Analyzing Strategic Issues: Guidelines and Recommendations

Importance of strategic issues

1. How important are the strategic issues you have chosen to address? Note that study questions for the case are meant to get you thinking. They do not necessarily point to the critical issues to be addressed in your analysis. Note also that the decisions to be made, or the alternatives to be considered by the case protagonist(s), are not the issues. Issues are factors that need to be taken into account in making these decisions. They are internal organizational characteristics or aspects of the external environment that you identify in your analysis, which make (or ought to make) a difference to the outcome of the decision-making process.
2. Have you used appropriate analysis tools, and on what facts in the case is your analysis based? Hint: the numbers in the case are typically one important basis of your analysis. Make sure you explain your conclusion(s) from each analysis.
3. Does your CAM show effective use of course concepts and of the analytical and reasoning skills you have learned in this course and in your other courses in the program?
4. Unsupported recommendations are not acceptable. Examples of unsupported recommendations are: “ABC Inc. should sell off Division Q because it does not fit”; or: “ABC Inc. should create a brand for its widgets” − without indicating why this would work, how this is to be accomplished, or why this would increase profits or fulfil some other important company objective.
5. How persuasive are your arguments? Before you hand it in, ask yourself what the “soft spots” are in your analysis, and make sure you have covered these off.
6. How effective is your written presentation? Clear, professional writing is expected.