Create a presentation showing the main opportunities and threats that Tesco face over the next five years.

Assignment task

This EMA is made up of three parts: Part A, Part B and Part C. You need to complete all parts of the assignment.

Part A: Case study – Tesco

Part A of this EMA will be marked out of 60 marks. The word limit is 2400 words.

Read the case study, which you can find in the assessment area and on the study planner in week 23, and answer the following questions:

Using concepts and theories from Block 1, explain why Tesco places high importance on innovation. You should consider how the various business functions within Tesco integrate to facilitate innovation. (20 marks)
Globalisation has created a new and dynamic relationship between the ‘global’ and the ‘local’. Based on your work during Block 2, how would you advise Tesco to balance these two competing perspectives as it continues to pursue its global expansion strategy? (20 marks)
Applying concepts from Block 3, explain how Tesco seeks to nurture long-term value creation. (20 marks)

Part B: Presentation

Part B of the EMA will be marked out of 20 marks.

Drawing on your work with the Tesco case study, create a presentation showing the main opportunities and threats that Tesco face over the next five years.

Your presentation should use no more than 6 slides and 300 words.

Part C: Skills reflection

This part of the EMA will be marked out of 20 marks.

Building on your work in the first week of the module, in particular Activity 1.3: The skills audit, reflect on how well you feel you have addressed the priorities for further skills development that you identified.

Your answer to this question should be no more than 300 words.

Guidance notes

General guidance

In tackling the EMA, you are expected to use appropriate concepts from B207 and choose those which support the argument you are making. In addition:

Relate your answers to the questions in Part A about the case study given rather than write everything you know about a particular area – i.e. answer the question(s) you are asked.
Note the word limits: do not try to write about all you have learnt while studying B207.
Read the guidance notes accompanying each of the EMA questions carefully before you start drafting your answers.
Plan ahead to allow plenty of time for drafting an answer you will feel happy about. You have the time to work on several drafts if you wish.
To ensure that you submit your EMA in a format that can be read by the markers, you must make sure that your file is in a format readable by all versions of Microsoft Word. This means that it must have a file extension of .doc, .docx or .rtf. If your word processing software creates a file with a different extension (e.g. .odt) you should use ‘Save as’ to save as either .doc, .docx or .rtf.
Make sure you reference ideas or phrases/sentences taken from elsewhere, including the case study and the module materials. Referencing should be in the OU Harvard style, about which you have learnt in several activities throughout B207.
Finally, if there is anything about completing the EMA or if there are questions within it that you do not understand, ask your tutor.

Your answers to the EMA questions will be marked on how well you apply ideas and concepts from B207. You must therefore make sure that you understand the relevant concepts and ideas thoroughly and that you read the case study carefully before attempting to answer the questions. Also, be careful not to copy and paste any material from the internet or published sources into your answers. What you find published elsewhere is very unlikely to address the questions, so copying any material from elsewhere will not result in a good mark (and may lead to potential charges of plagiarism).

Part A

All three questions in Part A ask you to explore the integrative nature of B207. Much of the work that you undertook in the Session 1 of the Module conclusion, ‘Thinking holistically about business opportunities’, was designed to prepare you for tackling this part of the EMA. The session discussed approaches to working with, and analysing, case studies. You also explored integrative thinking and had the opportunity to practice working with a variety of case studies. The aim of this was to further develop your abilities to apply concepts and theories from throughout the module to real world scenarios.

The questions ask you to closely analyse the Tesco case study. By this stage of your studies you will have a lot of experience working with case studies, but it is worth repeating the basic steps:

Read the case study through fairly quickly to get a feel for the sort of situation involved.
Make sure you understand what you are required to do (in this case, by reading the EMA questions). Go through the case study materials again looking for potentially important points and check that you are clear about what is required of you – if you are really unsure, check with your tutor.
Then re-read the case study again, this time very carefully. Make brief notes (and/or sketch a few diagrams) about the key issues that seem to be relevant to the questions. Identify anything that may be relevant.
Start organising your observations, for example, by identifying any underlying issues or events.
Use concepts and theories from the module to help you expand on and support your diagnosis.
Remind yourself again of the questions you have been asked to address, and organise your ideas appropriately.
Remember you are working to a word limit, so concentrate on what is clearly relevant. Support your argument with evidence from the case study, stating any assumptions you have made.

For all three questions in Part A you might want to revisit the various mind maps you have made throughout the module to remind yourself of the overall ideas within each block.

If you need to cite the case study in your answer, you can use within the text: Hinton (2018); (Hinton, 2018) and in the reference list Hinton, M (2018) “EMA Case Study: Tesco”, Open University, Milton Keynes

Part B

You were introduced to presentation skills in Session 2 of the Module conclusion. In particular, Section 2.5, which covered presenting ideas using slides. This section offered step-by-step instructions on creating slides, from selecting and condensing relevant information, right through to formatting your slides using presentation software, such as PowerPoint. It is worth revisiting Session 2 to remind yourself of this advice. You have a limited number of slides to produce so think carefully about what you consider to be the most important information you want to convey. It is a good idea to make sense of any evidence from the case study using concepts and theories from the module.

Part C

In Session 2 of the Module conclusion you were introduced to reflection as a key skill. Part C encourages you to use reflective techniques to look back at how your skills have developed. Your skills began developing in the very first week of the module when you were introduced to key skills, such as critical thinking, and undertook the skills audit. The skills audit was designed to help you identify any areas you could have developed as you proceeded through the module. A suitable approach to tackling this task might be to:

think about the range of skills you have developed
give examples showing how your skills have developed and how they could be transferred to your ongoing studies or professional life
identify any remaining barriers or limitations
think how you might tackle any future skills development and learning.

Guidance notes

General guidance

In tackling the EMA, you are expected to use appropriate concepts from B207 and choose those which support the argument you are making. In addition:

Relate your answers to the questions in Part A about the case study given rather than write everything you know about a particular area – i.e. answer the question(s) you are asked.
Note the word limits: do not try to write about all you have learnt while studying B207.
Read the guidance notes accompanying each of the EMA questions carefully before you start drafting your answers.
Plan ahead to allow plenty of time for drafting an answer you will feel happy about. You have the time to work on several drafts if you wish.
To ensure that you submit your EMA in a format that can be read by the markers, you must make sure that your file is in a format readable by all versions of Microsoft Word. This means that it must have a file extension of .doc, .docx or .rtf. If your word processing software creates a file with a different extension (e.g. .odt) you should use ‘Save as’ to save as either .doc, .docx or .rtf.
Make sure you reference ideas or phrases/sentences taken from elsewhere, including the case study and the module materials. Referencing should be in the OU Harvard style, about which you have learnt in several activities throughout B207.
Finally, if there is anything about completing the EMA or if there are questions within it that you do not understand, ask your tutor.

Part A

The questions ask you to closely analyse the Tesco case study. By this stage of your studies you will have a lot of experience working with case studies, but it is worth repeating the basic steps:

Read the case study through fairly quickly to get a feel for the sort of situation involved.
Make sure you understand what you are required to do (in this case, by reading the EMA questions). Go through the case study materials again looking for potentially important points and check that you are clear about what is required of you – if you are really unsure, check with your tutor.
Then re-read the case study again, this time very carefully. Make brief notes (and/or sketch a few diagrams) about the key issues that seem to be relevant to the questions. Identify anything that may be relevant.
Start organising your observations, for example, by identifying any underlying issues or events.
Use concepts and theories from the module to help you expand on and support your diagnosis.
Remind yourself again of the questions you have been asked to address, and organise your ideas appropriately.
Remember you are working to a word limit, so concentrate on what is clearly relevant. Support your argument with evidence from the case study, stating any assumptions you have made.

For all three questions in Part A you might want to revisit the various mind maps you have made throughout the module to remind yourself of the overall ideas within each block.

Part B

Part C

think about the range of skills you have developed
give examples showing how your skills have developed and how they could be transferred to your ongoing studies or professional life
identify any remaining barriers or limitations
think how you might tackle any future skills development and learning.

Submitting your EMA

You need to submit a single file for your assessment, including all three parts of the assignment.

If you produce one file for each part of the assignment and submit each file separately to the eTMA system, only the last file that you submit will be retained by the system and therefore this is the only file that will be marked.

To submit more than one file to the eTMA system you need to zip your files together to produce one file to upload to the system.

There are many types of zip or compression software available; you can use anything that produces a file with a .zip extension. However, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 have zipping functionality built in to the operating system so you do not need to purchase any other third party products. Zipping or compressing a file reduces the file size – the aim in this case is to produce one file with a size below 10MB so that it will be accepted by the eTMA system.

The instructions given below are for all XP, Vista and Windows 7 systems. Consult ‘Windows Help’ for further information.

To create a zipped (compressed) folder using Windows:

Open My Computer or Computer
Go to the required drive or folder
Find your file or files
Hold down the CTRL key on your keyboard and then Left-Click once on each file that you want to zip
You will now see that the file or files have been highlighted
Release the CTRL key and move your mouse over one of the highlighted files without clicking
Now Right-Click on one of the highlighted files and choose ‘Send To’ and then ‘Compressed Zip Folder’
The above action will now send all your highlighted files to a new folder with the name of the first file you highlighted and it will have a .zip extension on the end
All you have to do now is to Right-Click on your new zip folder, choose Rename and give it a name such as B207 EMA PIfollowed by your PI number.

Note: If you have files that are not in the same folder it may be a good idea for you to create a new folder somewhere and either Copy and Paste or Drag and Drop them all into this new folder so that they are all together, which will make it easier for you to zip them.

To add further files to a zipped (compressed) folder using Windows: (Consult ‘Windows Help’ for further information):

Open My Computer or Computer
Navigate to the zip folder you have created
Either Copy and Paste or Drag and Drop files over the top of the folder to add them to the zip folder.

Marking criteria

Marking criteria

Your marker will mark your assignment using the following criteria:

your knowledge and understanding of relevant concepts from B207
your application of these concepts to the case study information
your ability to communicate effectively: clarity and economy of writing, and clarity of structure
your ability to select information from a case study and develop arguments based on that selection

Generic marking criteria

Your marker will give your EMA a mark based on the generic marking criteria of the Open University, as shown in the table below. We include these guidelines here as they may help you gain an understanding of what different grades mean and what the expected standard is for each grade.