Critical reflections on the strategic management of Allstate

1. Using publicly available information about a large firm of your choice (which can be integrated with few clearly stated assumptions where needed), write an overview of the firms competitive situation, current strategy, and any other characteristics that you will deem relevant to your analysis (about 500 to 800 words).

2.Then, applying the concepts, ideas and frameworks covered in the module, reflect on the firms strategy to answer in three separate paragraphs the following questions (about 2,200 to 2,500 words):
a. To what extent are the traditional concepts of industry, competitor, and sustained competitive advantage useful to understand the strategic options available to the firm today or in the near future? Does, or should, the firm embrace the competitive logic of technological platforms and business ecosystems? Discuss and substantiate your argument.
b. How could the firm achieve greater strategic agility? Specifically, which broad strategic objectives should it pursue? In answering these questions, you may want to compare and contrast traditional options of differentiation/cost/niche leadership with innovative strategies of platform and/or ecosystem leadership.
c. Which circumstances, factors and resources could support or hinder the attainment of greater strategic agility? Which role might specific aspects studied on the module play in the process? You may reflect, for example, on the role of technology, organisational culture, organizational structure, organizational behavior, trust, relationship management, leadership, and so on.

At least 25 appropriate reference from journal article, published report, and book.

Your motivation and guiding research questions
What questions does your report aim to answer? Why, and for whom are these questions important? To what bigger goal does your report contribute (e.g., to inform the design of this specific project site? To better understand the process of informal learning? To better understand the role of tools in )?

A description of your research site and of its participants
Where is the site located? What’s its intended purpose? Who are the participants at this site? What are their goals? What other relevant details about the participants and the site are important to know?

Research approach
Describe how you collected and analyzed your data. How many hours did each of you and your team mates spend at the site, and across what period of time? What was your method for collecting your data (field notes, observations, interviews, etc)? How did you combine and analyze your data with your teammates, and ensure that your conclusions were based in evidence?

Conceptual framework
How do you conceptualize the learning that occurs in the space you observed? On what theories, ideas, or frameworks in the Learning Sciences is your framework based? What key things are involved in the learning that takes place at your site, and how do they relate to one another? Present “either graphically or in narrative form, the main things to be studiedthe key factors, variables, or constructsand the presumed relationships among them. Frameworks can be simple or elaborate, commonsensical or theory driven, descriptive or causal.” (Miles, Huberman & Saldaa, 2014, p. 20). You may provide separate frameworks for each of your lenses, or attempt to integrate your ideas into a single framework. See EXAMPLES here.

Your analytic approach
How did you (individually and together with your group, if applicable) make sense of your data? What roles did you play in each others analysis processes? How did you select which parts of your data to focus on? How did you ensure that your conclusions were based in evidence?

Evidence-supported claims
What themes, patterns, phenomena, etc. did you identify? What lens, theories, ideas, or frameworks in the Learning Sciences do your claims draw on? How do your claims emerge from, connect to, or offer concretization of ideas from these lenses? Provide some specific examples from your data as evidence to illustrate and explain your reasoning.
This section is an elaborated version of your first and second analytic memos (incorporating revisions based on feedback, and any further thoughts you may wish to incorporate).

Synthesis
Considering the different claims and frameworks that emerged from the different lenses, what higher-level ideas about learning in the space can you identify? Where do the perspectives of different lenses support or enhance each other? Where are there tensions or contradictions? Are there some places where the lenses just lead you to talk about completely different things? Is there a way to pull them together somehow?

Recommendations
Based on your analysis and on theories from the Learning Sciences, what recommendations do you make for better supporting learners’ experiences in this context?

Future work
What further questions remain to be investigated, and that you might address if you had more tools, resources, and time at your disposal?