COMM1170 Organisational Resources
Tutorial – Week 1
Tutor: Remember to take a copy
Contact:
Appointment times:
Tutorial:

Welcome activity
In this lesson, you will…
1. Gain a clear roadmap of COMM1170, including assessment
structure and weekly topics.
2. Identify organisational internal resources at Netflix and
explain how these can be harnessed to achieve competitive
advantage.
3. Discuss how operational excellence, customer intimacy
and product leadership can be used to achieve
organisational strategy.
4. Apply the VRIO framework to select the strongest resource
capabilities to achieve competitive advantage.
5. Post Individual Artefact 1 to the Turnitin Dropbox.
Course Orientation
“Getting Started” module on Moodle...
• Course outline
• Assessments
• Policies and Procedures
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Understanding
People
resources
Understanding
costing
Understanding
Budgeting &
the Required
Investment (1)
Flexibility
Week
Understanding
the Required
Investment (2)
Integration Integration
Week1
RBV of the
firm;
organisation
lifecycle; 3
strategic
approaches
Week2
HCM,
people
resources
&
capabilities
Week3
“As-is to-be”, 5
IS component
framework
Week4
Job and
process
costing
Week5
Budgeting,
Capital
raising
Week7
Capital
structure,
business
risk
Week8
Achieving CA
in mid-size
organisations
Week9
Achieving
CA in
start-ups
& early
growth
11
Understanding
the Organisation
COMM1170 ORGANISATIONALRESOURCES
Assessments
Week10
Achieving
CA in late
growth
and
mature
orgs
PleaseseeCOMM1170 AssessmentGuide
for details including exact deadlines
Business Case
Presentation Video
Business Case Video
Presentation 40%
Integration
Reflective Learning
Portfolio 20% +40% = 60%
Reflective
Learning
Portfolio 1
Reflective
Learning
Portfolio 2
Understanding
technology
resources
Technology
Communication Channels
Communication channel Purpose
Moodle announcements Official communication and information to navigate you
through the course from CC and ACC
Moodle forums Questions about the course that any student would benefit
from ACC, CC and Lecturers
COMM1170@unsw.edu.au Personal issue only. General questions about the course,
please post on Moodle forum
Tutor emails Connection point about tutorials logistics (not tutorial
content) and if you need further assessment feedback.
Emails directly to lecturers,
CC & ACC
Unfortunately, we cannot answer these because it does not
enable effective coordination and timely feedback from the
delivery team.
Tutorial Expectations
✓ Attendance: Vital for completing Assessments.
✓ Class will start by 5 mins past – roll is taken each week
✓ Participate - an interactive, engaging class = successful completion of content
Assessment Task Weighting Due Date*
Assessment 1: Reflective Learning Portfolio 1
A collection of artefacts and reflective commentary from
weeks 1-3
20% Week 4 - 11.59 AM Monday
30 September 2024.
Assessment 2: Reflective Learning Portfolio 2
A collection of artefacts and reflective commentary from
weeks 4-8
40% Week 9 - 11.59 AM Monday
4 November 2024.
Assessment 3: Business Case Video Presentation
An individual video presenting a business case for your
chosen company, synthesising skills, and frameworks from the
course
40% Week 11 – 4:00 PM Friday
21 November 2024.

Why Reflective Commentary?
1. Reframe what “learning” means and the ability to do so.
2. Set learning aspirations rooted in a personal “Why?”
3. Develop a personal learning journey.
4. Implement the learning plan with micro habits and continuous feedback.
Brassey, J., Mugayar-Baldocchi, M., & Nielsen, N. (2020). It’s time to future-proof skill sets for the decade
ahead. McKinsey & Company.
Explore an organisation to trial for assessment 3
• It’s important to focus on a larger organisation (no start-ups or early growth firms). The
organisation must be publicly listed on the NYSE/NASDAQ/FTSE/ASX/DAX etc. This will
enable you to access that organisation's financial information
• The information and evidence about the organisation needs to be available in the English
language.
• Limit of two students in the same tutorial to focus on the same organisation. Students
exploring the same organisation must focus on different issues in the assessment task.
The exception is large conglomerates with subsidiary companies, students may explore
different subsidiaries (e.g., the Walt Disney Company – has the theme parks business,
media, entertainment and consumer products).
• The organisation cannot be from major class examples, e.g., Netflix, Amazon’s logistics
management capability (in Week 1).
Lecture recap
Competitive advantage/Resource and capability analysis
Competitive Advantage
Operational Excellence
Providing customers with
reliable products or services,
at competitive prices and
delivered conveniently
Customer Intimacy
Personalisation of service/
customisation of products to
meet differing customer
needs. Includes: detailed
customer knowledge with
operational flexibility so they
can respond quickly to
almost any need, and/or
customizing a product to
fulfil special requests.
Product/Service
Leadership
Firms strive to produce a
continuous stream of
innovative products and
services and permanently
look for new solutions to their
customers' problems
Resources – what an organisation owns
• Tangible
• Intangible
• e.g., highly trained and motivated
customer agents
Capabilities – what an organisation can
do
• Cross-functional and multi-dimensional.
• Arise over time.
• Harder for competitors to duplicate.
• e.g., excellent customer service.
Organisational Performance
Competitive Advantage
Resource and Capability Analysis: Sizing up Competitive
Assets and Competitive Advantage
Identify the company’s resources and capabilities
Examine them for potential CA – the four tests of a competitive power (VRIO):
Tutorial Activities
1. Netflix as a case for resource and capability analysis
2. Potential organisation: brief resource and capability
analysis
Activity 1: Netflix resources and capabilities audit
❑ Access the Netflix Resources and Capabilities list on Moodle and in your
team, consider differences between the resources and capabilities.
❑ Categorise these, e.g., people resource/people capability/tech
resource/tech capability/capital resource and capabilities
❑ What type of competitive advantage do they have? One or more ?
❑Next choose 10 or more resources and capabilities from the list and write
them on post-it notes. Place the post-its under the relevant type of
competitive advantage (on the room whiteboard or on paper provided by
your tutor).
❑ Discuss with your team – what type(s) of competitive(s) advantage is
Netflix able to achieve? Write the CA type(s) in the worksheet under the
Activity 1 tab (Week 1 tutorial worksheet).
❑ Only if you have time - using the VRIO criteria – pick out 1- 2 resources or
capabilities that are strong in contributing to Netflix’s competitive advantage
and fill in the VRIO criteria on the Activity 1 tab on your tutorial worksheets.
Activity 2: Artefact One
Develop a brief resource and capability audit for your chosen organisation
Work Individually to research and complete the worksheet on Moodle:
• Select an Organisation
• How does the organisation achieve competitive advantage? (customer intimacy, operational
excellence, product/service leadership or a combination of these?)
• Identify one key resource and one important capability for your potential organisation.
• Apply the VRIO framework to assess the strength of the resource and the capability and how
they both contribute to the organisation’s competitive advantage.
• Upload the worksheet to Moodle Drop-box assignment link under week 1 and then use the
brief audit in the RLP. To use this document later for your assessment, it MUST be submitted
in this tutorial.
Assessment: Reflective Learning Portfolios 1
Well done! You have developed an artefact and applied concepts from the pre-lecture & lecture.
• During the tutorial, you will submit what you have done into a ‘drop-box’ (before it locks).
Found on Moodle (see Week 1-Tutorials).
• Following each tutorial:
• jot down your initial thoughts/reflections while they are fresh in your mind. This will help
you develop, and later write, your Reflective Learning Portfolio (RLP).
• collate your artefacts into your RLP. You might include photos, screenshots, text, or other
relevant evidence from any part of the week’s learning activities.
• Powerpoint, Canva or other presentation software is recommended for producing your RLP.
• You can choose any two artefacts (if, and only if, the artefacts were submitted to the drop-
box on time) from Weeks 1- 3 for RLP 1 (Due: September 30th).
Example RLP –
from the
Assessment
Guide
Key Takeaways Today
✓ Week 2 – pre-work on Moodle
✓ Attend Lecture
Next week
✓ Grasped the course roadmap and the
assessments.
✓ Identified organisational resources and
capabilities that contributed to competitive
advantage for Netflix.
✓ Completed and submitted the basic
artefact for Week 1 by examining a key
resource and capability (and their
contribution to competitive advantage for
your potential organisation).
This week’s to-do list
FRIDAY WEEK 1:
• Complete Library online module (See 'Assessment
Hub’ ‘Resources for RLPs’).
• View the library research workshops posted on Moodle
• Optional Friday drop-in session with the Lecturer (Dr
Helen) – 12 pm –12.30 pm via Zoom –
• Meeting ID –82071787527 Pword - 585010
Thank you! If you have any questions about the
course, please use the course forums
on Moodle.
If your question is of a personal nature,
please email:
comm1170@unsw.edu.au.
And/or if you need personalised
feedback on tutorial activities, please
email your tutor.