Sample MBA600 Capstone Strategy Assignment

MBA600 Capstone Strategy Assignment Sample

Assignment Brief

Assessment Type: Individual reflective essay

Length: 2000 words (+/- 10% allowable range)

Weighting: 40%

Total Marks: 100

Submission: Online

Due Date: Week 13

Task

Individually, for essay writing help you are required to reflect on the learnings gained from undertaking the capstone subject and assessments by writing a 2000-word reflective essay.

Assessment Description

The purpose of this assessment is to foster students’ ability to coherently reflect on their undertaking of the Capstone: Strategy subject together with a reflection on their entire MBA.

Assessment Instructions

You are required to look back at their MBA course as a whole and identify the specific skills developed that will assist them in becoming effective practitioners in the workplace.

Learning is a persistent change in performance or potential that results from experience and interaction. Reflective learning is the process of stepping back from these experiences and reflecting on how skills, attitudes, mindset, and behaviors have evolved.

Your Reflective Essay Must Cover The Following:

• Introduction.

• A brief discussion on the value of reflective practice for managers and leaders

• A personal reflection on learnings from the capstone subject and consultancy research process.

• A personal reflection on skills developed over the MBA.

• A personal reflection on how these will assist in future career endeavors.

• Conclusions.

• Reference list.

The reflective essay should include a discussion of learnings from both a theoretical and practical perspective. Additionally, insights from undertaking assessments and research, capstone lessons as well as group activities from this and other subjects over the duration of the course. Specific examples should be cited to support and justify all points.

Assessment Information

COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA Copyright Regulations 1969

This material has been reproduced and communicated to you by or on behalf of Kaplan Business School pursuant to Part VB of the Copyright Act 1968 (‘Act’). The material in this communication may be subject to copyright under the Act. Any further reproduction or communication of this material by you may be the subject of copyright protection under the Act. Kaplan Business School is a part of Kaplan Inc., a leading global provider of educational services. Kaplan Business School Pty Ltd ABN 86 098 181 947 is a registered higher education provider CRICOS Provider Code 02426B.

Assessment Submission

This file must be submitted as a ‘Word’ document to avoid any technical issues that may occur from incorrect file format upload. Uploaded files with a virus will not be considered as a legitimate submission. MyKBS will notify you if there is an issue with the submitted file. In this case, you must contact your workshop facilitator via email and provide a brief description of the problem and a screenshot of the MyKBS error message. You are also encouraged to submit your work well before the deadline to avoid any possible delay involving the Turnitin similarity report or any other technical difficulties.

Late assignment submission penalties

Penalties will be imposed on late assignment submissions in accordance with Kaplan Business School “late assignment submission penalties” policy.

Solution

Introduction:

Reflective learning helps people to reflect on their own skills, attitudes, behaviour and mindset. In this reflective report, it discussed the value of reflective learning and reflective practice for leaders and managers. It also discussed the experience of own reflective learning from the capstone subject and consultancy research process. Here, I also identified the skills and knowledge developed throughout the session of my MBA course. This course has been designed to build essential academic, business and cultural skills. Through this reflective report, I clarified the way acquired skills and knowledge from the MBA Capstone course will help me and assist me in future career endeavours.

Value of The Reflective Learning Practice for Leaders and Managers:

Reflective Learning Practice is a lifelong process of acquiring new skills and knowledge to enhance professional and personal skills. It helps in keeping the mind engaged and train the mind of humans to handle a wide variety of challenges. It boosts the confidence level, helps people to be flexible and boosts the confidence level of people. The reflective practice allows leaders and managers to explore their own leadership capabilities. Reflective practice reduces gaps in knowledge and skills, reduces conflict and reduces the environment of a problematic blame culture. Reflective practices help leaders to learn and acquire new skills in a faster way and enhance the ability to be flexible in new situations. It helps leaders and managers to deal with uncertain and unfamiliar circumstances and figure out the solution for controlling the unfamiliar situation. It helps in enhancing the problem-solving skills ability by enhancing the critical thinking and strategic thinking power of leaders and managers. It enhances the skills and deep understanding regarding business strategy (Husam& Abraham, 2019, p.38). Reflective practice helps leaders and managers to reflect on the particular moment and situation and enhances the ability to understate their own actions, assumptions and feelings of others. It leverages the ability to fix problems and enhances knowledge regarding business insights. It helps leaders and managers to become role models for their team members. It helps in identifying the gaps in professional and personal knowledge and skills to strengthen their existing capability and skills and acquiring new skills and knowledge from new experiences. It accelerates the own effectiveness and development of a leader. It helps managers and leaders in developing their aptitudes of basic reasoning, intellectual adaptability, knowledge regarding vital dynamics for figuring out better solutions to critical issues and enhances the ability of undivided attention. It enhances the capability of leaders and managers to explore themselves and enhances the self-capacity level to push the entire team members in a more fit, prepared and positive direction. It enhances the human administrative capability and potential of leaders and managers.

Reflection on Learnings from the Capstone Subject and Consultancy Research Process:

The MBA 600 course of Capstone strategy subject and consultancy research process helped me to gain the appropriate knowledge regarding the business model. It enhances my deep understandings of the business strategy and enhances the new concept regarding the business insights. It helped me to gain knowledge regarding business strategy theories. It enhances the knowledge regarding people, culture and contemporary leadership capability that enhanced my key concepts regarding managing human resources effectively. It helped me to gain knowledge regarding ethical guidelines, governance and sustainability policy for continuing the business effectively. It helped me to know the role of the board in the assessment of business risks and business strategy. It helped me to acquire knowledge regarding the importance of financial and economic communication and interpretation in business. It helped me to learn the techniques to assess business performance, business liquidity and financial position of the business. It enhanced my knowledge regarding marketing psychology and strategies to achieve business goals and objectives (Newton?Calvert& Arthur, 2018, p.166). It helped me to improve my understanding level regarding consumer behaviour and the way consumer behaviour is directly connected to the strategies of business to increase the market share of the company. I realised the MBA 600 course of Capstone Strategy helped me to develop a dynamic corporate-level strategy for creating and enhancing business value through disruptive innovation. It helped me to gain knowledge regarding the importance of diversity, emotional intelligence level and cultural intelligence level. It helped me to understand the importance of appraising the people from different cultural backgrounds within the organisation (Fraustino et al., 2019, p.46). It helped me to gain knowledge regarding developing dynamic capabilities for improving corporate agility. I realised that it helped me assess the opportunities and needs of customers exist in the organisation. It helped me to gain knowledge regarding designing an appropriate and innovative business model and securing the accessibility of business capital and resources. It helped me to understand changing, streamlining and improving the practices of an organisation based on the organisation needs. I realised that the course helped me to understand the importance of using the appropriate business theories in the relevant and appropriate place. It helped me to understand the importance of assessing the impact of external macro-environmental factors and internal microenvironmental factors on business strategies. I realise the importance of effective utilisation of business resources to increase cash flow, market share and sales of the company. I learned the importance of the utilisation of superior infrastructure and innovative technology in the business to improve the efficiency and quality of the internal business process. The overall journey of the MBA Course made me more empowered and confident for the future workplace.

Personal Reflection on Skills That Developed Through the MBA Course:

The MBA 600 course of Capstone strategy subject and consultancy research process helped me to improve my change management skills. It helped me to learn the appropriate steps of leading the change within the organisation. I learned the importance of Kotter's 8 step change management model step by step. It increased my ability to convince others regarding the importance of change. It helped me to improve my guiding power to my team members to overcome the natural resistance to accept changes (Rodriguez et al., 2020, p.5). I also learned about other change management models like Elizabeth Kubler Ross change management model and ADKAR model to bring the changes at the individual level. The content and resources of the MBA 600 course helped me to improve my communication skill level and professional etiquette level to convince customers and attract them to utilise the services of the business. I learned about different professional etiquette to continue the positive and fruitful communication with senior business executives, colleagues and team members etc. (Lee et al., 2020, p.308). I realised that it is important to communicate with others to understand their emotional states and needs. The overall course helped me to improve my problem-solving skill. It helped me to figure out the appropriate resolutions for any critical issues by assessing the business performance through VRIO analysis. I learned about different problem-solving techniques to support my team members in an uncertain situations (Ottonicar et al., 2021, p.67). Moreover, it helped me to gain knowledge regarding product life cycle stages. It helped me to improve my capability of developing appropriate product strategies by introducing new models and features through continuous innovation as per customers’ needs and requirements. It improved my knowledge regarding the different levels of pricing strategy as per the demand, quality, economic status of the country and value of the company and product. It also improved my knowledge regarding appropriate promotional strategies to build brand awareness and emphasise the brand position in the respect of the product life cycle. The overall concept helped me to improve my business management and employee management skill. Moreover, I realised it improved my customer service skill. It also enhanced my emotional intelligence level and I learned the different techniques to control my own emotion and others as well. It helped to improve my self-esteem level and confidence skill to control any situation and manage the business activities efficiently.

Personal Reflection on the Way Acquired Skills and Knowledge will Assist me in Future Career Endeavours:

My long-term aim is to become a successful business project manager and the MBA 600 course of Capstone strategy helped me to strengthen my entrepreneurial skills to achieve my goal step by step. Communication skills will help me to professionally interact with my seniors, other shareholders and my colleagues appropriately. It will help me to improve my negotiating power to manage business activities as a successful project manager (Fergusson et al., 2019, p.290). Knowledge regarding change management skills will help me to understand the appropriate moment to bring changes within the organisation. It will help me to effectively convince my team members and support them to bring the changes to improve the competitive level of the company. It will help me to bring creativity and innovation to the business. Knowledge regarding problem-solving techniques will assist me to improve my active listening skill and critical thinking power (Slade et al., 2019, p.2). It will help me to figure out the appropriate resolutions for any critical situation to continue the business activities as a leader. Employee management skills will help me to improve my leadership capability as a business project manager in future. The business management techniques will help me to figure out appropriate pricing strategy, promotional strategy and product development and distribution strategy for being competitive in the market in future. Effective knowledge regarding customer service will help me to easily convince potential customers (Cirocki and Farrell, 2017, p.5). It will help me to influence customers to utilise the services offered by my future company. Self-esteem and confidence level and emotional intelligence skills will help me for being active and flexible in any critical and uncertain situation. My future endeavour is to utilise my skills in a positive way to make a huge contribution to the place of the business world.

Conclusion:

In view of the overall experience, the content and resources of the MBA 600 Course helped me to realise that it is important to acquire the appropriate professional and personal skills and knowledge for becoming a successful businessman in future. I realise that it is important to be flexible and confident in the business world to achieve the long-term aim of the person. The overall course helped me to prepare myself as a future manager to lead my team members and business activities appropriately. I realised I need to give focus on strengthening my existing skills. Moreover, I need to improve my new skills by continuous learning and gathering feedback from others for being competitive in future.

References:

Cirocki, A. and Farrell, T.S., 2017. Reflective practice for professional development of TESOL practitioners. The European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL, 6(2), pp.5-23.http://www.reflectiveinquiry.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/RP-special.pdf

Fergusson, L., van der Laan, L. & Baker, S., 2019. Reflective practice and work-based research: a description of micro-and macro-reflective cycles. Reflective Practice, 20(2), pp.289-303.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14623943.2019.1591945

Fraustino, J.D., Pressgrove, G. &Colistra, R., 2019. Extending understanding of service-learning projects: Implementing place-based branding for capstone courses. Communication Teacher, 33(1), pp.45-62.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17404622.2017.1372609

Husam, H.A. & Abraham, P., 2019. Employability skills development through assessment in higher education: Students’ voices on reflective assessments. Glob Acad J Econ Buss, 1, pp.36-42.https://www.gajrc.com/media/articles/GAJEB_12_36-42.pdf

Lee, O.S., Lee, K.S. &Gu, H.J., 2020. Influence of Perception of Importance of Communication, Self-esteem and Communication skill on Patient Safety attitude of Nursing student. Journal of Digital Convergence, 18(10), pp.307-314.https://www.koreascience.or.kr/article/JAKO202031064817445.pdf

Newton?Calvert, Z. & Arthur, D.S., 2018. Capstone Courses and Projects. High?Impact Practices in Online Education: Research and Best Practices, pp.165-182.https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=wmd0DwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PT212&dq=benefits+of+capstone+courses+in+higher+education&ots=CG7ocgm5Ex&sig=kaTYa-M9dEhQk8AkWBExIPoYvqA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=benefits%20of%20capstone%20courses%20in%20higher%20education&f=false

Ottonicar, S.L.C., Valentim, M.L.P. and Bouthillier, F., 2021. From Business Information Literacy to Decision-Making, Problem Solving and Innovation. International Journal of Media and Information Literacy, 6(1), pp.66-76.https://cyberleninka.ru/article/n/from-business-information-literacy-to-decision-making-problem-solving-and-innovation

Rodriguez, J.A., Condom-Bosch, J.L., Ruiz, L. & Oliver, E., 2020. On the shoulders of giants: benefits of participating in a dialogic professional development program for in-service teachers. Frontiers in psychology, 11, p.5.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00005/full

Slade, M.L., Burnham, T.J., Catalana, S.M. and Waters, T., 2019. The Impact of Reflective Practice on Teacher Candidates' Learning. International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(2), pp.1-8.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1218300.pdf