04 May CAN IT CONTINUE TO PURSUE ITS CURRENT BUSINESS- OR CORPORATE-LEVEL STRATEGY PROFITABLY?
Maximum Points Available (100 Points)
Analyze the companys history, development and growth
Identify the companys internal strengths and weaknesses
Evaluate the SWOT analysis (50 Points)
Make recommendations (50 Points)
The following is a summary of the steps to take to analyze the case material:
1. Analyze the companys history, development, and growth. A convenient way to investigate
how a companys past strategy and structure affect it in the present is to chart the critical incidents
in its history – that is, the events that were the most unusual or the most essential for its
development into the company it is today. Some of the events have to do with its founding, its
initial products, how it makes new-product market decisions, and how it developed and chose
functional competencies to pursue. Its entry into new businesses and shifts in its main lines of
business are also important milestones to consider.
Identify the companys internal strengths and weaknesses. Once the historical profile is
completed, you can begin the SWOT analysis. Use all the incidents you have charted to develop
an account of the companys strengths and weaknesses as they have emerged historically.
Examine each of the value creation functions of the company, and identify the functions in which
the company is currently strong and currently weak. Some companies might be weak in
marketing; some might be strong in research and development. Make lists of these strengths and
weaknesses. The SWOT checklist gives examples of what might go in these lists.
Evaluate the SWOT analysis. Having identified the companys external opportunities and
threats as well as its internal strengths and weaknesses, you need to consider what your findings
mean. That is, you need to balance strengths and weaknesses against opportunities and threats. Is
the company in an overall strong competitive position? Can it continue to pursue its current
business- or corporate-level strategy profitably? What can the company do to turn weaknesses
into strengths and threats into opportunities? Can it develop new functional, business, or
corporate strategies to accomplish this change? Never merely generate the SWOT analysis and
then put it aside. Because it provides a succinct summary of the companys condition, a good
SWOT analysis is the key to all the analyses that follow.
5. Make recommendations. The last part of the case analysis process involves making
recommendations based on your analysis. Obviously, the quality of your recommendations is a
direct result of the thoroughness with which you prepared the case analysis. The work you put
into the case analysis will be obvious to the professor from the nature of your recommendations.
Recommendations are directed at solving whatever strategic problem the company is facing and
at increasing its future profitability. Your recommendations should be in line with your analysis;
that is, they should follow logically from the previous discussion. For example, your
recommendation generally will center on the specific ways of changing functional, business, and
corporate strategy and organizational structure and control to improve business performance. The
set of recommendations will be specific to each case, and so it is difficult to discuss these
recommendations here. Such recommendations might include an increase in spending on specific
research and development projects, the divesting of certain businesses, a change from a strategy
of unrelated to related diversification, an increase in the level of integration among divisions by
using task forces and teams, or a move to a different kind of structure to implement a new
business-level strategy. Again, make sure your recommendations are mutually consistent and are
written in the form of an action plan. The plan might contain a timetable that sequences the
actions for changing the companys strategy and a description of how changes at the corporate
level will necessitate changes at the business level and subsequently at the functional level.
After following all these stages, you will be able to present your analysis to the class. Remember that you
must tailor your analysis to suit the specific issue discussed in your case. In some cases, you might
completely omit one of the steps in the analysis because it is not relevant to the situation you are
considering. You must be sensitive to the needs of the case and not apply the framework we have
discussed in this section blindly. The framework is meant only as a guide and not as an outline that you
must use to do a successful analysis.
Please Note: You will use APA formatting. The length of the analysis will be 4 to 5 pages. The Oral
Presentation will be 7 to 12 minutes. Points will be deducted for presentations exceeding 12 minutes.
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