Part -1:
Strategic Issues Analysis of a Global Company
In 1971, one of the founders of a coffee shop in Seattle, Washington, wanted to name the company Pequod after the ill-fated whaling ship in Herman Melville's classic 19th century novel, Moby-Dick. The two other partners prevailed and, instead, the store was named for the sober-minded first mate of the Moby Dick whaling ship, Starbuck. For their logo, the partners chose a two-tailed mermaid to evoke the sirens that were said to lure sailors to Starbuck Island in the South Pacific. They could not have anticipated how prescient that symbol would become. Today, millions of consumers are lured to one of more than 19,000 Starbucks retail outlets in more than 60 countries around the world, where they purchase an estimated 10 million beverages every day (Starbucks, 2013).
With such a large footprint, Starbucks is a frequent target for concerns about its environmental impact, fair trade practices, tax haven strategies, employment strategies and impact on the local communities where it operates. While the company's leadership has acknowledged these concerns and worked to address them, they also remain committed to an aggressive growth strategy, which includes launching new products, new stores and new markets.
Consider the range of issues facing a global retailing operation such as Starbucks. To begin to analyse these issues, the management team needs to engage in strategic issues diagnosis. Issue diagnosis is of paramount importance for large corporations, such as Starbucks. Consider the strategies this company has adopted and also consider your personal reactions to these strategies. Consider the decisions that leadership has made in achieving its goals.
• Briefly describe one of the major strategic issues that Starbucks currently faces.
• Describe what the company has done to address the issue.
• Describe the leadership's role in this issue.
• Critically analyse this issue facing the company.
• Explain whether you support Starbucks' actions and why (or why not).
• Support your position with examples from the Learning Resources and your own research.
• Provide citations in the appropriate format.
• Review your colleagues' posts.
• Respond to at least two of your colleagues who share your general perspectives about Starbuck's strategies and leadership decision-making. However, instead of reinforcing your agreement, take an alternate perspective and make an argument (analysis with evidence) that supports this different view and which constructively and professionally challenges your peers' analysis.
• Be sure to support your postings with evidence from the Readings. Consult the Harvard Referencing Style Guide for proper citation and referencing information.
Part- 2:
• Review the Readings and, in particular, examine the articles by Collis and Rukstad (2008), Mitchell et al. (2011) and Reeves et al. (2012).
To complete your Individual Assignment:
• Conduct a thorough and well-argued strategy and strategic position evaluation which evaluates your selected company's recent and current strategy, either based on explicit information directly addressing strategy or based on inferential and circumstantial analysis of general information. Use the following questions to guide your analysis and summary:
Is your organisation's strategy and the specific action plans it has put in motion, consistent, and do all the elements align to support each other? How and why?
Are the activities, skills, competencies and capabilities of your company tailored to suppor its strategy? How and why?
Is the organisation's strategy, and the specific action plan steps it has taken, consonant with the current and future needs of the external ecosystem and stakeholder needs? How and why?
Is the organisation's strategy, and the specific action plan steps it thas taken, feasible, given current and future investments? If not, what would make it feasible, and how can the company reach the stretch goal (intent)?
Does your company's strategy lead to incremental change within the industry, or more fundamental change within the industry, or does it establish new positions outside the industry or in blue ocean spaces? How and why is the scope of your company's strategy the most appropriate?
Does your company's strategy preserve any advantages of the company? Which advantages, and how and why?
Does your company's strategy position the company to perform activities differently than rivals do? How and why?
Has the company identified trade-offs and limitations of its strategic action plan? What are they and why?