COURSE
PROJECT FORMAT
For
the course project, you will thoroughly investigate a company and report on it
with a written document. This analysis should be comprehensive and
cross-functional. It should look at the company as a whole to determine if its
strategy is right for its situation, and if not, what to do about it. It should
not look just at one functional area
or zero in on one particular problem the company faces that you are interested
in. It might well be that the problem you are interested in before you start
will emerge as one of the main issues to be dealt with, but there may be other
important issues.
Please do not use one of the
companies from the cases we used in class or your place of work. Instead, consider doing a competitor of the
company you work for. This project gives you a chance to apply concepts learned
in this course and throughout your graduate program.
·
The project analysis can be done through online/library research or
through direct contact with industry/company participants supplemented by
research.
·
You should use the following format, with the major sections
(shown below in Roman numerals) clearly labeled. I have tried to give you a
sense of what type of content should be in each section. How you subdivide and
organize within the major sections is up to you.
Company Analysis
I. Table of Contents
List at least the major sections (outlined below in Roman
numerals) and the corresponding pages.
Sub-listings within these major sections should also be included, but
what exactly they are is up to you.
II. Executive Summary
This should be about a half a page in length, absolutely one
page max. It should have a clear
statement of the problem, issue, challenge, etc., facing the company that you
have concluded from your analysis, and should summarize your major
recommendations. I have given you three words (i.e., problem, issue,
challenge), one of which hopefully fits your situation. For example, for a
particularly successful company, there may be no major “problem,” but more a
“challenge” of how to continue success given potential internal constraints
and/or external trends. I have also written these words (i.e., problem, issue,
challenge) in the singular, but they could be plural. However, in an executive summary, only the
major issues should be dealt with; you could address two issues, maybe three
max, for example, but not all of the more detailed issues that might be in your
paper. The summary should have very little history, background information,
details of analysis, etc. I didn’t
specify “none” as there might be a few things that need to be said for clarity
for your particular paper, but your focus should be on a clear statement of the
problem(s) and your recommendations.
Citations are not needed here because they will be in the main document.
III. Company Profile
This
section gives the reader an overview of what the company is currently. Here is
a list of types of relevant information in no particular order (i.e., you
choose the most logical arrangement): company history (brief!), mission,
objectives, overview of operations, products and or services, locations,
financials, marketing, distribution, industry, competitors, customers, current
strategy, data such as growth and market share, etc. I may not have listed everything relevant to
your company and you might not include everything listed above, but try to
paint a fairly complete picture as this course emphasizes integrated,
cross-functional analysis.
If your chosen company is part of a multi-business corporation,
your focus could be on the business level strategy of that division or SBU
within the corporation. You could, however, choose to do a broader, more
corporate level strategy analysis. Most students do business level strategy
analysis. If you do a business level strategic analysis, you should also
briefly describe the part that your business unit plays in the firm’s overall corporate
level strategy.
This
section could be longer in pages than some of the others, but it is less
difficult as it is mostly an overview of the company, its general context, and
its current strategy. The word “context” here may be confusing because the next
section is “situation analysis.” In this first section you are trying to give
the reader an overview of the company without going into analysis or
evaluation. Save your analysis, critique, justifications, and recommendations
for later. If you find yourself wanting to make evaluative statements in the
first section, stop and consider how and what information to include in the
first section and save the evaluative part for the analysis. You may have some
repetition of issues that are also dealt with in your situation analysis, but
don’t overdo it in this first section. For example, students might present
financial ratios this profile section to then be included as a strength or
weakness in the analysis section.
IV. Situation Analysis
Analyze
the company’s situation using appropriate analytical frameworks, theories, and
logic. Generate a limited number of conclusions about: the key issues that
need to be dealt with, constraints, key opportunities, core competencies that
should remain the basis for the company’s strategy, importance and priority of
issues, existing and potential synergies, causes vs. symptoms, etc. I have listed a number of types of issues
that could be conclusions from analysis, but I cannot tell you exactly which
types will be relevant for your particular analysis.
Many
models can and should be used (e.g., SWOT, Five Forces, PESTLE, VRIO, Value
Chain, CAGE, and more). Different models provide different and valuable
insights. This is good, but the more models you use, the more overlap with you
will have between them. For example, Five Forces analysis will uncover issues
that are also “threats” or “opportunities.” Such an approach can end up looking
like a long, disjointed list of models unless you to tie them together with
some kind of summary/conclusion to your analysis. It is important to have
conclusions to your analysis to bring these different insights together into a
clear picture of what the main issues are that the company needs to deal with
and that you will make recommendations for.
Hold
your recommendations about what the company should do in response to the
conclusions of your analysis for the next section. When you find yourself
wanting to write “they should do…”, stop and consider what the issue is that
triggered that solution.
Make
sure you do a thorough cross-functional analysis, not just a single function
(e.g., marketing) dominated analysis. Also, please remember the PowerPoint with
notes on Analysis and Problem Solving from the first class.
V. Strategy Critique and Recommendations
This
section should determine the appropriateness of the company’s strategy
(articulated in the company profile section) for its situation (issues that it
needs to deal with articulated in the situation analysis section). You should
clearly explain how the strategy (or parts of the strategy) does or does not
fit with the situation (or with other parts of the strategy). Recommend a
coherent package of changes to the company’s strategy and specific steps to implement them.
Explain and justify your recommendations. In addition, explain and
justify the aspects of the company’s strategy that you think should remain the
same (i.e., if you think the strategy is good, clearly explain why it is appropriate
for the situation.).
How
this compares to the conclusions from analysis can be confusing. While there
may be some overlap of ideas, I hope these examples will help: For example, if
a conclusion from analysis is that consolidation in the buyer industry is
causing rapidly growing buyer bargaining power and that this is a major issue,
this last section asks if the company’s strategy is adequately addressing this
issue. And if not, what should be done? For another example, if a key
opportunity identified in your analysis is global expansion to take advantage
of profitable emerging markets and gain scale and/or scope economies, this
section asks if the company is expanding globally? And if it is, is it pursuing the right
markets, and pursuing them appropriately? What specific actions do you
recommend the company take? This last section gets very specific and action
oriented. Saying the company needs to expand globally is not specific. Being more
specific would be recommending exactly what international markets they should
pursue and what their global entry strategy should be. Take a chance on
specifics. I understand that we are not experts on these industries.
Following
a format can be difficult, perhaps mostly because it is difficult to understand
what the format writer has in mind. For the format writer, it is hard to get
across general principles that will work for every project. You should most try
to write in a way that reflects the reality of the company that you are writing
about. Don’t go out of your mind trying to distort what you see as the reality
of your particular company to fit the format.
I
hope you can understand the nature of the separation of each section. There
will always be some overlap in the sections, but if you understand the purpose
of each section, you can discipline yourself as to where to write what. For
example, if you find yourself wanting to suggest a somewhat specific action in
the analysis section, try to think of the more general issue that triggered
that idea. The more general issue should be in the analysis, and the more
specific actions to address it should be put in the last section. If you didn’t
have any discipline, you might start suggesting ideas as they occur to you,
which could be in the very first section! I can tell you from experience that
such a thing is very difficult, if not impossible, to follow as a reader. You
should already be familiar with the discipline of how to write well-structured
paragraphs; a long paper like this requires structural discipline between the
sections as well.
Writing
I expect a well-structured,
internally consistent, clearly organized paper, free of grammatical and
typographical errors. Pay attention to paragraph structure. Papers
should be single spaced (or
the Word default of 1.15), 10-12 pitch font, with one-inch margins. The paper should
probably be approximately 12-15 pages. I give you this number not as a
requirement but to let you know the typical length that most students do. It is
perfectly ok to have more pages because the space taken up by charts, tables,
figures, citations, etc., is hard to predict or control. I prefer charts, figures, tables, etc., to be
in the text at the point they are referred to.
Sources of information must be fully cited.
This project is not an exercise in one type of formatting style, but I
recommend the IEEE style using in-text numbering as it is easy to do. You may,
if you like, use other mainstream formatting styles that you might be more
familiar with such as MLA or the parenthetical style of APA. There are numerous
sources online explaining citations styles, even free citation generators of
different styles. Word has automatic citation insertion under the “References”
tab. You can choose the style and enter
information in the fields. You will need to click “Show all bibliography
fields” to expand the entry box to include fields for website citations such as
URL, access date, etc.
Most any of the styles have the same
requirements as to what information should be in a citation so don’t worry
excessively about difference in spaces, periods, abbreviations, and other
minutia. If you have any questions, just
Google them! There are numerous webpages
about citations, from citing personal interviews to websites. However, please
note that URL’s alone are not sufficient for citations. Citations are not
needed for the executive summary because the material it discusses will have
been cited in the main body of the paper.
A bibliography or references list at the end
of the paper is required. It should contain only sources actually used and which are linked
to specific content in the paper. This will happen naturally as part of the
IEEE or APA format styles. Here is a
link to a document on the basics of IEEE citations: https://ieeeauthorcenter.ieee.org/wp-content/uploads/IEEE-Reference-Guide.pdf Here
is one for APA: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines Many
universities put their own versions of these style guidelines online, so you
might find one you like better.
