Group Project: Strategic Management Analysis of a Company

Structure of the Assignment -

I. Executive Summary: 100 -150 words to briefly outline the most important findings and recommendations of your analysis

II. Analysis

Chapter1

1.1. First, briefly introduce the company: name, size, location, product-markets, geographic coverage, some statistics.

1.2. Identify the vision, mission and major goals of the company. Briefly evaluate the quality of the mission statement.

Chapter 2 (SWOT analysis - identify the opportunities and threats facing the company)

2.1: Conduct a succinct PESTLE analysis. Focus only on those forces that have substantial effect on the company's business and ignore those that are less important.

2.2: Apply the competitive forces model (5 Forces Analysis) to the industry in which your company operates. What does this model tell you about the nature of competition and the industry attractiveness?

2.3: In what stage of its Life Cycle is the industry in which your company is based? What are the implications of this for the intensity of competition now? In the future?

2.4: Is the industry prone to strategic group formation? Identify any strategic groups that might exist in the industry. How does the intensity of competition differ across these strategic groups?

Chapter 3 & 4 (SWOT Analysis - identify company's strengths and weaknesses)

3.1. Does the company have a competitive advantage? What is it?

3.2: What resources and capabilities shape the strengths of the company? Consider the four generic building blocks of competitive advantage (CA): efficiency, quality, innovation, and responsiveness to customers. Which of these seems to underlie the CA of the company?

Chapter 5:

5.2: Using the theory on Business Level Strategies, identify what business-level strategy is your company pursuing? Provide evidence that supports your answer.

Chapter 6:

6.1: In what industry environment (e.g. embryonic, mature, etc.) does your company operate? Elaborate and provide evidence to support your argument.

6.2. Using the Ansoff Growth Matrix on p. 190 in the textbook, outline which growth strategies the company is using. Provide some examples to illustrate your answer.

Chapter 9:

9.1: Has your company ever pursued a horizontal integration strategy? What was the strategic reason for pursuing this strategy?

9.2: How vertically integrated is your company? In what stages of the industry value chain does it operate?

9.3: Does your company engage in related or/and unrelated diversification? Elaborate.

III. Conclusion

Make an evaluation on whether or not there is a strategic fit between company's environment and the strategy/ies the company is using. You can also recommend what other strategy/ies may be more appropriate given the particular external conditions and internal strengths and weaknesses of the company.