IB3700

Managing Strategy in the Digital Era

Group Work Assignment, 2022

Group Work Instructions

All assessments must be submitted ONLINE via my.wbs by 7pm UK time on the date displayed
against this assessment.

Please ensure that you have inserted a completed assignment coversheet, which must be included
as the first page of your script. This should include the Student ID number for each member of the
group, but not your names, and your group number.

Word/Time Limit
2000 word limit.

Word Count Policy

WBS has a school-wide policy on word counts. This is strictly enforced to ensure consistency across
modules and programme. You can find more information about this policy in your Student
Handbook under Academic Practice - 4i. Word count policy.

This is a strict limit not a guideline: any piece submitted with more words than the limit will result
in the excess not being marked.

Academic Practice
Please ensure you read the full guidelines for Academic Practice in the Undergraduate Handbook
and ensure you understand it. If in doubt, please seek clarification in advance of your submission.
This includes important information on:

• Cheating, plagiarism and collusion

• Correct referencing
• Using internet sources in assessments
• Academic writing
• English Language support
• Word count policy

When you submit your Group Work online, you will be required to tick a declaration box indicating
that the work involved is entirely your own (or that of your Group). Each assessment (where
applicable) will be put through plagiarism software to identify any collusion or inadequate
referencing of materials used from different sources.
We would consider taking action if your work:
1. Is too reliant on the words of particular authors (rather than presenting your ideas in your
own words), if the assessment uses the ideas or words of an author without referencing
them or putting their words into quotations (plagiarism).
2. Includes unreferenced work that you have previously submitted for any accredited course of
study (unless explicitly asked to do so by your Module Leader/Tutor) (self-plagiarism).

Extensions and Self-certification

Late submissions will incur a penalty of 5% for every 24 hour period after the due date and time, i.e.
this begins one minute after the submission deadline (beginning at 7.01pm).

Requests for specific extensions (of up to 15 days) which are typically for longer and more serious
concerns must be submitted via my.wbs ideally 72 hours BEFORE the deadline. Extensions can only
be approved if you clearly detail your circumstances and provide supporting documentation (or a
reason as to why you cannot provide the supporting documentation at the time) as set out in the
Mitigating Circumstances Policy.

Self-certification is a university-wide policy whereby you are permitted an automatic extension of 5

working days on eligible written assessed work without the need for evidence. WBS permits self-
certification for all types of written, assessed works such as essays and dissertations. It is not
permitted for exams, course tests, or presentations.

You can self-certify twice within each year of study, starting from the anniversary of your course
start date. This will cover all eligible written assessments that fall within the self-certification period,
as long as they have not previously had an extension applied. To find out further details about the
self-certification policy please see: https://my.wbs.ac.uk/-/academic/20778/item/id/1244460/.

If you wish to self-certify for an extension of 5 working days, please select 'Self-certification' in the
Extension Type field. If you wish to request a longer extension than 5 working days, please leave the
Extension Type as 'Standard'.

Further information
Please see the links below for further information on peer assessment and working in groups:

• Overview - Working Online With Others | Academic | my.wbs

• 4.1 Peer assessment and your assessed group task - Study Materials - Working Online With
Others | Academic | my.wbs

• 4.2 WBS policy on group work and peer assessment - Study Materials - Working Online
With Others | Academic | my.wbs

• University of Warwick Values

• Dignity at Warwick page – which includes the Dignity at Warwick Policy

Your assignment instructions begin below.

1. Identify an organisation that has recently been successful making digital technology a core part of
its product/service delivery and explain the motivation behind your choice. This can be both a
traditional organisation using digital technology or a “digitally born” organisation.

An example of such an organisation would be Netflix (case study week 3) but you cannot choose
Netflix!

Analyse how the company has become successful in making data, information, and knowledge
(through the use of digital technology) a valuable part of its business model.

Choose something creative and exciting.

2. Apply two conceptual models and frameworks discussed on this module and critically assess them
explaining the success of your company. A critical assessment means that you evaluate and reflect
how the conceptual models and frameworks apply as well as where they miss explanatory power.
For both the former and the latter, explain providing case evidence using multiple sources of
evidence. Try being creative in presenting the data to make your argument using visuals.

3. Based on question 2, reflect on what a good conceptual model for managing strategy through
information systems for organisations requires in our age of rapid digitalisation and digital
innovation.

4. Evaluate how your organisation has been using digital technology (including the use of data,
information, and knowledge) differently than one of its competitors. How sustainable is this
position? For example, in the case of Netflix you could compare with TiVo or the UK video rental
company BlockBuster (Wiki).

5. Take your organisation and think 10 years into the future, what action plan do you suggest to keep
its sustained competitive advantage given the role of data and information in our age of rapid
change from digitalisation and digital innovation? Evaluate which one of the two conceptual models
chosen in question 2 your organisation should build its strategic information systems strategy
around and why?

6. Finish your assessment with a prototype e-mail to the CEO of your organisation where you give
him feedback on how it has and will be making use of strategic information systems so far and will
be in the next 10 years. As CEOs tend to have little time and attention your e-mail can contain a
maximum of four full stop sentences and a maximum of 100 words.

NB. Maximum number of words is 2,000. Number of words per question are indicators and not
evaluated.