1. Strategic Management (SM) concept: Value Chain

2. Refer to the textbook and lecture notes to clarify the exact meaning of the Concept. How do we (or your text) define the Concept? Please, note that using random Internet sources for the purpose of this initial task can potentially lead you to a very wrong track, so avoid doing this. Instead, use the seminal literature on this topic to clarify and expand on the meaning of the concept. Seminal literature consists of books or academic articles published some time ago, in high quality journals. These seminal publications have proposed and outlined the concept for a first time. For example, The Theory of the 5 Forces Analysis was proposed by Michael Porter in his article “How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy”, Harvard Business Review, March/April 1979.

3. If unsure about the seminal literature related to the Concept, please consult with your Tutor. You need to locate and read these seminal articles and to present a more augmented, and thorough view of the Concept in your paper. This will involve some literature search. While reading the seminal literature, make sure you understand why the concept is an important part of SM and how it is related to the SM process, where does it fit within this process? To which other important SM concepts does the Concept relate and how? (600-700 words)

4. After clarifying the exact meaning and the origin of the Concept, search for articles from the electronic databases in the Electronic library (e.g. Business Source Complete, Emerald, ProQuest ABI/Inform, etc.) using your Concept as a search term. This will provide you with a large number of entries (articles). Choose several of these using the following selection criteria:

1. Quality of the journal that published the article. Only the best journals should be used, please check the list of recommended journals in your Unit Outline;

1. Date of publication: the article has to have been published in the last 4-5 years; if there are no suitable articles published recently (i.e in the last 4-5 years), search literature published up to 8-9-12 years ago.

1. The articles should be peer-reviewed, this means that low quality sources, such as trade journals, are totally unsuitable for the purposes of this assignment;

1. The nature of the article – use your judgement of whether or not the article is helpful in providing recent thinking and new insight about the concept, criticism of the concept, new linkages with other SM concepts, new views about its usefulness, or its new applications in SM.

All you need is 5-8 carefully selected articles of this type, to provide you with material, which you will then analyse, in order to identify how it relates to your concept and you will then synthesise the new insight on the concept, derived from these articles. If you aim to obtain a D/HD, then more articles (6-10) should be analysed and discussed.

5. Finally, you need to write your essay incorporating the new knowledge derived from your research. That is, you need to show how the original concept has evolved over time and to indicate clearly in what ways it has evolved, what new extensions, developments, applications and criticism of the concept have been proposed recently, synthesising all this into a very carefully composed essay. This will take you some time, as you will need to write a couple of drafts before you end up with a clear, interesting, insightful and useful discussion about the new developments in the Concept. (1100 -1200 words).

6. To finish the paper, please provide a conclusion, which needs to summarise the main findings of your research and outline why the content of the paper is important for scholars of SM. (100 -150 words).

7. Structure of the assignment:

1. Introduction
2. Body of the essay
   1. Clarify the meaning and origin of the concept (discerned from the seminal literature)
   2. Provide a discussion of recent developments in academic thought related to your chosen Concept.
3. Conclusion
4. list, arranging the references in alphabetical order; using Harvard referencing style