MANA Chapter 13

Strategic management cases include

• Detailed description of a challenging situation faced by an organization

• Chronology of events

• Support materials, such as financial statements, product lists, and interviews with employees

Strategic case analysis requires:

• Ability to critically evaluate business situations

• Going beyond the text and rooting out essential issues and cause of a company’s problems

Ability to Differentiate (Strategic Capabilities)

• Evaluate many different elements of the situation at once.

• Differentiate between factors that are influencing the situation

• Understand that problems are often complex and multilayered

  • Need to dig deep

  • Don’t be too quick to accept an easy solution

Ability to Speculate (Strategic Capabilities)

• Envision explanation that is not readily apparent

• Imagine different scenarios

• Contemplate the outcome of the decision

• Deal with uncertainty and incomplete knwoledge.

  • Data may be missing

  • Information may be contradictory

  • Details and consequences may be unknown

Ability to Integrate (Strategic Capabilities)

• Consider the impact of various decisions and environmental influences on all parts of the organization

• Create one set of recommendations that affect the whole company

  • Realize that changes made in one part of the company will affect other parts

  • Adopt a holistic perspective

Preparation: (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Investigate the situation

• Analyze and research possible solutions

• Gather the advice of others

• Put yourself in the shoes of an actual participant

Step 1: Become familiar with the material (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Read quickly through the case one time

• Assess possible links to strategic concepts

• Read the case again, making notes

• Evaluate the application of strategic concepts

• Formulate an initial recommendation

• Go through the case again to assess the consequences of the actions you propose.

Step 2: Identify problems (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Some cases have more than one problem to solve

• Avoid getting hung up on symptoms

• Try to articulate the case problems

  • Sometimes writing down a problem statement gives you a reference point

• Some problems will not be apparent until after you do the case analysis.

Step 3: Conduct strategic analyses (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Determine which strategic issues are involved

• Use strategic tools to conduct the analysis

  • Five forces analysis

  • Value-chain analysis

  • Contingency frameworks

  • Financial analysis—using Financial Ratio Analysis

• Test your own assumptions about the case

Step 4: Propose alternative solutions (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Develop a list of options. What are the possible solutions?

• Evaluate the alternatives

Step 5: Make recommendations (Conducting a Case Analysis)

• Make a set of recommendations supported by your analysis

• Describe exactly what needs to be done

• Explain why this course of action will solve the problem

• Indicate how best to implement the proposed solution

• Note: the solution you propose must solve the problem you identified

Integrative Thinking

• Involves making choices by reconciling opposing thoughts

  • Proposing more options and new alternatives

  • Identifying creative solutions

Integrative Thinking (4 Stages)

1. What features of the decision are salient— relevant and important?

2. What are the casual relationships between the features?

3. What might a sequence of decisions look like?

4. What might be the best creative resolution?

Heretical Questions

• Asking this can help challenge long-term beliefs about how things work

  • Can we design travel routes with “no left turns”?

  • Can we dye clothes without water?

• Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; instead, encourage something new. Mistakes are opportunities for learning.

Conflict Inducing

• Can be very helpful in arriving at better solutions.

  • Conflict can help avoid groupthink

  • The devil’s advocacy approach assigns someone the role of official critic.

  • Dialectical inquiry approaches a problem from two alternative points of view.

    • Formal debate using a thesis (a proposal)

    • Antithesis (a counterplan)