FORMAT FOR WRITTEN CASE STUDY REPORT

 

 

 

IMPORTANT:  Please fully utilize the concepts, approaches, and tools presented in the lectures and in the text.  Use these to serve a fruitful purpose in your case study.  Avoid using any of these for the sake of fulfilling a requirement.

 

 

Current Strategic Profile

 

A.  Identify and describe the company’s strategic vision, mission, products, services, and target markets.  Provide as much detail as possible.

 

B.   Analyze and thoroughly describe the company’s competitive strategy.  Be sure to examine the cost-price and uniqueness dimensions of the company’s competitive strategy.

 

C.  Identify and fully describe the value chain activities the company chose to focus on to implement her chosen competitive strategy.  Knowledge about the competitors should be explored and strategic group map can be used to identify the closest competitors.  Fully describe the resources-capabilities (strengths) utilized to perform these value chain activities and sort these out in terms of rendering core competencies (associated with competitive parity) and distinctive competencies (associated with temporary and sustainable competitive advantages).  Also, identify the resource-capability deficiencies (weaknesses) within the company’s value chain which have resulted in the competitive disadvantages (if any).  Use the VRIO approach for the aforementioned analysis.

 

D.  Describe the company’s current strategic objectives.

 

E.   Evaluate how well the company’s Current Strategic Profile has been working.  Be sure to use the “three tests” from the Thompson and Strickland text and provide detailed financial analysis, e.g., financial ratio analysis, break-even analysis, cash flow analysis, etc. as appropriate.

 

External and Internal Analysis

 

A.  Analyze the industry’s five forces.  Rate the strength of each force (weak / moderate / strong) and explain your analysis and rationale.  Describe how the company’s bargaining power compares in relation to each force.  Identify the opportunities the company must exploit and threats she must neutralize in order to improve her bargaining power in relation to each of the five forces.   Determine the resources-capabilities the company must improve (if existing weaknesses from step C above are applicable), reinforce (if existing strengths from step C above are applicable), develop and/or acquire (if new resources-capabilities are needed) to deal with theses opportunities and threats.

 

 

B.   Fully describe the drivers of change in the relevant industry and the potential impact of each change factor on the company in terms of posing either opportunities or threats.  Determine the resources-capabilities the company must improve (if existing weaknesses from step C above are applicable), reinforce (if existing strengths from step C above are applicable), develop and/or acquire (if new resources-capabilities are needed) to deal with these opportunities and threats.

 

C.  Provide a summary list for the resources-capabilities identified in steps A and B.  Provide additional information for each resource-capability in the list with respect to:  (1) whether an existing weakness to be improved, an existing strength to be reinforced, a new strength to be internally developed, or a new strength to be acquired, (2) its competitive implication (i.e., parity, temporary competitive advantage, or sustainable competitive advantage).  Use the VRIO logic to determine the competitive implication of each resource-capability.  If you are not satisfied with the ensuing competitive implications, then make reiterative revisions through steps A and B.

 

 

Proposed Strategic Profile

 

A.  New strategic profile is to be synthesized based on the external and internal analysis performed above.  Provide a diagram which consists of two columns representing opportunities/threats and resources-capabilities; draw arrows to show the matching links between the two columns.

 

B.   Based on the above diagram, describe the changes you propose to the company’s Current Strategic Profile.  If changes are not recommended in certain parts of the Current Strategic Profile, then a rationale for the recommendation to maintain status quo in these aspects must be provided.

 

C.  Discuss the financial implications of your proposed changes.  Analyze the impact of the proposed changes (if implemented successfully) on the company’s financial ratios.  What would be the challenging but attainable financial objectives the company should expect to achieve?  Rational for the numbers proposed must be provided.  Does the company have sufficient funds to invest in the proposed changes?  If not, how should the company raise the required financial capital?  Your treatment of these issues should be specific, substantive, and thorough.

 

 

Implementation

 

A.  Provide detailed functional area action plans to implement the Strategic Profile changes proposed above.  The functional area action plans must be provided and elaborated upon for each specific proposed change.

 

B.   Provide detailed management and organizational plans to implement the Strategic Profile changes proposed above.  Please fully utilize the concepts introduced in the implementation chapters of the Thompson and Strickland text.  (Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13).

 

 

Grading Criteria

 

Excellent performance (letter grade of “A”/exceeding requirements) in this project entails a team to carry out all of the above steps correctly, substantially, interactively (i.e., logical flow through the steps of this format), creatively, completely, and to write a business style (see the writing style in the Thompson and Strickland text) report which exhibits competent writing proficiency.  In the event that information required to meet the criteria of providing substance and completeness in carrying out the above steps could not be obtained, then the information search effort should be fully described in the report where applicable.  In the absence of complete and accurate information, reasonable assumptions should be made and these should be fully stated in the report where appropriate.

 

 

Grading Criteria and Points

 

Current Strategic Profile                        10 points

External and Internal Analysis                10 points

Proposed Strategic Profile                    10 points

Implementation                                     10 points

Use of Additional/Outside

Sources of Information and

citing these correctly                             5 points

Report Organization, Business

Writing Style, Writing Proficiency          5 points

Total                                                    50 points

 

 

Further Instructions

 

Use word processed, double-spaced format.  No report length limitation is required.  Strike a balance between writing parsimoniously, “to the point” style and providing adequate elaboration to the reader.