BUS 403, Strategic Management

What you "see" depends on which part of the elephant you're examining

In the world of business, companies seek competitive advantage, and much of that advantage is controlled through the information the company chooses to share (or not). Some information you seek may be available for internal use only, and this will vary from company to company. Or it may be broken into many pieces, some of which are missing, or bent (biased), or too expensive to buy. You will likely need to consult multiple sources to piece together and verify the information you need for your project.

It's important to remember that with few exceptions, the information you will find represents an opinion or perspective, and it should be treated as such. Much of it is based on an informed analysis of available data, but it is still only one perspective. Also consider that different analyses may rely on different combinations of data. Use multiple sources whenever possible, and make sure you point out areas where the opinions and perspectives differ, before offering your own perspective or conclusions.

(Image source: http://www.taosinstitute.net/photographs-images)

When working on a group project, it can be tempting the divide the workload by the different sections (Organizational Analysis, Financial Analysis, Strategic Plan, etc). But this might not be the best way. Information someone discovers while researching one section may be helpful in informing analysis of another section.

For instance, imagine one group member conducting a research on organizational analysis discovers there is very low morale among Company A's Quebec offices, and another person doing research market analysis discovered that Company A was predicting a major improvement in the Quebec area sales. In such a case it would be helpful for both of those pieces of information to be integrated together in analysis, so that you could tell your client that Company A's dependence on their Quebec branch's performance may be a vulnerability. 

That's why it's very important that Strategic Management research isn't done in silos. Members of the team need to know what other team members have discovered, so they benefit from connections in the research.

You're going to spend a lot of time this semester examining the company you to analyze. So make sure you you give it some careful though.
Some factors worth considering:

• Will you be able to find the sources you need to analyze this company? In general publicly traded companies will have way more information available than private ones. Many of the resources we have available tend to be geared toward Canadian and US companies as well.
• Is this a company that all members of the group can get on board with? While the company the group picks will inevitably excite some group members more than others, its important to give consideration to picking one that maximizes enthusiasm.
• Think about each member's long term personal and career interests. Are there particular types of industries, or types of problems that would helpful to learn to analyze? Can this project help on that path?