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 investigating will emerge as one of the main issues to be dealt with, but there also may be other important issues.

Please do not use one of the companies from the main cases we used in class (Mondavi, Emirates, Disney) or your place of work. 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

1. 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.

1. 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 main 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 in the executive summary because they will be in your 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.

1. 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 versus. 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.

1. 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.