PROBLEM 1
Use the Internet to study two franchisees in two different industries(or sectors). Then, carefully evaluate and compare their "vertical restraints" for the purposes of assessing the consequences of these provisions for strategic decision making.
PROBLEM 2
"Organizational Designs"
Please respond to the following:
- Discuss how a company could benefit from either centralization or decentralization. Explain your rationale.
- Select a large U-form or M-form organization and describe how it would be different if it switched form (i.e., a U-form organization switching to an M-form, or an M-form organization switching to a U-form).
PROBLEM 3
"Vertical Restraints"
Please respond to the following:
- Evaluate and compare the "vertical restraints" of the two industries (above)/ sectors for the purposes of assessing the consequences of these provisions for strategic decision making.
- In this age of globalization, boundaries between firms and boundaries between markets are hardly ever distinguishable. Corporate strategies therefore have to be multidimensional and multifaceted. It is a widely held belief by non-economists that outsourcing is as valuable a strategic choice as vertical extension. Argue for or against the notion, citing examples to support your position.
PROBLEM 3
Even before the metals and manufacturing companies described earlier, U.S. railroads in the 19th century were M-form organizations based on geography. Why might a large railroad be better organized as M-form than U-form?
Your university is probably an M-form organization. Its president administers schools, for example, a college of business and a college of liberal arts. Each of these in turn has a dean who is responsible for faculty departments such as economics and finance. Why is an M-form more likely than U-form to be an efficient way of organizing a university and to organize the schools within it?
In most universities faculty with specialized interests will often attempt to break off from existing departments and form ones devoted to their own specialties. Do you expect that this will produce an inefficiently large number of department?
Why do you expect that pressure by employees to form fragmented departments will be a smaller problem in for-profit corporations than in nonprofit or governmental universities?
PROBLEM 4
Why might you expect to see flat royalty payments in home-based franchises but revenue-based royalties in franchises that operate from commercial buildings? (Among the most popular home-based franchises are cleaning services offered to businesses and delivery services for seniors who live at home.)
One study compared the performance of a single company's franchised and company-owned fast-food outlets on health inspections. It found that franchises received higher (better) average point scores on a standard rating form and that their scores had a smaller standard deviation than those of company-owned outlets. Do these two facts surprise you? Why or why not?