the link below is one of articles to read for the case analysis;
http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/06/20/193491766/can-this-dominican-factory-pay-good-wages-and-make-a-profit
The link below is for another article to read for the case analysis;
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/31/us/osha-emphasizes-safety-health-risks-fester.html?ref=todayspaper&%20r=0&_r=0
the description below is what a professor wants ;
View the videos and read the articles describing the case of Royal Furniture Co. in No. Carolina…and the case on the Dominican Factory, comparing and contrasting the approaches in these two cases and giving your assessment of the ethical issues and how they were handled in each case.
Guidelines for Case Analyses
A case study is a detailed account of a company, industry, person, or project over a specific period of time. The content within a case study may include information about company objectives, strategies, challenges, results, recommendations, and more. Case studies are used to teach students how to assess business situations and make decisions based upon those assessments.
In this course, all of the information to be analyzed is provided in the case documents; it is not necessary to research additional information on the firms and their environments. A simple way of analyzing a case is to start by reading the case thoroughly and then addressing the following basic questions:
1. What is going on here? Describe of the firm or organization and the situation or issues it is facing.
2. Who is the decision-maker? What is their position? What are their responsibilities?
3. What is the problem? What are the issues? Why is this situation a problem?
4. Why is this happening? What are the contributing factors—root causes—of this situation? What must be resolved? Decided? How urgent is the decision?
5. What are the alternatives the firm/organization could consider? What are the constraints? What choices does the firm have to address the issues?
6. Of those identified alternatives, what choices do you recommend – and why?
Case Write-up Assignments:
Prior to each in-class case analysis (dates listed on your syllabus) you should read the case and
write up a set of “case notes” based upon the guidelines above, to utilize during your in-class
discussion. Print out your case notes to submit in class following class discussion.
Your case notes should be 1-2 pages maximum, and do not have to be “academic prose”—can
be bulleted lists, answering the questions above. Case notes will be evaluated as “excellent” (5
points), “good” (4 points), “adequate” (3 points); “fair” (2 points); “weak” (1 point)
based on the quality and thoroughness of your descriptions in support of your
conclusions and recommendations. The lowest score of the set of cases will be dropped.
Note: Case notes are part of your participation grade and are due at classtime on the day of the case analysis. Please submit on Canvas at least one hour before classtime (times will be recorded); submission after that time will be docked one point for each day late.
The Formal Case Analysis Process: Case analyses are a key aspect of many professional
studies, and involve much deeper description, data collection and analysis than you will need to
do for this class, and are expanded in the attachment to illustrate the depth of analysis possible.
In-Depth Case Analyses
For more extensive case analysis, involving research into the current state and strategic objectives of a given firm or industry, the following analytical template is more appropriate. Some cases may provide 30+ pages of information, which you would then supplement by targeted research into the areas of your specific interest. Again, If you want the case study analysis to be professional and accurate, you must have a clear understanding of the issues that the company or industry faced, so read the case thoroughly before you start. Reproduced below are two excellent references for more in-depth case analyses that may prove helpful:
http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/Busi/IntroBus/CASEMETHOD.html
Preparing A Case Study
It helps to have a system when sitting down to prepare a case study as the amount of information and issues to be resolved can initially seem quite overwhelming. The following is a good way to start.
Step 1: The Short Cycle Process
1. Quickly read the case. If it is a long case, at this stage you may want to read only the first few and last paragraphs. You should then be able to
2. Answer the following questions:
1. Who is the decision maker in this case, and what is their position and responsibilities?
2. What appears to be the issue (of concern, problem, challenge, or opportunity) and its significance for the organization?
3. Why has the issue arisen and why is the decision maker involved now?
4. When does the decision maker have to decide, resolve, act or dispose of the issue? What is the urgency to the situation?
3. Take a look at the Exhibits to see what numbers have been provided.
4. Review the case subtitles to see what areas are covered in more depth.
5. Review the case questions if they have been provided. This may give you some clues are what the main issues are to be resolved.
You should now be familiar with what the case study is about, and are ready to begin the process of analyzing it. You are not done yet! Many students mistakenly believe that this is all the preparation needed for a class discussion of a case study. If this was the extent of your preparation, your ability to contribute to the discussion would likely be limited to the first one quarter of the class time allotted. You need to go further to prepare the case, using the next step. One of the primary reasons for doing the short cycle process is to give you an indication of how much work will need to be done to prepare the case study properly.
Step 2: The Long Cycle Process
At this point, the task consists of two parts:
1. A detailed reading of the case, and then
2. Analyzing the case.
When you are doing the detailed reading of the case study, look for the following sections:
1. Opening paragraph: introduces the situation.
2. Background information: industry, organization, products, history, competition, financial information, and anything else of significance.
3. Specific (functional) area of interest: marketing, finance, operations, human resources, or integrated.
4. The specific problem or decision(s) to be made.
5. Alternatives open to the decision maker, which may or may not be stated in the case.
6. Conclusion: sets up the task, any constraints or limitations, and the urgency of the situation.
Most, but not all case studies will follow this format. The purpose here is to thoroughly understand the situation and the decisions that will need to be made. Take your time, make notes, and keep focused on your objectives.
Analyzing the case should take the following steps:
1. Defining the issue(s)
2. Analyzing the case data
3. Generating alternatives
4. Selecting decision criteria
5. Analyzing and evaluating alternatives
6. Selecting the preferred alternative
7. Developing an action/implementation plan
Defining the issue(s)/Problem Statement
The problem statement should be a clear, concise statement of exactly what needs to be addressed. This is not easy to write! The work that you did in the short cycle process answered the basic questions. Now it is time to decide what the main issues to be addressed are going to be in much more detail. Asking yourself the following questions may help:
1. What appears to be the problem(s) here?
2. How do I know that this is a problem? Note that by asking this question, you will be helping to differentiate the symptoms of the problem from the problem itself. Example: while declining sales or unhappy employees are a problem to most companies, they are in fact, symptoms of underlying problems which need to addressed.
3. What are the immediate issues that need to be addressed? This helps to differentiate between issues that can be resolved within the context of the case, and those that are bigger issues that needed to addressed at a another time (preferably by someone else!).
4. Differentiate between importance and urgency for the issues identified. Some issues may appear to be urgent, but upon closer examination are relatively unimportant, while others may be far more important (relative to solving our problem) than urgent. You want to deal with important issues in order of urgency to keep focused on your objective. Important issues are those that have a significant effect on:
1. profitability,
2. strategic direction of the company,
3. source of competitive advantage,
4. morale of the company’s employees, and/or
5. customer satisfaction.
The problem statement may be framed as a question, eg: What should Joe do? or How can Mr. Smith improve market share? Usually the problem statement has to be re-written several times during the analysis of a case, as you peel back the layers of symptoms or causation.
Analyzing Case Data
In analyzing the case data, you are trying to answer the following:
1. Why or how did these issues arise? You are trying to determine cause and effect for the problems identified. You cannot solve a problem that you cannot determine the cause of! It may be helpful to think of the organization in question as consisting of the following components:
1. resources, such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and
2. people who transform these resources using
3. processes, which creates something of greater value.
Now, where are the problems being caused within this framework, and why?
2. Who is affected most by this issues? You are trying to identify who are the relevant stakeholders to the situation, and who will be affected by the decisions to be made.
3. What are the constraints and opportunities implicit to this situation? It is very rare that resources are not a constraint, and allocations must be made on the assumption that not enough will be available to please everyone.
4. What do the numbers tell you? You need to take a look at the numbers given in the case study and make a judgment as to their relevance to the problem identified. Not all numbers will be immediately useful or relevant, but you need to be careful not to overlook anything. When deciding to analyze numbers, keep in mind why you are doing it, and what you intend to do with the result. Use common sense and comparisons to industry standards when making judgments as to the meaning of your answers to avoid jumping to conclusions.
Generating Alternatives
This section deals with different ways in which the problem can be resolved. Typically, there are many (the joke is at least three), and being creative at this stage helps. Things to remember at this stage are:
1. Be realistic! While you might be able to find a dozen alternatives, keep in mind that they should be realistic and fit within the constraints of the situation.
2. The alternatives should be mutually exclusive, that is, they cannot happen at the same time.
3. Not making a decision pending further investigation is not an acceptable decision for any case study that you will analyze. A manager can always delay making a decision to gather more information, which is not managing at all! The whole point to this exercise is to learn how to make good decisions, and having imperfect information is normal for most business decisions, not the exception.
4. Doing nothing as in not changing your strategy can be a viable alternative, provided it is being recommended for the correct reasons, as will be discussed below.
5. Avoid the meat sandwich method of providing only two other clearly undesirable alternatives to make one reasonable alternative look better by comparison. This will be painfully obvious to the reader, and just shows laziness on your part in not being able to come up with more than one decent alternative.
6. Keep in mind that any alternative chosen will need to be implemented at some point, and if serious obstacles exist to successfully doing this, then you are the one who will look bad for suggesting it.
Once the alternatives have been identified, a method of evaluating them and selecting the most appropriate one needs to be used to arrive at a decision.
Key Decision Criteria
A very important concept to understand, they answer the question of how you are going to decide which alternative is the best one to choose. Other than choosing randomly, we will always employ some criteria in making any decision. Think about the last time that you make a purchase decision for an article of clothing. Why did you choose the article that you did? The criteria that you may have used could have been:
1. fit
2. price
3. fashion
4. colour
5. approval of friend/family
6. availability
Note that any one of these criteria could appropriately finish the sentence, the brand/style that I choose to purchase must…. These criteria are also how you will define or determine that a successful purchase decision has been made. For a business situation, the key decision criteria are those things that are important to the organization making the decision, and they will be used to evaluate the suitability of each alternative recommended.
Key decision criteria should be:
1. Brief, preferably in point form, such as
1. improve (or at least maintain) profitability,
2. increase sales, market share, or return on investment,
3. maintain customer satisfaction, corporate image,
4. be consistent with the corporate mission or strategy,
5. within our present (or future) resources and capabilities,
6. within acceptable risk parameters,
7. ease or speed of implementation,
8. employee morale, safety, or turnover,
9. retain flexibility, and/or
10. minimize environmental impact.
2. Measurable, at least to the point of comparison, such as alternative A will improve profitability more that alternative B.
3. Be related to your problem statement, and alternatives. If you find that you are talking about something else, that is a sign of a missing alternative or key decision criteria, or a poorly formed problem statement.
Students tend to find the concept of key decision criteria very confusing, so you will probably find that you re-write them several times as you analyze the case. They are similar to constraints or limitations, but are used to evaluate alternatives.
Evaluation of Alternatives
If you have done the above properly, this should be straightforward. You measure the alternatives against each key decision criteria. Often you can set up a simple table with key decision criteria as columns and alternatives as rows, and write this section based on the table. Each alternative must be compared to each criteria and its suitability ranked in some way, such as met/not met, or in relation to the other alternatives, such as better than, or highest. This will be important to selecting an alternative. Another method that can be used is to list the advantages and disadvantages (pros/cons) of each alternative, and then discussing the short and long term implications of choosing each. Note that this implies that you have already predicted the most likely outcome of each of the alternatives. Some students find it helpful to consider three different levels of outcome, such as best, worst, and most likely, as another way of evaluating alternatives.
Recommendation
You must have one! Business people are decision-makers; this is your opportunity to practice making decisions. Give a justification for your decision (use the KDC’s). Check to make sure that it is one (and only one) of your Alternatives and that it does resolve what you defined as the Problem.
Structure of the Written Report
Different Instructors will require different formats for case reports, but they should all have roughly the same general content. For this course, the report should have the following sections in this order:
1. Title page
2. Table of contents
3. Executive summary
4. Problem (Issue) statement
5. Data analysis
6. Key Decision Criteria
7. Alternatives analysis
8. Recommendations
9. Action and Implementation Plan
10. Exhibits
Notes on Written Reports:
Always remember that you will be judged by the quality of your work, which includes your written work such as case study reports. Sloppy, dis-organized, poor quality work will say more about you than you probably want said! To ensure the quality of your written work, keep the following in mind when writing your report:
1. Proof-read your work! Not just on the screen while you write it, but the hard copy after it is printed. Fix the errors before submitting.
2. Use spell checker to eliminate spelling errors
3. Use grammar checking to avoid common grammatical errors such as run on sentences.
4. Note that restating of case facts is not included in the format of the case report, nor is it considered part of analysis. Anyone reading your report will be familiar with the case, and you need only to mention facts that are relevant to (and support) your analysis or recommendation as you need them.
5. If you are going to include exhibits (particularly numbers) in your report, you will need to refer to them within the body of your report, not just tack them on at the end! This reference should be in the form of supporting conclusions that you are making in your analysis. The reader should not have to guess why particular exhibits have been included, nor what they mean. If you do not plan to refer to them, then leave them out.
6. Write in a formal manner suitable for scholarly work, rather than a letter to a friend.
7. Common sense and logical thinking can do wonders for your evaluation!
8. You should expect that the computer lab’s printer will not be functioning in the twelve hours prior to your deadline for submission. Plan for it!
9. Proof-read your work! Have someone else read it too! (particularly if english is not your first language) This second pair of eyes will give you an objective opinion of how well your report holds together.
Karen Schweitzer, About.com Guide
1. Investigate and Analyze the Company’s History and Growth. A company’s past can greatly affect the present and future state of the organization. To begin your case study analysis, investigate the company’s founding, critical incidents, structure, and growth.
2. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses Within the Company. Using the information you gathered in step one, continue your case study analysis by examining and making a list of the value creation functions of the company. For example, the company may be weak in product development, but strong in marketing.
3. Gather Information on the External Environment. The third step in a case study analysis involves identifying opportunities and threats within the company’s external environment. Special items to note include competition within the industry, bargaining powers, and the threat of substitute products.
4. Analyze Your Findings. Using the information in steps two and three, you will need to create an evaluation for this portion of your case study analysis. Compare the strengths and weaknesses within the company to the external threats and opportunities. Determine if the company is in a strong competitive position and decide if it can continue at its current pace successfully.
5. Identify Corporate Level Strategy. To identify a company’s corporate level strategy for your case study analysis, you will need to identify and evaluate the company’s mission, goals, and corporate strategy. Analyze the company’s line of business and its subsidiaries and acquisitions. You will also want to debate the pros and cons of the company strategy.
6. Identify Business Level Strategy. Thus far, your case study analysis has identified the company’s corporate level strategy. To perform a complete analysis, you will need to identify the company’s business level strategy. (Note: if it is a single business, the corporate strategy and the business level strategy will be the same.) For this part of the case study analysis, you should identify and analyze each company’s competitive strategy, marketing strategy, costs, and general focus.
7. Analyze Implementations. This portion of the case study analysis requires that you identify and analyze the structure and control systems that the company is using to implement its business strategies. Evaluate organizational change, levels of hierarchy, employee rewards, conflicts, and other issues that are important to the company you are analyzing.
8. Make Recommendations. The final part of your case study analysis should include your recommendations for the company. Every recommendation you make should be based on and supported by the context of your case study analysis. (Source: )