Strategy management

Order Description
1. Identify the strategic issues in this case
a. A strategic issue is any issue that has the potential to fundamentally affect the company’s competitive position, its strategy, its operations and its prospects. Typically, it is the issue
addressing which resolves all other issues. More importantly, the number of strategic issues facing an organization is limited in number – at the most there are two or three such issues.
Prioritize. Look not at the symptoms but the underlying cause.
b. To identify the strategic issues one needs to examine the firm’s competitive positioning. The firm’s competitive positioning is arrived at after an analysis of the firm’s environment (industry
analysis), the firm’s resources and capabilities (internal analysis) and the firm’s strategies and its outcome. The
strategic issue is something that has the potential to affect the firm’s competitive positioning and may be due to changes in the environment, internal resources and capabilities, questionable
strategies and the like.
c. Third, to examine the competitive position you need to consider all relevant information in the case. Question any hidden assumptions. Make explicit all assumptions you make in order to arrive
at your conclusions. Assess your logic and arguments for coherence and consistency.
2. Identify alternative courses of action
a. The relevant alternatives are those that most directly address the strategic issues that you have identified in the first step. The relevant alternatives should be based on the analysis that you
have performed earlier. In other words they must be consistent with the industry analysis, the internal analysis and the
firm’s strategies that you have identified.
b. Second, examine whether these alternatives are really alternatives. In other words, can the firm simultaneously undertake one or two or all of the alternatives? Some decisions like a Make or Buy
decision are truly mutually exclusive. On the other hand, in some other cases a firm may not be able to
pursue all alternatives because the firm does not have the resources and capabilities.
3. Evaluate the alternatives and recommend one course of action. Justify your decision.
a. To recommend any one of the alternatives that you identified in the earlier step you need to evaluate all
the alternatives. What are the pros and cons of each alternative? Why are some alternatives not feasible options for the firm? It is this analysis that enables you to identify and recommend the
alternative that you think best addresses the strategic issue that you have identified. Present your recommendations with specific implementation details and support your decision by arguing its
merits vis-à-vis the alternatives. Evaluate your entire analysis in terms of its consistency, coherence, brevity and logic. Does it make any assumptions that you have not made explicit? Is the
information used factually correct? Are the conclusions
justifiable? Are they based on opinions, personal beliefs or logic and facts?
Additionally, in preparing your paper there are several common errors to avoid:
• Focusing on minor issues on which there is little data. Let the case facts and questions guide you to the selection of issues. If there is little or no data on an issue, you can identify it as
being potentially important, but do not dwell on it in the analysis.
• Rehashing the case. Someone has already written the case, and the instructor has certainly read it. Do
not summarize the case; begin by stating the key issues. Present facts from the case to support your line of reasoning.
• Drawing conclusions without providing the data to back them up. Don’t make unsupported statements or draw conclusions that the available data does not, or cannot support.
• Drawing generic conclusions. For example, all companies need to be profitable and to satisfy their customers. For each case, show clearly what this particular company needs to do so that it
resolves the issues specific to its competitive situation, available resources, management objectives, etc.
• Non-critical evaluation of case data. Before using a “fact” presented in the case, ask if it was collected in a sound manner, is unbiased, and directly relevant to the issue. Qualify conclusions
reached by considering the quality of the data on which conclusions are based.
• Failure to provide a rationale for eliminating alternatives not selected. It is important to show that the recommended course of action is likely to deal effectively with the problems identified.
It is equally important to provide a rationale for dismissing other alternatives as less effective or desirable.
• Failure to present analytical work in an understandable manner. When doing computations, be sure that you present the step-by-step analysis you conducted, including data sources and the formulas
you used. This kind of information should be presented as exhibits.
• Fuzzy recommendations. Avoid making recommendations that lack clarity, are impractical, are not integrated into the analysis, fail to address a key issue in the case, or fail to recognize the
importance of short and long-term timing issues. Provide viable, specific, actionable recommendations
• Incomplete analyses. Incorrect computations, improper use of data, making inappropriate assumptions;
or failure to draw on theories and techniques presented in this course.