Imran was studying for a BA in Business Studies and doing his placement year in an advanced consumer electronics company. When he first joined the com- pany he was surprised to note that the company’s business strategy, which was announced in the com- pany newsletter, seemed to be inconsistent with what Imran knew of the product market.
Imran had become particularly interested in corpo- rate strategy in his degree. He was familiar with some of the literature that suggested that corporate strategy should be linked to the general external environment in which the organisation operated. He wanted to do some research on corporate strategy in his orga- nisation for his degree dissertation.
After talking this over with his project tutor Imran decided on the following research question: ‘Why does [organisation’s name] corporate strategy not seem to reflect the major factors in the external operating environment?’