Case - STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS/VISION, MISSION, GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Assignment Overview
The MGT599 Case is an ongoing exercise, meaning that we will be thoroughly reviewing one company throughout our four modules. This session, we will be conducting a strategic analysis of the Coca-Cola Company.
Most companies have something that resembles a vision, mission, or set of values; or stated goals/objectives that define who the company is and how the company plans to do business. However, organizations may not always label these statements properly -calling a vision a mission, or calling their values a set of beliefs. Sometimes, companies do not have a mission statement at all, operating instead on a set of goals.
Case Assignment
In this assignment, you will be critically evaluating the vision, values, mission statement, and goals/objectives of the Coca-Cola Company.
Keys to the Assignment
After studying the background materials and completing the SLP, you are in an excellent position to evaluate a company's published mission, vision, values, and objectives/goals. This Case asks you to begin your strategic analysis of the Coca-Cola Company by evaluating the company's mission, vision, values, and goals. To do this, observe the following procedure:
- Step 1: Visit the official website of the Coca-Cola Company and identify the company's vision, mission, values, and goals. (Hint: You'll need to do some exploring and a certain amount of speculation-as the terms "vision" and "mission" (and sometimes even the term "company goals") are used interchangeably. Explore the "Our Company" and "Investors" links. Also, be sure that you look closely at the most recent Annual Reports.
- Step 2:Critically evaluate the mission, vision, values, and goals (again, you'll likely need to make decisions as to which is which). Use the criteria in the background materials to support your assessment of the quality of the company's mission, vision, values, and goals.
- Step 3: Determine which (if any) of the elements consider the goals and needs of specific stakeholder groups. Write down any examples.
- Step 4: Consider what changes are needed to improve the vision statement, the mission statement, the statement of company values, and the company's objectives and goals.
- Step 5: Write a 6-7 page paper addressing the above requirements. You must meetminimum length requirements, by responding to each step above with precision and with depth of critical thinking.
1. Use of proper APA style is required in this course. Therefore, prepare your Case with proper documentation of sources, using in-text citations and a complete end reference list. Refer to the Well-Written Papers. guide if you are not familiar with APA style.
2. Consider the Case as a formal business report that you are developing for the Board of Directors and CEO as the Coca-Cola Company consultant. This is a professional document. Follow the format below:
3. Note: You must use section headings to respond to all major requirements in all papers. Your section headings should appear similar to the following:
o Executive summary: This is a synopsis of the main points, conclusions, and recommendations made in the longer report.
o Introduction: State the main purpose of the paper (thesis statement), what you hope to accomplish, and how you will go about doing it.
o Main Body: The "meat" of the paper. Emphasize analysis, not just description. Don't just give me facts - interpret them! Delineate separate topics or sections with appropriate use of headings.
- Executive Summary
- Introduction
- Company's Mission Statement and Analysis
- Company's Vision and Analysis
- Company's Values and Analysis
- Alignment of Company's Mission, Vision, Values, and Goals with Stakeholders' Interests
- Recommended Changes
- Conclusion
Tips and Suggestions
Note the following tips and suggestions:
- Business school case-study assignments are meant to offer practice opportunities for future businesspeople who are earning their MBA degrees. Consider yourself a consultant hired by the company to make these critical assessments. There are no right or wrong answers to the Case question, so long as your position is well-defended.
- Study the theoretical concepts provided in the Background materials section of the module, and identify main strategy concepts.
- Analyze the vision, mission statement, etc. according to the criteria presented in the Background materials. Be critical and do not let yourself be influenced by a company's "spin."
- Do not hesitate to criticize the current statements. In many instances, you may not be able to find information on the company's website. Many companies do not get this right.
- Include a cover page and reference page, in addition to the 6-7 pages of analysis described above.
- Include appropriate section headings.
- Cite and reference all sources, including those that you paraphrase. This means include citations and quotation marks for direct quotes of more than five words, and citations for information you have "borrowed" or paraphrased from other sources.Background on the SLP
The SLP for this course requires that you participate in a simulated business exercise. Simulations are interactive, allowing you to see - and learn from - the results of your decisions. Moreover, you are able to repeat the simulation, improving the quality of your decisions, learning from past mistakes.
Speaking of mistakes, Joe Thomas had been the V.P. of Marketing for the Clipboard Tablet Company during the four-year period of 2012 through 2015 inclusive. Suffice it to say that the pricing and R&D strategy used by Joe Thomas throughout his four-year tenure was a disaster. Indeed, year-over-year, the company's performance has declined significantly. The inevitable result: Joe is fired on Dec. 15, 2015.
You are hired to replace Joe - and this, just as the company faces the prospects of another dismal new year - to begin 2016. Mysteriously, you are caught up in a Time Warp, in which you are taken back to January 1, 2012. While you find these circumstances to be very strange, you recognize that they do give you the opportunity to erase the past four-year history completely, redoing the unfortunate decisions that have been made by Joe Thomas over the last four years. As a recent MBA graduate, you are excited by the opportunity, because you know that you have the requisite knowledge and the skill set required to vastly improve the performance of the Clipboard Tablet Company.
In this simulation, you will be examining income statements and marketing reports to assist you in making decisions about pricing, product development (R&D expenditures), and product life cycles.
Following is a brief summary of what you will do in each SLP:
1. SLP1: In this first SLP, it is Dec. 15, 2015. You have just replaced Joe Thomas. You are getting ready to create a marketing strategy for 2016. Before doing so however, you need to review the performance of the company over the last four years. You review the financial, marketing, and product data to determine how well your products have fared against the competition. Confident that you are familiar with the 4-year history of your products, you are ready to move forward into 2016.
2. SLP2: At the beginning of SLP2, you have mysteriously been caught in a Time Warp, in which you have been taken back to January 1, 2012. You realize that you have the opportunity to redo the decisions made by Joe Thomas during 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015. Of course, you know that you can do better than Joe Thomas. You work your way through each of the four years, making better decisions than Joe along the way, trying to generate more profit and an overall better performance than your predecessor. As you do so, you methodically keep track of your decisions (noting the reasons you've made each decision you have), and you document the results of your decisions. You write a final report that demonstrates why you made each decision - and the results of your decisions.
3. SLP3: Alas, in SLP3, the Time Warp has struck again, taking you back once more to January 1, 2012. You recognize that you had forgotten to use CVP analysis to support your decision-making process. Using CVP, you evaluate your pricing strategy for the past four years. You have confidence that the use of CVP has helped you to develop a new (and hopefully, a vastly improved) product, pricing, and R&D strategy.
4. SLP4: In SLP4, you run the simulation using the CVP-related strategy you developed in SLP3. Once again, at the end of each year, you document each decision, and you document your results. Hopefully, your use of CVP has helped to improve your SLP2 results!
Attachment:- Case.zip