Business Admin Capstone 499: External and Internal Environments (please use the last assignment choose)
Overview
In this assignment, you are to use the same corporation you selected and focused on for the Strategic Management and Strategic Competitiveness assignment.
Using the corporation you chose from the Week 3 assignment, Strategic Management, and Strategic Competitiveness, examine the industry in which the entity operates. Use any or all of the following resources to conduct research on the company:
- Company website.
- Public filings from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Filings & Forms page.
- Strayer University’s online databases.
- The Lexis Advance database.
- Other miscellaneous sources. Note: the company’s annual report will often provide insights that other resources may not include.
Use the External and Internal Environments Template [DOCX] to ensure that your assignment meets the requirements.
Requirements
Write a 4-6 page paper in which you do the following:
- Choose the two segments of the general environment that would rank highest in their influence on the corporation you chose.
- Assess how these segments affect the corporation you chose and the industry in which it operates.
- Considering the five forces of competition, choose the two that you estimate are the most significant for the corporation you chose.
- Evaluate how well the company has addressed these two forces in the recent past.
- With the same two forces in mind, predict what the company might do to improve its ability to address these forces in the near future.
- Assess the external threats affecting this corporation and the opportunities available to the corporation.
- Give your opinions on how the corporation should deal with the most serious threat and the greatest opportunity. Justify your answer.
- Give your opinion on the corporation’s greatest strengths and most significant weaknesses.
- Choose the strategy or tactic the corporation should select to take maximum advantage of its strengths, and the strategy or tactic the corporation should select to fix its most significant weakness. Justify your choices.
- Determine the company’s resources, capabilities, and core competencies.
The specific course learning outcome associated with this assignment is as follows:
- Analyze the effects of the general environment, competition, threats, opportunities, strengths, and weaknesses relative to a corporation.
Discussion Post:
1.
- Evaluate the business-level strategy of either Starbucks or Lockheed Martin to determine whether you believe the strategy is appropriate to offset forces in the industry. Provide specific examples to support your response.
- Make recommendations for improving this strategy as well as describing any challenges you foresee in executing those recommendations. Provide specific examples to support your response.
2.
- Using the Internet, research acquisitions that are currently underway and choose one of these acquisitions to discuss. Based on the firms’ characteristics and experiences and the reasons cited to support the acquisition, do you feel it will result in increased strategic competitiveness for the acquiring firm? Why or why not?
- Of the problems that affect the success of an acquisition, which one do you believe is the most critical in the global economy? Why? What should firms do to make certain that they do not experience such a problem when they use an acquisition strategy?
3.
- What incentives influence firms to use international strategies? What are the three basic benefits firms can gain by successfully implementing an international strategy? Why?
- Determine why, given the advantages of international diversification, some firms choose not to expand internationally. Provide specific examples to support your response.
- As firms attempt to internationalize, they may be tempted to locate their facilities where business regulation laws are lax. Discuss the advantages and potential risks of such an approach, using specific examples to support your response.
