean any less valuable, it just means the accounting department has a harder time measuring it.
Second point: Wholeheartedly agree. I think my topic (I have a pretty good idea now) will be close to this, maybe a little more focused on a particular part of the organization.
Third point: meh. I mean, I know it’s important, I just can’t seem to muster any enthusiasm about that particular topic right now.
Why and how your company should become a better learning organisation – I think this could be a good one and timely with the shake up at the IFL and the fact that your MBA designation will be a product of the current learning program.
Actually, that was the first topic taken. But it’s that guy’s job to think about stuff like that, so I can see why he was so interested.
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