Writing a Strategic Management Report
This document summarises what I have learnt about report writing in my own career in industry, consultancy and academia. I believe that it constitutes a reasonable guide to good practice. But this is an area in which opinions and practices differ - for example, some people DO like to see the different theoretical models laid out in detail, something that I regard as unnecessary. You are advised to check with your tutor to make sure that what is written here accords with their own requirements and preferences.
©Adrian Haberberg 2001
Please remember that you are writing a business report and not an academic essay, and that you are writing it for a busy and intelligent manager. More specifically:
• Do not waste time and paper reproducing information from the case study. In particular, do not bore your "client" with a long history of the organisation you are studying. You should assume that they have read and understood everything in the case study. Your job is to add value to that information.
• Remember that a report, like any other good piece of writing, tells a story in an interesting and coherent way. There should be a clear flow from one section of your writing to another, and each part of the report should draw upon what has gone before, and feed analysis forward to what follows.
• Do not assume that, if you write down all the theoretical models one after the other, you have done your job. If all you write is a PEST, followed by a Five Forces Analysis, followed by a SWOT analysis, followed by a……., then you will end up with a tedious and repetitive list of unrelated points that will probably not answer the question very well. You need to acquire the ability to select the relevant parts of each analysis (and only the relevant parts) and put them together so as to answer the question you have been set.
• Avoid jargon.