Strategic Management in Global Environment

MGT523 Strategic Management in Global
Environment

Group Project Winter 2020

GENERAL
INSTRUCTIONS

Please
read the instructions below. Failure to comply with the instructions will
result in a penalty ranging from 5% to 100% of the grade

1. Use
   this document as a template for your response. In other words, type your
   student information and your answers into the document.
2. Each
   group will submit a soft copy (on Blackboard only) on
   February 10, 200. [There will be a 20% penalty for every day
   late. No submissions will be accepted after February 12th].
3. The
   teams can have 3 to 5 participants.
4. Your
   answers must be based on the company you have selected to analyze.
5. This
   GP carries a 20% weightage towards the final grade.
6. Please
   use Times New Roman, font size 12 and a line spacing of 1-1.5.
7. The
   length of this project should be up to 30 pages.
8. If
   you use text from the textbook/case study, please make sure you paraphrase it
   in a way that fits with your overall discussion. Please put an appropriate
   citation to make it explicit that you are using information from the sources.
   If you think the text fits into your discussion without paraphrasing, please
   cite it in a way that makes it clear that this is a direct quote (e.g. indent a
   paragraph containing text or put a sentence in quotes)
9. Please
   use your own thinking/writing to answer the questions.

GROUP PROJECT
DESCRIPTION

1.
Overview

The
Group Project (GP) involves students making operational and strategic
decisions. Students will act as a team of top managers when making these
decisions. The strategy project is an integral part of a strategic management
course.

This
project has proved to be one of the best experiential learning experiences for
the COBA students, where they should develop strategic management skills.
During the project, students should carry out a rigorous analysis of a
real-life company.

The
GP is the final deliverable of the MGT523 Strategic Management in a Global
Environment Course and allows you to immediately apply everything you have
learned in the classroom. It is a comprehensive and demanding exercise that is
carried out over the winter term. The goal of the project is to address and
analyse an issue of particular strategic importance of a company from an
executive management viewpoint.

2.
Learning Objectives

The
most important learning objectives of the group project are as follows:

• To give students an opportunity to apply
  concepts and theories of strategic management in “real world”.
• To introduce students to practical matters
  of strategy formulation and implementation.
• To give students an opportunity to
  establish concrete relationships between the concepts and methods studied
  during the program and current real-life strategic and managerial issues.
• To expose students to the complexity,
  serendipity and artistic side of strategic management and competition.
• To help students to analyze, evaluate and
  create strategies (including green strategies).
• To help students to develop both written
  and oral skills when presenting the results of their work.

3.
Assignment Strategy

PHASE
1: CHOOSE ONE CASE COMPANY

1. Choose
   one company of the list below. Each group should analyse and present a
   different company. Based on that, you need to email the name of the company to
   me – do some information research before you select the
   company. Sometimes spending 30 minutes doing research will save you a degree.
2. Companies
   are available on a first–come, first–served
   basis with NO repeats!

i. Ember (https://embertech.com/)

ii. Lumoid (https://lumoid.com/
)

iii. DoorDash (https://www.doordash.com/)

iv. SmartThings (https://www.smartthings.com/)

v. Tesla Motors (https://www.tesla.com/)

vi. GoPro (https://gopro.com/)

vii. Munchery (https://munchery.com/#sthash.6ws5Sb2t.dpuf)

viii. Cruise (https://www.getcruise.com/)

ix. Juicero (https://www.juicero.com/)

x. Shyp (https://www.shyp.com/)

xi. Doordash (https://www.doordash.com/)

xii. Instacart (https://www.instacart.com/)

xiii. Fitbit (https://www.fitbit.com/home)

• After
  selecting your company, you should visit its web site (I have included all the
  web sites above) to get market reports of this company. Secondly, go to article
  databases such as Infotrac. Emerald, Proquest and etc to find articles on the
  company. Vast majority of articles will not be usually academic, but practical.
  Lastly, do some Google search, BBC news and, of course, visit the company’s
  web site.
• When
  writing a company-based report you would usually be expected to concentrate on
  practical side rather then on theory. Good solution may be for you to give
  practical analysis – but refer to the theory on the appendix.
• Also,
  please remember, that each company has its history, therefore when, for
  example, suggesting a new strategy for the company – always
  firstly analyse previous strategies on that organisation, because it is
  possible, that whatever you suggest may have already been used by the company.

PHASE
2: ANALYZING FIRM’S PERFORMANCE AND ISSUES

Firm
and Industry Performance: Analyze focal firm’s performance against
industry average and its key competitors. Has the company done
well? Has it done better than industry average? Has it done better than the key
competitors?

External
Analysis: Analyze external environment of the firm over a
period covered in the case. How did the industry and its attractiveness evolve?
Why so? Identify key external challenges/factors that industry faced over time.
How did they affect industry? What has been the nature of rivalry? (PESTE-Chapter
4)

Internal
Analysis: Analyze firm’s internal environment. Identify key
challenges facing firm in the past. Why are these key
challenges? How did they affect Firm? What are the firm’s
key resources/activities/functional expertise? How have this
resources/activities/functional expertise affected firm’s relative performance?
(Long-term & short-term) Quantitative data

Critical
assessment of Strategy: Critically analyze firm’s strategy and
competitive advantage? What has it been? Has it enjoyed
competitive enjoyed? Suffered from disadvantaged? Has it been sustainable? Why
so? Has it planned strategy implementation well? Has it been doing a good job
of evaluation and control?

Key
lessons learnt from the past: What are the key sources of competitive
advantage in this industry? What are the key factors likely to
affect industry and firm’s performance in future?

PHASE
3: DEFINING THE CURRENT ISSUE(S) AND PROBLEM STATEMENT

What
are the main strategic issues company is likely to face going forward? The
problem statement should be a clear, concise statement of exactly what needs to
be addressed. Asking your team the following questions may help:

• What appears to be the problem(s) here?
• 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 address.
• 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!).
• 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, e.g.: What should Mr. Adel do?
or How can Mr. Kamal 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.

PHASE
4: ANALYZING INFORMATION

In
analyzing the case data, you are trying to answer the following:

• 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:
  • resources,
    such as materials, equipment, or supplies, and
  • people
    who transform these resources using
  • processes,
    which creates something of greater value.
• Now, where are the problems being caused
  within this framework, and why?
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

PHASE
5: GENERATING ALTERNATIVES

This
section deals with different ways in which the problem can be resolved.
Typically, there are many alternatives. Things to remember at this stage are:

1. Make
   suitable assumptions: Managers often work with incomplete
   information by making assumptions about future. Assumptions relate to key
   external and internal factors. These assumptions are based on historical data
   and do not represent blanket wishful thinking, however. When you make
   assumptions, explicitly state them and offer rationale as to why these
   assumptions make sense.
2. 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.
3. The
   alternatives should be mutually exclusive, that is, they cannot happen at the
   same time.
4. 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.
5. Doing
   nothing as in not changing your strategy can be a viable
   alternative, provided it is the best alternative. You will need to defend this
   like any other recommendation, based on the facts.
6. 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.
7. 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.

PHASE
6: 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.

PHASE
7: RECOMMENDATIONS, CONCLUSION, REFERENCES & APPENDICES

What
are your recommendations for these firms? How would you change their
strategies? What recommendations do you have for implementation?

References:
You should cite all external sources in your text by using APA format. It is a
good idea to start your references section at the beginning of the writing
process and add to it as you go along. It will be a tedious and time-consuming
task if left until you have completed the main body of the text. If you do
leave it until the end, the time spent on compiling the reference section is
time that would have been better spent on checking and amending your report.

Appendices
– Supplementary material at the end of a book,
article, document, or other text, usually of an explanatory, statistical, or
bibliographic nature. In general, appendices should
be kept to the minimum. If they are so important that your reader’s understanding
of the points you are making in the text makes their inclusion in the report
necessary, then they should be in the main body of the text. If, on the other
hand, the material is ‘interesting to know’ rather than ‘essential to know’
then it should be in the appendices.

4. Proposed
Structure of the Written Report

1. Title page

1.1. Company name

1.2. Class code
and class name

1.3. Full names
and student ids of group members

1.4. Instructor
name

1.5. Semester and
year

2. Automatic Table
of Contents

3. Executive
summary

3.1. Summarize
your entire report in one page or less

4. Analyzing
firm’s past performance and issues

4.1. Firm and
industry performance

4.2. External
analysis

4.3. Internal
analysis

4.4. Critical
assessment of strategy

4.5. Key lessons
learnt from the past

5. Identifying
current issues

5.1. Phase 3:
defining the current issue(s) and problem statement

5.2. Phase 4:
analyzing information

5.3. Phase 5:
generating alternatives

6. Solving future
problems

6.1. Phase 6: key
decision-criteria

6.2. Phase 7:
recommendations

7. Conclusion

8. Appendices

Bibliography-References

5.
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.
You are highly encouraged to use tools, framework and theories covered in this
course to conduct analysis and synthesis and develop arguments. Clearly
identifying and correctly matching theoretical basis while building arguments
will help in securing good grades.

6.
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.

7.
Write in a formal manner suitable for scholarly work, rather than a letter to a
friend.

8.
Common sense and logical thinking can do wonders for your evaluation!

9.
Proof-read your work!

6. Grading
Criteria

There’s
no such thing as “the correct answer” to a case study question. Several
answers. Generally, the instructors’ use the following criteria when assigning
a grade to a response:

1.
The overall quality of a response’s content

a.
Does your response actually address a question?

b.
How effective is your solution?

c.
How original is your response?

d.
Does your response contain sufficient details?

2.
The degree to which a response shows understanding of concepts, frameworks and
theories covered in the course

a.
Does your response actually use a concept, framework, or theory covered in this
class?

b.
Does your response get into specifics of a concept, framework, or theory?

3.
The degree to which a response is logically coherent

a.
Is there a line of thought that flows through your response?

b.
Are you claims supported/illustrated with facts, examples, or illustrations?

c.
Is your response well-structured?