Strategic Management Group Project

Strategic Management | 1
You are required to belong to a group of at least three students for this project. Groups, as well as the company to analyze, will be assigned by the professor during Week 2. Each group is required to perform an in-depth, longitudinal analysis of a company and the industry in which it operates and submit one report.
The idea here is to impress your professor, as you would wish to impress a boss, with your thorough understanding of the company and the industry in which it operates and your creative yet practical solutions to its current problems.
This is a chance to synthesize selected parts of your undergraduate curriculum into a wide-ranging report that will create a helpful model for how to analyze and solve complex business problems as you return to the workplace.
Guidelines
• Each group should submit one group report
• The group project report should be
o Typewritten
o Double-spaced
o Using 12-point size font
o Not exceeding 25 pages (excluding cover page, tables, figures, appendices, references, and endnotes)
• The cover page should provide the complete names of the group members and the course name
EBA4498 – Strategic Management
Group Project
Strategic Management | 2
The report should contain the following sections:
1. A cover page listing team members
2. Table of contents
3. Executive summary of project
4. Company background/history
5. Analysis section (see below)
6. Important issues and problems faced by the company and reasonable solutions to these issues/problems (see below)
7. List of references
8. Exhibits (tables and charts)
Again, this is a chance to:
o Review and synthesize all you have learned in this capstone strategy course
o Connect back to the ideas you learned in your functional courses in marketing, finance, operations and HRM, etc.
o Tie this all together into a package that will help your career by training you to apply powerful analytical techniques to solve complex business problems
Accordingly, your analysis should apply as many concepts from the textbook as you can to enrich your understanding of the company, industry and current situation. For example:
o Competitive advantage and business models
o Mission, vision, values and corporate governance
o PESTEL analysis, five force analysis, driving forces, and strategic group maps for the industry
EBA4498 – Strategic Management
Group Project
Strategic Management | 3
 A brief history of the industry (development stages)
 You may use business models, market share, perceived quality and other critical and relevant variables to identify viable strategic groups in the industry
 Competitor analysis – what other companies are currently doing
o SWOT, value chains, and benchmarking
o Competitive strategies
 Identify and compare key strategies pursued by major players in the industry; you are also expected to discuss which strategy seems to be most successful in the industry, and the rationale for this success
o Offensive and defensive strategies, vertical integration and strategic alliances
o International strategies
 Global/local market position (e.g., size of major markets, products, customers and end users, pricing structure)
o Corporate strategies
o Ethics, CSR and environmental sustainability
 How well the company measures up against the competition on these criteria
o Organizational structure and skills
o Operational excellence
o Corporate culture
o Business performance
 Tracking and discussion of company performance over time (at least 5 years)
 Financial outlook
 Include stock analysis if applicable
In a 25-page paper written by 3+ people focused on one company and industry over several weeks, you should be able to address all of these dimensions of the situation.
o Creativity and Critical Thinking
 Creativity and imagination are always welcome
 Critical thinking is always desirable
EBA4498 – Strategic Management
Group Project
Strategic Management | 4
Key Strategic Issue
o From your team's industry analysis and competitive analysis of the firm, identify a single major strategic issue facing the company (the best issues are typically either major problems to be solved, or major opportunities to exploit)
Alternatives
o Develop, in detail, two or three viable strategic alternatives. In each alternative you should
 Show how it addresses the key strategic issue
 Show the ability of the company to successfully pursue each alternative (from competitive advantage analysis, and financial analysis)
 Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative
o Make sure you completely discuss all of the above for the first alternative, and then do the same for the second alternative
o Do not switch back and forth between discussing each alternative
Recommended Course of Action
o Select one alternative and discuss why this alternative was chosen over the other
Implementation
o Discuss how the recommended course of action can be implemented and how the disadvantages and risks of the chosen alternative can be minimized or handled
• Directions as to where and how projects should be submitted will be given to you by Week 6 by your instructor
• Projects are due Week 6 by Sunday at 11:59 p.m. ET