As you analyze your assigned company, you should understand how competitive forces shape corporate strategy. A typical way for an organization to strategically analyze these factors is to conduct a five forces analysis of their organization. Corporate leadership can use this tool, to successfully analyze and identify a clear sense of the organization's strategic vision. This focus is important because of the requirement for improved business understanding in a rapidly changing global environment. Some of the main strategic management questions asked are, where is the organization now, and where will the organization be 1, 3, 5, or even 10 years from now? Moreover, where will the organization be if no business changes are made? While looking at these questions, leadership must not only take action (especially if the answers are unacceptable), but also weigh the risks and payoffs. Smaller businesses may engage in strategic management to ensure that they adapt to trends and external changes such as globalization.

By definition, strategic management is a process in which an organization develops and implements plans that promote the goals and objectives of that particular organization. The overall process of strategic management is continuous, and it changes as the organizational goals and objectives evolve. The strategic management process begins when executives evaluate their current position with respect to the company’s mission, goals, and strategies. Managers then scan the organization’s internal and external environments and identify strategic issues that may require change. Internal or external events may indicate a need to redefine the mission or goals or to formulate a new strategy at the corporate, business, or functional level. The final stage in the strategic management process is execution of the new strategy. It is now time to take an analytical look at the forces and structure that shape effective strategic decision-making.

For this Assignment, you will complete the following:

• After reviewing this video Porter’s Five Competitive Forces (Video file, 13 min 11 sec), conduct a detailed Five Forces analysis for your assigned company. Your analysis should be thorough, incorporate scholarly research, and cover:
  • Corporate Threats of New Entrants
  • Corporate Threat of Substitutes
  • Supplier Power
  • Buyer Power
  • And, Competitive Rivalry

Illustration of Porter's 5 Forces. By Grahams Child [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

Your deliverables include:

1. A 3 page written analysis; APA formatted MS Word document.
2. Written evaluation for each force highlighted above. Justification should be supported by scholarly evidence (i.e. – peer-reviewed journal articles; 10K report, etc.).

* A word of caution: The assigned organizations are all publically traded companies on the DJIA. Therefore, there is a great deal of published analysis and information available on the Web. This assignment is NOT a review of someone else’s analysis. The integration of such external analysis, even if cited, will result in a failing grade. *

Required Products (Tools) Created from Research & Analysis

• Porter’s Five Forces

Learners are to populate these products with evidence that was discovered in their research before writing the independent report and creating the team presentation.

Required Research Sources:

• Organization’s 10k, internal publications, and marketing material
• Review this video Porter’s Five Competitive Forces (Video file, 13 min 11 sec)
• Porter, The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy

Suggested additional sources of information:

• McKinsey Quarterly (0047-5394) https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/home.aspx
• Harvard Business Review (0017-8012)
• HBS Working Knowledge http://hbswk.hbs.edu/
• New York Times
• Wall Street Journal
• The Economist
• Other instructor-approved sources

Things to Remember!

✓ Write a 3 page written analysis.

✓ Written evaluation for each force highlighted above. Justification should be supported by scholarly evidence (i.e. – peer-reviewed journal articles; 10K report, etc.).
✓ Use Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, with APA-formatted (6th ed.) in-text citations and references for all resources.
✓ Check and correct any spelling or grammatical errors in your document prior to submitting it for evaluation.

o Online Writing Lab (OWL)
o APA, MLA & More: Citing Sources
o Copyright & Avoiding Plagiarism

Compose your work using a word processor (or other software as appropriate) and save it frequently to your computer. When you're ready to submit your work, click Browse My Computer and find your file. Once you've located your file click Open and, if successful, the file name will appear under the Attached files heading. Scroll to the bottom of the page, click Submit and you're done.

Please be aware that papers in this course may be reviewed by anti-plagiarism software.