Homework
Case Study: Pfizer
Read the case thoroughly and decide whether you will work alone or incorporate your team members.
If you are working in teams or solo, place yourself in the role of an executive director of research at Pfizer (in charge of the team which hired Ventavia Research Group), which means you should consider yourselves to be "in" the case scenario.
If you are working in a team, appoint one member to serve as the process leader of the group and the remaining members focus on the content. Otherwise, you are serving as process leader in terms of this project.
Assess the following and write this as a report with full citations and references from the text, the case study, and other sources as needed:
i. Reach agreement as a group (or solo) on a one-sentence definition of the underlying problem. Is it based in HR? Public relations? Regulatory oversight? Administrative confusion? Be sure it is a problem and not a symptom. The difference between a problem and a symptom can be described as "a symptom is the effect caused by the problem while the problem is the reason causing the symptom" (Boje, 2012, p. 1).
ii. Decide on what strategic approach or approaches (from your textbook) could/may be used to explain the rationale behind your identification of the problem.
iii. Develop a list of alternative solutions for the executive director, using strategies described in the Hitt textbook. You may want to engage a SWOT analysis to lead you in definition of the strategy/strategies which may be incorporated. Feel free to include the SWOT diagram as an addendum to your report.
iv. As a group (or solo), converge on the best three solutions to the problem definition.
v. After discussion, choose the best solution. Include who should be involved in making the decision that solves the problem. Just the executive director? Just the executive director and the staff? Other stakeholders? Explain why.
vi. Develop an implementation plan and the action steps the executive director should take to get the solution implemented. Include the amount of involvement of you (the executive director), as well as the subordinates. Do you feel that Ventavia should have been retained for additional contract work with Pfizer? Why or why not?
vii. Outline and describe potential negative consequences and pitfalls of your plan.
viii. Finally, once steps 1-7 are complete, consider your or the group's problem definition, solution, and action plan in terms of the strategic advantage to Pfizer.From your answer in #2, build on the idea of a) was the strategy incorporated by you or your team appropriate to solving the problem you identified and produce the solutions you feel most benefits Pfizer in the long term; and b) in retrospect, would you have engaged a different strategy based upon what occurred in the Ventavia-Pfizer contract? If working in a group, identify which group member served as process leader for this exercise - see Note 2.
Expectations: While this is not technically a research-based homework, outside information and perspectives you bring into the homework must be on the level of peer-reviewed articles or source materials which add to the scholarly nature of doctoral work. Please note the tab in the case study with related content as well as outside news sources and peer reviewed articles for further insights.Use 7th edition APA form and style.
Note: Much of situational analysis (case study) involves the ability to ask appropriate and relevant questions in both problem identification as well as in critical analysis of steps which need to be taken in both revealing strategies which may be deployed as well as in defining a course of action. Thus, this homework is meant to mirror the doctoral process of problem/situational definition (Chapter 1), refinement of key questions (Chaps. 1-3), and finally, recommendation of strategic action to yield results (Chapter 3). I am including resources for your perusal which include a chapter of Berger's A More Beautiful Questionand Boje's Making a Horse from a Camel, which are housed in Module 4 in the courseshell. It is not necessary to read these, but I provide them in the spirit of engaging more dialogue around these topics.
Note 2: Boje says that "it is the process leader's role to ensure that all members have a thorough understanding of the fundamental problem before letting the group move prematurely to a phase it is unprepared for" (p. 450). In this case, we must also understand the difference between content and process leaders. Boje (n.d.) "distinguishes between the content, the actual work done on the problem by the group, and the process, how individuals work with each other to solve the problem" (p. 447).
Format your homework according to the following formatting requirements:
i) The answer should be typed, using Times New Roman font (size 12), double spaced, with one-inch margins on all sides.
ii) The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the homework, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
iii) Also include a reference page. The Citations and references must follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.