An Entrepreneurial Audit Report

An Entrepreneurial Audit Report (4000 words)
With this assignment, you are asked to identify an organisation of which one you work for or one at your choice, and provide an audit report of their operations from an entrepreneurial perspective. You should use relevant models/concepts presented in lectures as your framework, which you tie in as relevant concepts, issues and ideas from the course as you find appropriate. Your analysis should begin with a brief history of the organisation including its founding, organisational form, locations, products/services, recent developments (expansion or changes), and so forth. This history should be within two pages (600 words). The body of paper should follow, and this should be the actual critique. You should then close with a section of two to three pages of specific, tangible recommendations for change and how to implement them (1000 words).
So, the operative question becomes what should be included in the critique section of the report. You will analyze how entrepreneurial and innovative your organisation be at the status quo. Key issues may include any aspects of the following, which you should choose most critical and relevant issues in your analysis accordingly whilst bearing in mind that this critique section should not exceed 2400 words. Literature review and empirical evidence can be used in this section to support your analysis.
- Describe the organisational structure and management system. Is it efficient? Is it internally consistent? Does it support and facilitate innovative activities and individual creativity? In what ways does it support or constrain entrepreneurship?
- How tight or loose is the organisational control system? Is there ‘slack’/flexibility to support entrepreneurial initiative? Provide examples of controls that support or hinder entrepreneurship.
- What is the dominant management/leadership style in the organisation? How much does delegation/empowerment feature in the management style of senior management? Middle management? Provide examples of this style.
- Apply the traits or characteristics associated with the entrepreneurial personality to the senior/middle managers of this organisation and discuss how this might affect the degree of entrepreneurship and innovation at different levels of organisation.
- What kind of culture does the organisation have? What are the key values? How are these reinforced? Is it supportive of entrepreneurship?
- Is failure tolerated in this organisation? In what ways? Does your organisation favour risk-reverse or risk-taking? Why?
- Look at the way in which the company evaluates and rewards employees. Are the appraisal and reward systems encouraging entrepreneurial behaviour? Why or why not?
- In addition to financial rewards, what sort of awards or recognition does the organisation provide employees?
- Examine the hiring practices of the firm from an entrepreneurial perspective. How does this impact on entrepreneurship and innovation in the organisation?
- How bureaucratic is this organisation in terms of red tape procedures, approval cycles, and speed in decision-making?
- Describe how open communication is in the company? Can anybody communicate with anybody? Is it efficient? Is it very hierarchical?
- How do people in organisation feel about change? What the attitude of senior management toward change? What the attitude of frontier and operational staff?
- How market-driven or customer-focused is this organisation?
- What are the critical resources that they require, in your view, to effectively capitalize on the key opportunities confronting them today.
- Has the strategy for identifying and obtaining resources changed over time? Do they attempt to own or to leverage resources? How well have they managed this?
- At the present time, what are the core competencies of the organisation? How do these relate to being an entrepreneurial organisation?
- What changes does the organisation have to confront? How do these might affect the organisation? In your opinion, do they represent opportunity or threat?
- What is the most entrepreneurial department or area in your organisation? What is the least entrepreneurial? In both cases, why?
- Identify two innovation champions in the organisation. Why do you think they are champions?
- What is the most entrepreneurial thing the organisation has done in the past two years?
- Of the above, what do you see as the major problem area in this organisation today?