Select a business with which you are very familiar.
Briefly describe the company. What is its purpose/mission? Organizational structure?
Conduct a S.W.O.T. analysis. Based on the information you already have, identify the company's internal strengths and weaknesses. Evaluate relevant components of the business environment. Having identified the opportunities and threats and strengths and weaknesses, consider what they mean (or should mean) to the company. Is the company in a strong competitive position? Why or why not?
Determine the corporate-level strategy. Justify your assessments. What has been the company's competitive advantage? Identify what contributes the most to or detracts from the company's competitive advantage.
Analyze business-level strategy. Using Porter's five forces model, discuss the company's business-level strategy and describe how it competes. If Porter's model has revealed the threats to the company from the environment, can the company deal with these threats? How should it change its business-level strategy to counter them?
Identify the issues uncovered. Identify any problems/issues, or areas in need of improvement that were uncovered by your analysis. Is "organizational change" an issue? In addition, conflict, power, and politics may be important issues. Focus on those issues that you can evaluate most thoroughly. Based on your analysis, try to analyze why problems in these areas are occurring.
Make recommendations. Recommend strategies and actions the company can take to resolve/capitalize on issues you've identified Remember, your recommendations should follow from your analysis, and should use tools/strategies discussed in class and in your book.