| Course | BUS 733 Transforming the Business (BUS/733) |
|---|---|
| Week | 8 |
| Paper type | Doctoral transformation strategy paper |
| Length | about 1,206 words, 4 double-spaced pages plus title page and references |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | University of Phoenix |
| Program | DBA |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for BUS 733 Week 8
Powering the Plains Through 2035: An Integrated Transformation Strategy for a Member-Owned Electric Cooperative
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
BUS/733: Transforming the Business
Week 8 Final Paper
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Great Plains Energy Cooperative and all figures, dates and people are composites written for a model paper.
Owned by 22 distribution cooperatives with about 410,000 rural members, Great Plains Energy Cooperative is the wholesale power source for much of rural Kansas and Nebraska. Coal still provides 58% of its energy. Over seven weeks, this series set a vision of reliable, affordable, cleaner power by 2035, mapped a complex global environment, weighed resources, prepared leaders for the first plant retirement, set sustainability goals and designed a measurement system. This final paper integrates those parts into one strategy for the board. A transformation strategy is only as strong as the fit among its parts; a sound vision fails if incentives, structure and measures still reward the old model.
Executive Summary
Great Plains will retire its two coal plants in 2029 and 2033, replacing them with wind, solar, four-hour batteries and flexible gas, while redeploying every plant worker who wants to stay and partnering with members on efficiency and demand response. The plan targets a 75% emissions cut by 2035, rates within 2% per year of inflation and reliability at or above current standards. Capital needs total about $3.2 billion over ten years.
Transformation as Strategic Renewal
Agarwal and Helfat (2009) defined strategic renewal as the refreshment or replacement of attributes that affect an organization's long-term prospects, and they distinguished discontinuous renewal from incremental renewal. Great Plains needs both: discontinuous change in its generation fleet and incremental renewal in skills, routines and member relationships. Seeing the effort this way keeps leaders from treating the plant retirements as the whole transformation.
The Case for Change
Coal plants face rising maintenance costs, fuel and rail price exposure, tighter environmental expectations and lender concerns. Wind and solar costs have fallen, and members increasingly ask for cleaner power. Waiting would raise long-term costs and risk forced, poorly planned retirements.
Environment
The global environment adds complexity: transformer lead times of two to four years, tariffs that change equipment costs, long interconnection queues, shifting federal incentives and harsher weather. Scenario planning showed that a diversified portfolio performs acceptably across futures.
Resources
Valuable resources include rights of way, interconnection points at retiring plants, skilled line crews and plant workers and member trust. Gaps exist in forecasting, storage operations, data analytics, complex contracting and member engagement.
Strategic Priorities
Three priorities follow from the analysis. First, a reliable clean portfolio: build about 1,400 megawatts of wind, 600 of solar, 500 of four-hour storage and 400 of flexible gas, reusing plant interconnections. Second, a redeployed workforce: retrain coal workers for wind, storage, gas and transmission roles. Third, member partnership: work with member cooperatives on efficiency, rooftop solar rules and demand response.
Phasing
Phase one, 2026 to 2028, orders long-lead equipment, contracts forecasting, starts retraining and builds the first wind and storage projects. Phase two, 2029 to 2032, retires the first plant, adds solar and storage at its site and expands member programs. Phase three, 2033 to 2035, retires the second plant and completes the portfolio.
Leadership
Judge and Piccolo (2004) pooled results from many studies and reported that transformational leadership correlated to follower satisfaction, motivation and leader effectiveness, with contingent reward also strongly related to several outcomes. The cooperative will therefore combine inspiring, trusted leaders with clear, fair rewards. The plant closure plan uses early disclosure, guaranteed job offers, local change agents, community partnership and visible executives.
Structure
A transformation office led by a vice president reporting to the chief executive will coordinate projects, retraining and member programs, with its own budget. Coal plant managers keep full responsibility for safe, dependable output until each unit closes, which protects today's members while the new fleet is built.
Culture
The cooperative's culture prizes reliability and safety, which remain essential. Leaders will extend that culture to include learning and adaptation by sharing results of pilots openly, rewarding teams that solve integration problems and treating forecast errors as information.
Incentives
Executive and manager incentives will balance affordability, reliability, people and emissions measures. No single measure will exceed 30% of the incentive, reducing the temptation to trade one goal for another.
Sustainability
Goals include a 50% emissions cut by 2030 and 75% by 2035, no involuntary layoffs from retirements, community transition funds and verified annual reporting. Land and wildlife practices protect rural relationships.
Strategy Map and Measures
Kaplan and Norton (2000) presented strategy maps as a way to show how objectives in learning, internal processes, customers and finance connect, helping organizations communicate and test strategy. Great Plains' map links retraining and forecasting capabilities to renewable integration, reliability and member satisfaction, lower emissions and stable rates. Leading indicators include forecast error, retraining completion and interconnection milestones.
Governance
The board will review the scorecard quarterly, with an annual strategy session to test assumptions and update targets. A sustainability committee and a member advisory panel provide oversight.
Member Engagement
Members own the cooperative, so the strategy must earn their support, not just inform them. Each member cooperative's board will receive annual briefings, and Great Plains will hold regional meetings before each plant retirement. Member cooperatives will co-design efficiency and demand response programs for their own territories, since irrigation-heavy systems in western Kansas face different peaks than towns in eastern Nebraska. A shared savings arrangement will return part of the avoided peak costs to members who reduce load during critical hours, giving them a direct stake in the transformation's success.
Contingencies
The plan includes decision points. If transformer or battery deliveries slip more than a year, the second plant's retirement can move from 2033 to 2034 without breaching the 2035 goal. If federal incentives shrink further, the cooperative will shift some solar to wind, which performed better under constrained scenarios. If member load grows faster than expected from irrigation electrification or new industrial customers, an additional 200 megawatts of storage is pre-approved for study. Naming these triggers in advance lets the board adjust quickly without reopening the whole strategy.
Budget
Of the $3.2 billion in capital, about 70% goes to generation and storage, 20% to transmission and substations and 10% to retraining, systems and community funds. Financing combines federal rural utility loans, tax credits where available and reserves.
Risks and Responses
Key risks are equipment delays, addressed through early orders and supplier diversity; policy changes, addressed through flexible contracts and scenario reviews; extreme weather, addressed through storage, gas backup and winterization; workforce loss, addressed through early job offers; and member resistance to rate effects, addressed through transparent reporting and efficiency programs.
Contribution to Research
The case extends research on transformation and renewal into member-owned, regulated organizations, where owners are also customers. It suggests that worker redeployment may shape both commitment and capability retention during asset retirements, a question for future study.
Reflection
Working through the case showed that transformation is less about choosing technologies than about aligning people, structures and measures over a long period. Integrating the course's themes revealed tensions, such as speed versus affordability, that no single analysis would expose.
Conclusion
Great Plains' strategy integrates a clear vision, analysis of a complex environment and resources, three priorities, phased execution, leadership and change plans, aligned structure, culture and incentives, sustainability goals, measures and governance. Together, these parts give the cooperative a coherent path to reliable, affordable, cleaner power by 2035.
References
Agarwal, R., & Helfat, C. E. (2009). Strategic renewal of organizations. Organization Science, 20(2), 281-293. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1090.0423
Judge, T. A., & Piccolo, R. F. (2004). Transformational and transactional leadership: A meta-analytic test of their relative validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(5), 755-768. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.89.5.755
Kaplan, R. S., & Norton, D. P. (2000). Having trouble with your strategy? Then map it. Harvard Business Review, 78(5), 167-176.
What the BUS 733 Week 8 instructions ask
The final BUS 733 assignment usually asks doctoral students to write an integrated strategy for transforming an organization. Common requirements include stating the vision and the case for change, analyzing the environment and resources, setting strategic priorities, describing leadership and change approaches, addressing sustainability, aligning structure and culture, defining measures and governance and assessing risks. Some prompts also require a reflection on what the student learned or a contribution to research. Begin with a short executive summary. Integrate earlier work rather than pasting it in, support each element with peer-reviewed sources and use APA citations. Make sure the parts fit together, since the course rewards a coherent strategy rather than a collection of separate analyses.
How this BUS 733 Week 8 example is built
The paper presents a ten-year strategy for an electric cooperative moving from coal to renewables. It frames the effort as strategic renewal, sets three priorities, namely a reliable clean portfolio, a redeployed workforce and member partnership, and phases the work from 2026 to 2035. It aligns structure with a transformation office, culture through leaders who model new behaviors and incentives that balance cost, reliability, people and emissions. A strategy map connects objectives to measures. Capital needs are estimated and split by category. A risk register addresses supply delays, policy changes, weather and member resistance. The paper ends by reflecting on contributions to research on cooperatives and plant retirements.
BUS 733 Week 8 grading rubric: where the points go
Strong final strategy papers integrate every element into a coherent plan in which vision, analysis, priorities, leadership, sustainability and measurement reinforce each other. Faculty credit a clear case for change, priorities that follow from the analysis, realistic phasing, alignment of structure, culture and incentives, credible governance and measures and honest risk assessment, all supported by scholarly research. Papers that explain tradeoffs and contingencies show judgment. Reviewers look for a concise executive summary, consistency in figures across sections and a closing reflection on what the case adds to scholarship. Tables for phasing and budget help. Disciplined writing and careful referencing make a long document readable and persuasive for both faculty and practitioners.
BUS 733 Week 8 help: mistakes to avoid
Students often paste earlier assignments together without integrating them. Rewrite each part so it connects to the others. Another common gap is listing many priorities; choose a few and explain why. Students also forget alignment. A strategy fails if structure, culture and incentives still reward the old model. Check that numbers match across sections. Include a realistic timeline and budget. Address risks with responses, not just a list. Use scholarly sources for each major element, and cite them where the claim appears. Avoid jargon and claims of certainty. Finally, write a short reflection on what the case contributes to research or practice, since the DBA emphasizes applying and extending knowledge.
Related BUS 733 sample papers
Other BUS 733 week samples
- BUS 733 Week 1: Business Transformation and Vision
- BUS 733 Week 2: Complexity and the Global Environment
- BUS 733 Week 3: Resources and Capabilities
- BUS 733 Week 4: Leading Transformational Change
- BUS 733 Week 5: Sustainability in Transformation
- BUS 733 Week 6: Performance and Measurement
- BUS 733 Week 7: Research on Transformation
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BUS 733 Week 8 questions, answered
What does BUS 733 Week 8 usually cover?
It usually covers a final transformation strategy paper that integrates vision, environment and resource analysis, priorities, leadership, sustainability, alignment, measures, governance and risk.
Where can I find a free BUS 733 Week 8 sample paper?
The complete transformation strategy for a rural electric cooperative is shown above with margin notes; we can also write a strategy built on the organization you chose.
What is strategic renewal?
The process by which an organization refreshes or replaces attributes that shape its long-term prospects, such as its strategy, capabilities or structure, to stay viable as conditions change.
How do I make a strategy paper coherent?
Tie every priority to the analysis, align structure, culture and incentives with the priorities, connect objectives to measures and check that figures and timelines agree across sections.
What should a transformation strategy include?
A vision and case for change, environmental and resource analysis, priorities, phasing, leadership and change plans, sustainability goals, alignment of structure and culture, measures, governance and risk responses.
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