Strategic Management This assignment requires you to conduct a review of a corporation’s corporate strategy. The assign

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Strategic Management
This assignment requires you to conduct a review of a
corporation’s corporate strategy. The assignment fulfils
Nistler College’s requirement to have graduating students submit an
individual, research-based written assignment in the
strategic management course.
For this assignment, you should pick one of the following
companies:
Apple
Corning
Emerson
Estee Lauder
Fortune Brands
Hershey’s
Honeywell
International Flavors and Fragrances
Microsoft
Length – 5 pages double-spaced, plus a maximum of 5
appendices. The title page and bibliography are not included
in the page limits. The bibliography must have a minimum of
20 references from reputable sources. Sources should not be
cited in the main paper.
You should review the annual reports of the company for the last
three years, as well as news stories of any developments at the
corporate level – e.g., entry into new industries, acquisition of a
company, long-term partnership, or alliance agreements the
corporation may have entered, divestments or sale of one or more
businesses, etc.
The specific sections for this assignment are as follows.
Introduction. Here you would provide an overview of the
corporation – like what you are doing for the Corporate Analysis
assignment. You would cover what is the size of the corp. (in
revenues and employees), where it operates (i.e., number of
countries), what are its main businesses. Also, what are some
of its most well-known brand names or products? Devote
another paragraph to trends in revenues and income, distribution of
revenues and income across its main businesses, and stock price
(absolute and relative to an index such as the S&P 500).
Devote the final paragraph to its history, covering important
changes (additions/deletions) in its portfolio of businesses,
tracing the evolution of its portfolio to the current time.
Devote some appendices for tables and visuals related to this
section. (1-page max)
The corporate strategy. Describe the current corporate
strategy – it could be a mixture of multiple types – e.g., related
diversification and multi-domestic. Mention specific
corporate strategy type(s) used and provide evidence. Use an
appendix to show a visual representation of the strategy (e.g., the
constituent businesses and countries/continents).
Also describe the corporate strategy implementation modes used
(e.g., internal development, acquisitions, and/or long-term
partnerships/alliances). For this, you should check their
recent history of major corporate strategy moves – going into new
businesses or beefing up existing businesses via acquisitions,
internal development, or long-term partnerships. Many corporations
use more than one implementation mode. You should describe
all the ones that your corporation uses and provide examples.
Also, go into the dominant mode used. Use an appendix to show
the distribution of modes over different constituent
businesses. For global strategies, the implementation modes
are exporting, licensing/franchising, joint ventures, strategic
alliances, foreign direct investments, and wholly-owned
subsidiaries. Can use an appendix that is linked to this section
with a neat table that organizes all the information on their
strategy and implementation modes used for specific
businesses/targets. (2 pages max)
Evaluation. Provide your evaluation/review of the current
strategy. This would involve thinking about questions such as
these - Does the portfolio make sense? What is the value of
keeping the businesses together? What general strengths
(capabilities, resources (e.g., knowledge, technologies) do these
businesses share? Are there any other advantages, such as
smoothing out earnings across businesses (not all businesses may
perform poorly at the same time)? Which businesses could be
good candidates to get rid of and sell to other corporations, or
have them spun out as independent businesses? These are
guiding questions for illustration, to give you a direction of
inquiry. Do not simply answer the questions above one at a
time – your review should be integrative, and argumentative –
provide logical reasons for your opinions, even if you may not have
the complete numbers for a definitive analysis. Can organize your
thoughts/review in a table or chart in an appendix associated with
this section (2 pages max).
The above three sections constitute the main paper. This
will be followed by appendices that you believe support the main
paper. Make sure all the appendices that you add are referred
to in the main paper. The last section would be a
bibliography of your sources, in any consistent format.