INTRODUCTION
Overview
A typical undergraduate business major seldom has formal training on how to conduct a real-world firm or industry analysis from start to finish. The term-project is a group activity to be carried out over the duration of the semester. It puts the students in a real-world situation where they conduct research and analysis without the aid of a published case. It requires students to select an industry and a representative firm (subject to my approval) to analyze the various reasons underlying firm performance. Despite struggling during the process, when it is finished, most students are surprised with how much they have learned and feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment. By the end of the project, you will not only have practice in using key strategic management components and processes to increase understanding of the material, but also will be able to conduct a complete strategic management analysis of any company.
Objective
The goal of the research project is to give the student practical experience with the elements of strategic management. The team-project provides the students with the experience of identifying a strategic problem, collecting data, conducting analysis, and providing recommendations based on your findings. It serves three basic purposes. The primary purpose of this project is to provide a tangible application of many of the concepts discussed in the text. The secondary purpose of this project is to enhance your skills at collaboration, presentation, writing, critical thinking, and logical analysis. The tertiary purpose of this project is about getting to know a particular firm and/or its industry.
Strategic Analysis
Why do companies need a strategy? The field of strategic management explains that a company’s strategy not only provides it with a general sense of direction but also helps it to prioritize various decisions and allocate scarce resources.
To analyze the chosen firm’s performance you will be required to conduct both (a) external environmental analysis, and (b) internal firm analysis. Students should realize that one approach is not better than the other. Firm performance is influenced by both internal and external factors. As managers you will require both firm- and industry- specific information for developing and implementing a winning strategy. Hence, an outstanding term-project will be one that combines both primary and secondary research and addresses both internal and external issues.
Organization
The semester-long Strategic Analysis Project (SAP) is organized into seven sections. The first six sections are aligned to a course module/ major topic. The division into sections will facilitate a better comprehension of the task. It also allows you to pace yourself appropriately and the instructor to better monitor your progress. Each section requires your group to collect different type of information and therefore conduct different type of analysis. Each section carries different weight as follows:
SAP 1 – Identify a Firm for Analysis [2 Points]
SAP 2 – Identify the Firm’s Strategy [3 Points]
SAP 3 – Assess the Firm’s Strategy [5 Points]
SAP 4 – Identify the Firm’s Strategic Problems [2 Points]
SAP 5 – Analyze the Firm’s Industry Environment [5 Points]
SAP 6 – Analyze the Firm’s Internal Environment [5 Points]
SAP 7 – Analyze the Firm’s Competitive Advantage [5 Points]
SAP 8 – Strategic Recommendations [3 Points]
USE THIS LINK
https://learn.uco.edu/content/enforced/117908-20142.201620/Guidelines%20for%20Strategic%20Analysis%20Project/TEMPLATE%20FOR%20TERM%20PROJECT.swf?ou=117908
GENERAL EXPECTATIONS
Final Report Requirements
The reports should be professional both in terms of content and style. Please use 12-size Times New Roman font typed in double spaces with at least one inch margins. The maximum length of report shall be around 25 pages, not including the cover page, figures, graphs, references, and other supplementary materials. The students are also required to provide an extensive bibliography. The style requirements will be discussed in the class or during the group meetings with the instructor.
Your report will be judged on how well it analyzes the external environment (identifies (a) opportunities & threats, (b) the effect of Porter’s five forces of competition on firm profitability, and (c) key success factors), assesses the firm’s current state (presents strengths and weaknesses, in terms of a firm’s resources, capabilities, core competencies, core rigidities, effectiveness of value chain structure, etc.), discusses prior or current corporate-level strategic actions of the firm (specific details about the pros & cons), and presents a convincing argument for the strategic actions the firm should take in the future.
The exact structure of the paper is up to you (there is no “one size fits all” model), but you should consider structuring the paper as follows, unless you can come up with a more fitting structure: a) industry analysis; b) internal analysis and business strategy and performance; and c) strategic recommendations.
COGENT ARGUMENTS
It is required of you to argue your case well even if you do not come up with perfect solutions to all the problems faced by your chosen firm in a particular industry. The ability to critically and logically analyze strategic dilemmas, and to persuasively present your arguments, orally and in writing, will serve you well, no matter what you do in the future. Employers consistently report these to be skills they desire in employees. Do NOT borrow content from published sources. Build up your own argument. This is the only way you add any value, and this is the only way you’ll learn anything.
EMPLOY THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS
These are your analytical tools with which to make sense of the strategic issues faced by your firm. Anybody can “BS” about a firm. It’s much harder and much more valuable to critically and logically analyze a firm. If you get beyond basic BS, you’ll start to build a very valuable analytical tool chest – one that you can carry around with you long after you’ve forgotten about the particular firm you studied.
USE QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS
Student reports also have a tendency to be vague, offering fluffy statements with no support, such as: “There is a trend toward increasing levels of factor Q in the general environment.” Says who? Assume no one believes you unless you provide specific figures from a credible source. Numbers, numbers, numbers! And not just numbers from a single period. It adds no value to state: “Factor Q was at Level P in Year Z.” OK, but how is that relative to other years? Numbers are relative (Is a million dollars a lot of money? Depends – to me, yes; to Bill Gates, no). If there’s no context to compare against, these numbers mean nothing. SHOW TRENDS OVER TIME so that the data has a context in which to be interpreted. To get the hang of this, pretend you have a “BS Bird” on your shoulder. Every time you write a statement, BS Bird says, “That’s bullsh**! The exact opposite is true!” The only way to stop BS Bird is to prove him wrong. To prove him wrong, you must use and properly cite relevant and credible sources.
ADMINISTRATION ISSUES
Project Selection
Students should consider this project as an opportunity to study a firm they find interesting. Further, this project can help them gain knowledge about a firm or at least the industry in which they would like to work.
ADVICE ON PROJECT SELECTION
It would make sense for you to choose a firm that is a member of a well-defined industry and has relevant strategic issues to explore —otherwise, your team will flounder as it struggles to define the industry and find relevant strategic issues. (For example, General Electric is difficult to categorize into a single industry, so it is challenging to identify GE’s competitors.) New firms and undiversified firms are also poor choices, since new firms tend to have little history, and undiversified firms (they have only one line of business) tend to have few interesting strategic moves to analyze. It is also advisable to choose a public firm, as data are more available on public firms.
It is therefore desirable that you choose a medium- or large-sized public company to study. Further, it is also suggested that you inform your choice to the instructor by e-mail before you actually write the proposal. Ideally, you should choose a local Oklahoma City based company that is willing to share its operational and performance data with your group.
• Teams may NOT choose any firm that is the subject of one of the course cases.
Team Selection
Much work today is done in teams. One of the goals of this project is to practice working collaboratively – to build working relationships despite differences in opinions and priorities. Most often, you DO NOT get to choose who you want to work with. However, for this course, students are free to form groups on their own. The size of the group will depend on the course enrollment.
ADVICE ON TEAM SELECTION
Select your teammates based on availability (you’ll have to meet outside of class), attitude (Are they driven? Are they sociable? Leader or follower? Are they just treading water until graduation?), and skill sets (look for a diverse set of skills – finance, management, marketing, etc.). Choose as wisely as you can – teamwork can be fun, or it can be painful.
Sometimes teams do not come together well. Some members may not contribute equally. If you’re tempted to get lazy, remember that team members report each other’s participation throughout the semester. If your teammates report to me that you did not participate adequately, I will lower your grade accordingly. So just don’t cheat your team – it’s not nice, and it probably will harm your grade.
PEER EVALUATION
As in all group work for this course, members are expected to participate equally in terms of their effort to the group projects. The grades will reflect the group’s efforts and will be assigned equally except in instances where your group members judge your effort to be deficient. Each member will be asked to rate their fellow group members by way of a confidential peer evaluation form. Only the individual member and I will know the contents of each evaluation. Where a group member is judged to be substantially deficient relative to his or her teammates, a grade reduction will be incurred. Likewise, if a group member or members are singled out for outstanding contribution by teammates, that person’s grade may be raised accordingly.
Instructor Advisement
You are encouraged to meet with me during office hours to ensure that you are on target for the assignment.
Plagiarism
When you conduct research, you most likely will not be gathering the data yourself – to find, say, the population of the United States, you will not go out and count everyone yourself, but will instead rely on US Census Bureau figures. Sometimes when using “secondary” data like this, the line between plagiarism and research gets fuzzy but by and large, the line is very clear. Don’t cross it.
If you are unclear please refer to UCO Policy for Copyrighted Materials:
http://www.uco.edu/academic-affairs/faculty-staff/policy-for-copyrighted-materials.asp
Some basic rules include ensuring you properly credit the original source and avoid repeating extended passages of others’ writing. This is a team project, so if anything is plagiarized, the entire team is responsible. Thus, every teammate should review the sources that all other teammates use – plagiarism by one is plagiarism by all.
Grading
Each section will be graded according to the following general criteria:
1) Content— were the correct analytical tools used? Were they used properly? Were assertions supported well with facts and relevant data?
2) Organization—was it structured logically? Did it flow well?
3) Writing style—were paragraphs and sentences properly formed? Was it primarily grammatically correct? Was it well-integrated so as to appear as a seamless document, not a collection of parts?
4) Presentation style— did the presentation cover the relevant material? Did it convey the group’s findings in a logical and coherent manner?
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