TEAM PROJECT - California State University, Sacramento



MGMT 105 - TEAM PROJECT

OBJECTIVE:

Your group has been asked by a company to assist them with their strategic business plan. The purpose of the plan is to develop a NEW strategic direction for the company that will make them more successful/profitable. A company that is currently struggling would be a good choice. A company that is currently traded on any stock exchange is preferable. Any other company, must be approved by the instructor. A 20 minute presentation will need to be presented at the end of the semester discussing your group’s strategic business plan.

DESCRIPTION:

You and your team members will interview, research and forecast for the company. Your plan should include (but is not limited to):

• Table of Contents

• Executive Summary

• Mission Statement

• Organizational Chart

• Executive Team biographies

• Company Goals

• Brief History

• Market Analysis (market position/share)

• Internal and External Environmental Analysis

• Competitive Advantage

• Current Business Strategies (including Business, Corporate and International levels)

• Proposed Business Strategies (including Business, Corporate and International levels)

• Implementation (How will they get this done? Action Plan)

• Conclusion

• References

• Appendices

FORMAT:

Use any professional format that you feel is applicable. The only criteria are that there is an Executive Summary at the beginning and all resources are referenced including all personal interviews. Please use Appendices for all worksheets and other pertinent information.

PRESENTATION:

The presentation will be approximately 20 minutes long, with 3 members in your group presenting. Make sure your presenters have practiced so that they will feel comfortable presenting. Concentrate your time on discussing the new proposed business/corporate strategies.

MODULES:

The following modules are tools to help you and your team members with the preparation of the project. These are not mandatory, but are advised so that your team has the available information to make informed decisions about your company’s strategic direction.

Module 1:

1. Give a short account of the history of the company, and trace the evolution of its strategy over time.

2. Identify the mission and major goals of the company.

3. Do a preliminary analysis of the internal strengths and weaknesses of the company and of the opportunities and threats that it faces in its environment.

4. Who is the CEO of the company? Evaluate the CEO’s leadership capabilities.

Module 2:

1. Does your company have a formal mission statement? Does it define the business, identify major goals, and articulate the corporate philosophy?

2. If your company lacks a mission statement, what do you think its mission statement should be?

3. If you company has a mission statement, do you see it as appropriate, given the material discussed in class?

4. Identify the main stakeholder groups in your company. What claims do they place on the company? How is the company trying to satisfy those claims?

5. Do the leaders that operate the company do a good job of aligning the interests of top managers with those of stockholders?

6. Pick a major strategic decision made by your company in recent years, and try to think through the ethical, business and financial implications of that decision. Do you think that the company acted correctly?

7. Pick a new strategic direction for the company and evaluate the ethical, business and financial implications of this new initiative.

Module 3:

1. Apply the five forces model to the industry in which your company is based. What does this model tell you about the nature of competition in the industry?

2. Are there any changes taking place in the macroenvironment that might have an impact, either positive or negative, upon the industry in which your company is based? If so, what are these changes and how will they affect the industry?

3. Identify any strategic groups that might exist in the industry. How does this intensity of competition differ across the strategic groups you have identified?

4. How dynamic is the industry in which your company is based? Is there any evidence that innovation is reshaping competition or has done so in the recent past?

5. 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 both now and in the future?

6. Is your company based in an industry that is becoming more global? If so, what are the implications of this change for competitive intensity?

7. Analyze the impact of national context as it pertains to the industry in which your company is based. Does national context help or hinder your company in achieving a competitive advantage in the global marketplace?

Module 4:

1. Identify whether your company has a competitive advantage or disadvantage in its primary industry.

2. Evaluate your company against the four generic building blocks of competitive advantage: efficiency, quality, innovation and customer responsiveness. How does this exercise help you understand the performance of your company relative to that of its competitors?

3. What are the distinctive competencies of your company?

4. What role have prior strategies played in shaping the distinctive competencies of your company?

5. Do the strategies currently pursued by your company build on its distinctive competencies? Are they an attempt to build new competencies?

6. What are the barriers to imitating the distinctive competencies of your company?

7. Is there any evidence that your company finds it difficult to adapt to changing industry conditions? If so, why do you think this is the case?

Module 5:

1. Is your company pursuing any practices to improve efficiency?

2. Is your company pursuing any practices to enhance quality?

3. Is your company pursuing any practices to enhance innovation?

4. Is your company pursuing any practices to improve customer responsiveness?

5. Evaluate the competitive position of your company in the light of your answers to questions 1-4. Explain what, if anything, the company needs to do to improve its position.

Module 6:

1. How differentiated are the products/services of your company? What is the basis of their differentiated appeal?

2. What is your company’s strategy toward market segmentation? If it segments its market, on what basis does it do so?

3. What distinctive competencies does your company have? Is efficiency, quality, innovation, responsiveness to customers, or a combination of these factors the main driving force in your company?

4. Based on these product/market/distinctive –competency choices, what generic business-level strategy is your company pursuing?

5. What are the advantages and disadvantages associated with your company’s choice of business-level strategy?

6. How could you improve its business-level strategy to strengthen its competitive advantage?

7. Is your company a member of a strategic group in an industry? If so, which one?

8. What investment strategy is your company pursuing to support its generic strategy? How does this match the strength of its competitive position and the stage of its industry’s life cycle?

Module 7:

1. In what kind of industry environment does your company operate? (embryonic, mature)

2. Discuss how your company has attempted to develop a competitive strategy to protect its business level strategy.

3. What new strategies would you advise your company to pursue to increase its competitive advantage? For example, what kinds of strategy toward buyers or suppliers should it adopt? How should it attempt to differentiate its products in the future?

4. Based on this analysis, do you think your company will be able to maintain its competitive advantage in the future? Why or why not?

Module 8:

1. Identify how your company might profit from global expansion, the strategy your company should pursue globally and the entry mode that it might favor.

2. What potential does your company have to add value to its products or lower the costs of value creation by expanding internationally?

3. On the international level, what are the cost pressures for local responsiveness in the industry in which your company is based? What implications do these pressures have for the strategy that your company might pursue if it chose to expand globally?

4. What foreign market might your company enter and what entry mode should it use to enter this market?

Module 9:

1. How vertically integrated is your company? If your company does have vertical integrated operations, is it pursuing a strategy of taper or full integration?

2. How diversified is your company? If your company is already diversified, is it pursuing a related diversification strategy, an unrelated diversification strategy, or some mix of the two?

3. Assess the potential for your company to create value through vertical integration. In reaching your assessment, also consider the bureaucratic costs of managing vertical integration.

4. On the basis of your assessment in question 3, do you think your company should (a) outsource some operations that are currently performed in house or (b) bring some operations in-house that are currently outsourced?

5. Is your company currently involved in any long term cooperative relationships with suppliers or buyers?

6. Is there any potential for your company to enter into (additional) long-term cooperative relationships with suppliers or buyers? If so, how might these relationships be structured?

7. Assess the potential for your company to create value through diversification.

8. On the basis of your assessment in question 7, do you think your company should (a) sell off some diversified operations or (b) pursue additional diversification?

9. Is your company currently trying to transfer skills or realize economies of scope by entering into strategic alliances with other companies? If so, how are these relationships structured? Do you think that these relationships add value to the company? Why?

10. Is there any potential for your company to transfer skills or realize economies of scope by entering into (additional) strategic alliances with other companies? If so, how might these relationships be structured?

Module 10:

This module requires you to assess your company’s use of acquisitions, internal new ventures, and joint ventures as strategies for entering a new business area and /or as attempts to restructure its portfolio of businesses.

If your company has entered into a new business area during the last decade:

1. Pick one new business area that your company has entered into during the last ten years.

2. Identify the rationale for entering this business area.

3. Identify the strategy used to enter this business area.

4. Evaluate the rationale for using this particular entry strategy. Do you think that this was the best entry strategy to use?

5. Do you think that the addition of this business area to the company has added or dissipated value?

If your company has restructured its business during the last decade:

1. Identify the rationale for pursuing a restructuring strategy.

2. Pick one business area that your company has exited during the last ten years.

3. Identify the strategy used to exit this particular business area. Do you think that this was the best exit strategy to use?

4. In general, do you think that exiting from this business area has been in the company’s best interest?

Module 11:

1. How large is your company as measured by the number of employees? How many levels are in the hierarchy?

2. Based on these two measures and any other information you may have, would you say your company operates with a relatively tall or flat structure? What effect does this have on people’s behavior?

3. Does your company have a centralized or decentralized approach to decision making? How do you know?

4. In what ways do the company’s vertical differentiation choices affect the behavior of people and submits? Do you think the company’s choice of vertical differentiation is appropriate for its activities? Why or why not?

5. What changes (if any) would you make to the way the company operates in a vertical direction?

6. Draw an organizational chart showing the main way in which your company groups its activities. Based on this chart, what kind of structure (functional or divisional) does your company operate with?

7. Why did your company choose this structure? In what ways is it appropriate for its business? In what ways is it not?

8. What changes (if any) would you make to the way your company operates in a horizontal direction?

9. Given this analysis, does your company have a low or a high level of differentiation?

10. What kind of integration or integration mechanisms does your company use? Why? Does its level of integration match its level of differentiation?

11. Based on the analysis of your company’s level of differentiation and integration, would you say your company is coordinating and motivating its people and subunits effectively? Why or why not?

12. What changes would you make to the company’s structure to increase the firm’s effectiveness? What changes has the company itself made to improve effectiveness? Why?

Module 12:

1. What are the major kinds of control problems facing your company? How do these control problems related to your organization’s structure, which you identified earlier?

2. With the information at your disposal, list the main kinds of control systems used by your organization to solve these problems. Specifically, what use does your company make of (a) financial controls, (b) output controls, (c) behavior controls and (d) organizational culture?

3. What kinds of behaviors is the organization trying to (a) shape and (b) motivate through the use of these control systems?

4. What role does the top management team play in creating the culture of your organization? Can you identify the characteristic norms and values that describe the way people behave in your organization? How does this design of the organization’s structure affect its culture?

5. How does the company rewards shape their employees’ motivation?

6. Does the organization offer other kinds of employee incentives? What kinds of incentives?

7. Based on this analysis, do you think that your organization’s control system is functioning effectively?

8. To what degree is there a match between your company’s structure and its control and incentive systems?

Module 13:

1. What are the sources of your company’s distinctive competencies? Which functions are most important to it? How does your company design its structure at the functional level to enhance its (a) efficiency, (b) quality, (c) innovativeness and (d) responsiveness to customers?

2. What is your company’s business-level strategy? How does it design its structure and control systems to enhance and support its business-level strategy? For example, what steps does it take to further cross-functional integration? Does it have a functional, product, or matrix structure?

3. How does your company’s culture support its strategy? Can you determine any ways in which its top management team influences its culture?

4. What kind of international strategy does your company pursue? How does it control its global activities? What kind of structure does it use? Why?

5. At the corporate level, does your company use a multidivisional structure? Why or why not? What crucial implementation problems must your company manage to implement its strategy effectively?

6. Based on this analysis, does your company have high or low bureaucratic costs? Is this level of bureaucratic costs justified by the value it can create through its strategy?

7. Can you suggest ways of altering the company’s structure to reduce the level of bureaucratic costs?

8. Can you suggest ways of altering the company’s structure or control system to allow it to create more value? Would this change increase or decrease bureaucratic costs?

9. In sum, do you think your company has achieved a good fit between its strategy and structure?

Module 14:

1. Find some examples of recent changes in your company’s strategy or structure. What kinds of change did your company implement? What kinds of change did you company implement? Why did your company make these changes?

2. What do you think are the major obstacles to change in your organization?

3. Given the nature of your organization’s strategy and structure, is conflict a likely obstacle to change in your organization? Can you find any examples of conflicts that have occurred in your organization?

4. Is there any evidence of political contests or struggles between top managers or between divisions or functions in your organization? What can you find about the power of the CEO and the top management team?

How well do you think strategic managers have managed the change process? What other changes do you think your company should make to its strategy or structure?

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