Evaluating the Company E.ON’s Main Corporate Level Strategies

The purpose of this assignment is to give you an opportunity to demonstrate the knowledge and skills you have learned from this module. There are many, equally valid ways to fulfil the assignment tasks. You will therefore have to make many choices of your own. For example, you have to decide what you define as E.ON’s main corporate level strategies, what time span to include, and which tools and concepts to apply.
You need to conduct your own research into the company, its strategies, and its environment. Internet search, in particular the company website, news articles, and journal articles will be useful for gaining information about the company and its environment. To define the tools you use and to back up theoretical claims, you have to refer to academic journal articles and/or books.
You should first describe the most important features of E.ON’s corporate level strategies. The main focus is on corporate level strategies, but you can refer to business level and operational strategies when they are closely linked to corporate level strategies. You need to include E.ON’s current and recent strategies, but you can choose how far back to go into the past. You will have to look at least slightly back into the past in order to describe the strategies, but you are NOT required to provide a detailed history of E.ON’s strategies.
To describe strategy, you should use strategy concepts such as the Ansoff matrix, the strategy clock, or Porters generic strategy options. Please note that you should not use all of these concepts, but you should be parsimonious. You can use other concepts instead (regardless of whether they were mentioned in the lectures) as long as they are relevant.
To describe strategies, you should also use the information that you get on E.ON’s particular activities (such as mergers, marketing campaigns), but you should analyse these activities in relation to the strategy that you described, using strategy concepts. Do not describe strategy just by listing activities.
You then have to evaluate the strategies with regard to their suitability. You should use only the criterion of ‘suitability’ for your evaluation, not other criteria such as feasibility, validity and consistency. Please use the definition of ‘suitability’ from the Johnson et al. textbook that is presented in the lectures. To examine suitability, you will therefore have to analyse how the strategies match (a) E.ON’s remote and operating environments, (b) its capabilities, and (c) its stakeholders’ expectations (Stakeholder expectations will however be smaller point than the other two). Make sure you include not just shareholders as stakeholders.
Please do not provide an extensive analysis of the environment, capabilities, or stakeholder expectations without linking this analysis to your strategy evaluation. In other words, focus only on those factors in the environment and on those capabilities and stakeholder expectations that are relevant for evaluating whether a strategy is suitable or not.
To highlight the relevant factors in the environment, the capabilities, and stakeholder expectations, you again have to use theoretical concepts (such as core capabilities, environmental forces) and analytical tools (such as PESTEL, SWOT, and/or stakeholder mapping). You should briefly define the concepts and tools you use (no critical evaluation of the tools is needed), and then apply them to the case. You are expected to demonstrate that you have understood the concepts and tools in theory, and that you are able to use them to analyse the case.
There is no set number of tools and concepts that you should use, but you have to make a choice of which concepts or tools to apply. Please note that you should not use all concepts and tools discussed in the lectures. Do not use too many tools, as this could make your analysis too superficial. Also, do not use a tool if it does not provide relevant additional information, and avoid overlapping tools. The fewer concepts/tools you use, the more depth and detail you are expected to provide for each one. When choosing analytical tools, please make sure you have access to the data you need for applying them.