Reference no: EM131021363

Consider the brief description of Target's stakeholder relationships and combine that information with your experience shopping in a Target store. How might Targets stakeholders (in a particular employees, customers, local communities, and suppliers) influence the manager's decisions about building competitive advantage in the analysis stage of the AFI framework? How might Target gather information from its stakeholders in order to inspire a better customer experience in the formulation stage in order to differentiate? Or in order to lower costs? Brainstorm by jotting down as many ideas as you can think of) about how key stakeholders may affect (or be affected by) the implementation stage.

BP's experience in the Gulf of Mexico has made it the poster company for how not to manage stakeholder relationships effectively (See Strategy Highlight 1.2) What advice would you give to BP's managers in order to help them continue to rebuild stakeholder relationships in the Gulf Region? Brainstorm ways that top management might leverage the experience gained by reacting in the Gulf and use that knowledge to motivate local managers and employees in other locales to build stakeholders relationships proactively so that avoids this type of negative publicly.

As noted in the chapter, research found that firm effects are more important than industry effects. What does this mean? Can you think of situations where this might not be true?

Chapter 2

Identify an industry that is undergoing intense competition or is being featured in the business press. Discuss how scenario planning might be used by competitors to prepare for future events. Can some industries benefit more than others from this type of process? Explain Why?

Chapter 3

Why is it important for an organization to study and understand its external environment? Make sure you understand that the factors of the external environment are also referred to as the demand shifters.)

How do the five completive forces in Porters Model affect the average profitability of the industry? For example in what way might weak forces increase industry profits, and in what way do strong forces reduce industry profits? Identify an industry in which many of the competitors seem to be having financial problems. Which of the five forces seems to be strongest? Make sure to discuss each of the 5 forces.

Chapter 4

1. Why is it important to study the internal resources, capabilities, and activities of?
Firms? What can be gained?

A. Conduct a value chain analysis for McDonald's. What are its primary activities? What are support activities? Identify the activities that add the most value for the customer. Why? Which activities help McDonald's to contain cost? Why?The resource-based view of the firm identifies four criteria that managers can use to evaluate whether particular resources and capabilities are core competencies and can, therefore, provide a basis for sustainable and competitive advantage. Are these measures independent or interdependent? Explain. If (some of) the measures are interdependent, what implications does that fact have for managers wanting to create and sustain a competitive advantage? 3 (NOTE: The resource-based view of the firm originally was from Jay Barney's research agenda. Do not hesitate to conduct outside research on this important topic before answering this Discussion Question.)As discussed in the chapter, a balanced scorecard views the performance of an organization through four lenses: customer, innovation and learning, internal business, and financial. According to surveys from Bain and Company (a consulting firm), in recent years about 60 percent of firms in both public and private sectors have used a balanced scorecard for the performance measures. How do customers view us? (Hint: First discuss the following: Who are the customers? The students? The companies that hire students? Others?How do we create value?What core competencies do we need?

How do shareholders view us? (For public universities, the shareholders are the taxpayers who invest their taxes into the university. For private universities, the shareholders are the people or organizations that endow the university.)

2. At the next big family gathering, you want to impress your grandparents with the innovative ideas you have learned in business school. They have decades of experience in investing in the stock market and from their experience in investing in the stock market and, from their college days, believe the economic profitability is the primary responsibility of business. You would like to convince them that a triple bottom approach is the modern path to stronger economic performance. Prepare a casual yet informative speech that you can use to persuade them. They probably will not listen for more than two minutes so you know you have to be clear and concise with interesting examples. You may want to reinforce your argument by consulting "The Bottom Line of Corporate Good" published in Forbes. Present your speech in APA format.