Content and Format Guidelines for the Strategic Analysis Paper The following ten

Content and Format Guidelines for the Strategic Analysis Paper
The following ten content areas represent the major sections for your strategic analysis paper. Be sure that you have an approved company (see Assignment 5) prior to beginning to develop the analysis. Please present your paper in the following order, using the same section titles you see below. These ten sections should be subdivided or subtitled for greater clarity. There is no official page limit. However, you are expected to be thorough and to relay and evaluate relevant information. It would be difficult to earn a good grade with a paper of less than 12-15 pages. See detailed formatting guidelines below these content guidelines.
1– Executive Summary (Maximum of one page):
a Describe and evaluate the firm: products, markets, size, etc. – what we call the scope of the firm. It may best be articulated in the company mission but some companies will not address these items in their mission
b Describe and evaluate the industry: dominant firms, keys to success, etc.
2—Analyze Company Mission Statement
a Present your company’s mission statement- what it sells, where it sells it, to whom (primary customer profile)
b Evaluate the presence or absence of key mission statement elements (Ch 2)
c Provide an overall analysis/critique of the company mission statement
d Based on this analysis suggest at least two changes to strengthen the mission statement
3– Assess the External Environment:
a Briefly explain each sector (remote, industry, operating) of the external environment
b Identify and evaluate the General/Remote sectors’ (economic, political, social, technological, ecological) current and future effects on demand for the company’s primary industry. These five sectors will not be equally significant. Discuss which of the five present significant threats or opportunities. This analysis is discussed in detail in Chapter 4 of your text. Remote/General External Environment (Ch 4), discussing whether each sector represents either a threat or an opportunity.
c Analyze the Industry Environment:
1) Identify each of the firms “Contending Five Forces” (Ch 4) and evaluate the effect of each force on the firm’s primary industry’s Competitive Environment.
2) Rank each force in terms of their present and future influence on industry-wide profitability.
d. Construct competitor operating environment profiles with regard to the powerful forces, including their competitive advantages.
4) Develop the Company Internal Resource Profile via Value Chain Analysis/Resource Based View: (Chapter 6)
a From the perspective of the Resource Based View of the Firm, identify and evaluate your company’s tangible resources, intangible resources, and organizational capabilities.
b Perform a Value Chain Analysis (Ch 6) for the firm as a whole, specifying which Primary and Support Activities represent a basis for developing core competencies and competitive advantage.
c Compare your firm’s value chain strengths and weaknesses against its key rivals.
d Indicate the most significant competitive advantages that the firm possesses and how they are best employed to ensure superior performance. Where are its competitive advantages and disadvantages?
5–Develop a Financial Analysis:
a. Display and evaluate the last five years of revenues and net income for your company and a key rival within your primary industry. For most of your companies, this would conclude with the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022 or 2023. What you will want to include here would be revenue and income for each of the two companies over those five years. A table and/or graphs of that data to display the trends would be essential.
b. Display and evaluate the last five years of financial ratios for both your company and that key rival. You must use at least one ratio from each of the following categories (liquidity, leverage, etc.) that is most relevant to understanding the firm (Ch 6, Appendix B). You must also explain why you selected the ratios you’re using – why are they better metrics than the other available ratios within the category for your company’s primary industry? The two readings on ratio analysis should help with this section of the assignment.
1) Liquidity Ratios
2) Leverage Ratios
3) Activity Ratios
4) Profitability Ratios
b. Compute your company’s Weighted Average Cost of Capital (from FINC 311).
d. Compute the book value of your company (from FINC 311) and compare it to the firm’s current Market Capitalization, explaining why your computed value is either higher or lower than its Market Capitalization.
6 Develop Corporate Level Strategic Alternatives, at least one:
(Remember the definition of corporate level strategy from Chapter 1: determining the businesses in which the firm should be involved. So what you’re looking for here are strategy alternatives for entering or exiting industries. Could your company benefit from an acquisition or investment to develop into a new industry? Alternatively, a change in corporate level strategy could be a divestiture out of some industry that is stagnant or no longer a good fit with your mission. Your source here is Chapter 9. Most companies do not alter their corporate level strategy very often but you must come up with at least one alternative to do so.
-Be sure to consider acquisitions of unrelated businesses as corporate-level alternatives.
Determine the keys to success and pros & cons for this alternative versus staying the course by continuing to compete in industries via the businesses that already comprise your portfolio.
7–Evaluate Business Level Strategic Alternatives, at least one:
-Options may include one generic and multiple business-level grand strategies, strategic alliances, or a turnaround. (Think of this as a package of a generic and grand strategies designed to achieve competitive advantage via either cost leadership, differentiation, speed, or market focus. Then more specific grand strategies such as vertical integration, market development, innovation, etc. that would more specifically define how you intend to achieve the competitive advantage. So you have what the firm is already doing, now develop one other that would represent a business-level strategy change. Describe the pros and cons of both their current and your newly developed alternative. See Chapter 8)
8 Make a Strategic Choice:
-Should the firm implement the corporate-level strategic alternative you identified in part
5 above, why or why not?.
-Should the firm implement the business-level strategic alternative you identified in part
6 above, why or why not?.
9-Identify Key Institutionalization Processes:
Indicate key requirements for success including structure, culture, leadership, and
rewards.(the big four components of Institutionalization of strategy: structure, culture, leadership, reward systems). Through these components described in chapters 11 and 12 you are attempting to create an organizational environment/atmosphere the provides the optimal setting for successful implementation of strategy. As you analyze your company, are there weaknesses in any of the four. Which are the weakest components – the components that need to be strengthened in order to more efficiently implement their current strategies or the one’s that you have recommended as a better alternative. Is your company in need of restructuring? Remember – strategy should lead structure. So change in strategy would most often necessitate restructuring. Does your organization have a strong/functional corporate culture or are there weaknesses that must be reshaped? What about your strategic leadership? Assess the top management team. Is it time for change? How are the leaders compensated? Are there longer term incentives that would better align executive compensation with shareholder wealth creation? You do not need to address all four components but at least two of the four and make recommendations to strengthen.
10—Covid-19 Addendum to Strategic Analysis Project: Covid-19 has caused unprecedented societal disruption worldwide. As you are well aware, this (hopefully) once in a lifetime pandemic has profoundly affected industries. In the upcoming Strategic Control Module (# 6) you will study special alert control wherein strategist attempt to anticipate cataclysmic events that – while not expected – if they were to occur could provide widespread disruptions that would present major threats or opportunities to businesses. Strategists attempt to anticipate disruptions and develop contingency strategies were the unexpected to become reality. It is doubtful that few, if any of your companies saw this coming. Nonetheless, we have a great learning opportunity in terms of analyzing the effects of Covid-19 on your company and its primary industry.
Here’s what to address:
a. Covid-19 emerged from the social/demographic general environmental sector. Is there any evidence that you’ve uncovered in your company research that suggests or implies the company or any rival had “seen this coming” or had developed strategies for dealing with this type of disruption?
b. Describe how the pandemic presents a threat and/or opportunity for your industry (not just your company). In other words, what is the immediate and likely long-term effect on demand for your industry’s product or service? Note that not all industries are adversely affected – see food retailing, delivery services, video conferencing applications, PPE manufacturers…
c. Analyze the pandemic’s effect on the competitive forces in your industry. Which of te forces may become more or less powerful in terms of profitability for participants in your industry? Buyers, Suppliers, Substitutes, Potential Entrants, Rivalry among existing firms.
d. Which industry participants – including your own firm – have resources that have become more significant in this environment? Think in particular of key value chain activities or organizational capabilities that have emerged as more valuable in terms of competitive advantage. Alternatively, what weaknesses have emerged to expose companies and hasten their competitive demise?
e. Going forward what are the long-term effects of the pandemic on your company? Strategically? Operationally? Tactically? Rivals who will improve their competitive position and those that will decline or cease to exist?
Format Requirements For Your Strategic Analysis Paper MGMT 480
1) Use 1” margins and type double-spaced with a font of 12.
2) Create a title page.
3) Create a table of contents, listing the titles of each the 10 major sections of the analysis as shown above in the content guidelines. This should be the 1st page after the title page.
4) Place all the sections of the paper in the proper order. Title each section the same as per the content titles. You should subhead under each of the 10 major content areas to strengthen/structure your analysis.
5) Employ an MLA format for references, bibliographies, etc. Be sure to cite sources of industry, company, financial information.