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The final exam is worth 200 points. Students will submit their analysis
to the appropriate Turnitin Assignment link (in corresponding folder) by
3:30pm on Monday, May 8th.
Report Structure
Beyond the content itself, your report should include the following (outside of
page limit) to make it a professional presentation:
A title page
An executive summary (not more than one page)
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A table of contents
A table of figures
A reference list
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SBI 1A: ANALYZING THE ENVIRONMENT
Your final product should:
1. Offer an overview of the industry as a whole (e.g., size of industry overall,
growth rate, number and size of competitors, etc.)
2. Identify forces in the environment
o Evaluate the various forces in the broader environment (e.g., PEST
Analysis) and then select the top3 forces.
o Evaluate the various forces in the competitive environment (e.g., 5-
Forces Analysis) and then select the top3 forces.
3. Use the information collected on environmental forces to determine the
most significant
o Drivers of Change
o Key Survival Factors
4. Arrive at a conclusion of how attractive the industry is today and how
attractive it might be in 5 years.
Use the theory and tools presented in the class, book, and supplemental
readings to gather information about the environment that you believe
will be useful to the analysis. You may use frameworks and tools like
P.E.S.T., Five-Forces Analysis and others to help structure your
exploration and the collection of key pieces of information.
Document the sources that you surveyed to collect the information so
that you can defend your analysis. Also, provide details on the approach
used to gather information and the information that was gathered.
2. ORGANIZATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
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List these forces, categorize the impact (high, medium, or low) and then
identify the top three forces on firms in this industry (with justification and
explanation).
2. What are the most significant Key Survival Factors that must be
addressed by every firm in this industry? Justify your selection (why
these and not others?). Note: Some of the significant drivers
could have a positive impact on competition in the industry. Others
could have a negative impact on competition in the industry.
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4. What are the goals of the firm?
5. What is the Product and Market Focus of the firm?
6. What is the firms Value Proposition?
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Compare information organized above and arrive at specific
conclusions about the firms performance (Use the methodology taught
in class to complete this analysis)
a. Provide your arguments and conclusions below. Be sure to
explain how/why you came to each conclusion.
The financial performance and profitability of the firm is . . . .
The market performance of the firm is . . . .
The organizational health of the firm is . . . .
b. Given the above, provide an overall assessment of the firms
performance. This should include:
Identifying where the firm should be placed in the performance
matrix
Discussing trends in performance (e.g., stable? moving from
good to poor?, etc.)
Based on this assessment, what is the relative urgency of change
for the firm?
Step 2
Theory informs us that Organizational capabilities result from a
purposeful combination of a firms resources and organizing processes, and
that they are influenced by the desires and preferences of managers. To
understand this you should:
a. MANAGEMENT PREFERENCES
Identify as much as you can about the preferences of key managers
and how that has enabled or constrained the capabilities you
identified within the firm. Gather information on recent actions by
management that could highlight the underlying management
preference that drove those actions. Areas to gather data might be:
the management discussion section of the 10K, the Annual Report
summary of strategic decisions, public statements by leadership of
the firm, industry analysts and public press commentary, and
transcripts of annual meetings.
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b. FIRM RESOURCES
Identify as much as you can about the resources of the firm that are
used in the capabilities identified in Step 1. Using ideas covered in
class consider both tangible and intangible resources in a variety of
areas within the firm.
c. ORGANIZING PROCESSES
The Organizing Processes piece of your analysis is focused on
examining and interpreting indicators of how the firm organizes its
assets in ways that create specific capabilities for the firm and,
ultimately, value for its customers. The organizing that occurs, in
turn, results from three organizational components: a) organization
structure, b) management processes, and c) leadership behavior.
Identify as much as you can about how the firm puts its resources into
action within broader capabilities.
Step 3
Organize your identified firm capabilities and the underlying components
that are necessary for them to be effective. On their own, resources,
management preferences and organization are simply pieces of the puzzle.
Put them together correctly, however, and a firm can generate powerful
organizational capabilities.
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SBI 2A:
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and Recommendations). The difference is the levels of analysis. In previous steps
you looked at each component of the model. Now, you are going to bring the
information and conclusions from previous steps together to gain an overall
understanding of the firms position.
1. DATA COLLECTION
As noted, you have collected the data through your work on each of the previous
steps. What is needed now is to simply bring it all together in one place. Review
your conclusions from the previous steps on firm performance, environment,
strategy, and org. capabilities and jot-down the important information here.
Note that you can use short-hand notes here, so long as you remember the
richness of your ideas in each section and refer back to those when you are
analyzing and making decisions on the information below.
THE ENVIRONMENT/INDUSTRY
1. Drivers of change
2. Key survival factors
3. Product/Market and Value Proposition possibilities
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Where there are potential future misfits (given current industry
trends). That is, identify where the strategy is likely to fall short of
addressing/responding to specific drivers and/or KSFs in the future
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to reveal the underlying causes that the firm must address. That is, what is
causing the symptoms (e.g., decreasing sales or shrinking market share, poor
profitability, disgruntled employees, etc.) that were identified above? Where
possible, these causes should be expressed in terms of the alignment (or
misalignment) between specific strategy components and specific aspects of
the environment and/or org. capabilities (e.g., the product/market focus is no
longer appropriate for the environmental conditions of because; the org.
capabilities do not support the value proposition because ..., etc.).
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