Business environment

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Project Guidelines for

Business Environmental Analysis A component of BUS 302: Foundations of Business Environment Aaron McDonald, course instructor Assistant Professor, College of Business Administration, California State University San Marcos Introduction All organizations must function within the context of their environments. What works and is successful under one set of environmental conditions may be a disaster when there are changes in one or more components of the environment. Therefore, environmental conditions present great opportunities and threats to organizations. As a practicing manager, analyst, or consultant, you will often be asked to prepare and present an analysis of a business situation that is dependent on changes and developments in the business environment. Furthermore, refining your informational literacy, mastering analytical skills and developing strategic thinking will enrich your career toolkit and position you for success in your professional pursuits. Project Objectives The purpose of this project is to conduct in-depth research and analysis of the business environment for a U.S. based company of your choosing. Your goal is to evaluate environmental opportunities and threats for the business. Additionally, you will choose a city not in the United States that presents an opportunity for expansion for the business. By completing this project you will improve your ability to locate and select high quality business information and learn how to apply relevant analytical tools to improve your understanding of a company, its industry, and the key issues that affect its future potential. Further, you will improve your ability to work collaboratively. Finally, you will refine your ability to think strategically in business situations. Important considerations The project is completed in teams of about five individuals. The project is divided in several parts that lead to a final paper at the end of the semester. The estimated time to complete the project at a satisfactory level is over 50 hours. Starting early and managing the project with consistency throughout the semester are key to a successful experience. Detailed guidelines for each component of the project are offered on the following pages.

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Part 1: Project scope & issue analysis Estimated time to complete: 3–5 hours Due: Feb 17, 2021 Percentage of Total Project Grade: 5% Goals:

- Identify shared business interests among the team and define the scope of your project - Develop a deeper understanding of what variables are involved - Identify reliable sources of data that will inform your research and start scanning relevant publications

Steps:

- Explore the professional interests, objectives, and intellectual curiosities of each team member. Each team member should contribute to this discussion.

- Find common interests or areas of shared curiosities that could benefit from a semester-long team research and analysis.

- The scope of your project may be defined in terms of, general societal trends, industries or industry issues (e.g., competitive dynamics, industry restructuring, etc.), problems that have not been solved, but have a business application, etc.

- In the process of completing this part, the team should conduct at least one in-person meeting with all team members present and at least one video conference meeting

- During the first meeting, all team members should agree on the technological platforms that will be used for project work (e.g., file sharing, document drafting, communication, etc.)

- Do not hesitate to consult with the instructor in this process. - The scope of the project may be adjusted throughout the semester, but not fundamentally changed. - The team may discuss companies of interest at this point, but this is not the objective of the first part.

Furthermore, teams should avoid choosing a company to research at this point. What to deliver

- An essay of about one page, authored by the entire team. The write-up will describe the scope of the report and should contain an analysis of issues or symptoms (time horizon: past to present) and a statement of problem(s) that need(s) to be resolved (time horizon: present to future).

- Team contract. Refer to the template at the end of this document for an example of a team contract. You may use that one, modify it, or create your own.

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Part 2: Company research Estimated time to complete: ~20 hours Due: April 7, 2021 Percentage of Total Project Grade: 25% Goals:

- Locate an existing public corporation that operates within the scope identified by your team and analyze their strategic approach and position.

Steps: 1. Select a publicly traded corporation that your team believes has potential within an industry as regards

the scope identified in Part 1. Company selection is subject to instructor approval. 2. Explore the corporate website. How is it laid out? What are your first impressions of the company?

Where is the company headquartered? Write down their HQ address info. Become familiar with the location of the important information you will be searching throughout your project (e.g., investor relations and other sections).

3. Identify the company’s mission, vision, and goals, and write them down. How clear are their mission and vision? Are they well communicated?

4. Become acquainted with the company’s products and services and draw up the company’s corporate structure. How diversified are they?

5. Define the company’s strategic business units 6. Identify the company’s critical value-creating activities 7. Explore the international reach of the company. What is their global footprint? How many countries?

How much revenue do they derive from domestic vs. foreign markets? 8. Search for and read about your target company, from other online business news sources: has the

company been in the news recently? Summarize the general issues about this company from the news?

9. Consult major databases available on campus along with high quality business publications to learn about the company

10. Identify and define the industry the company obtains most of their revenues from. Analyze the dynamics of this industry and the company’s competitive position relative to the five forces. What are the industry’s driving forces and what is their impact?

11. Identify and define the company’s major growth industry/ies. Analyze the company’s competitive position in the industry/ies relative to the five forces.

12. Conduct a competitor analysis from the perspective of your target company. Determine direct competitors and potential competitors. How does the company compete?

What to deliver Interim report 2: A written report which addresses the topics outlined in the steps above. If you are unable to find useful information for any area, explain your methods and efforts. Any worksheets used may be appended to your report. You may use this time to prepare data visualizations to be used in the final report (i.e., tables, figures, etc.). Also provide a list of references for all information found (APA format), with proper referencing and citations in the text of your report. Any tables, figures, or other exhibits should contain information about the source of the data. There is no page limit. Part 3: Strategic diagnostics – Final report

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Estimated time to complete: ~25 hours Due: May 12, 2021 Percentage of Total Project Grade: 60% Goals:

- Analyze the company’s business environment using the PESTEL model. - Identify opportunities and threats based on environmental conditions. - Identify one foreign city that presents an opportunity for the company to expand. - Analyze the foreign city’s business environment using the PESTEL model and explain why this

environment provides an opportunity? - Submit a comprehensive professional final report.

Steps:

1. Complete an environmental analysis for the company using the PESTEL model. Explain how each component in the model affects the company.

2. Conduct a SWOT analysis on how the company fits with its business environment 3. From the SWOT analysis, identify and explain two opportunities and two threats from the business

environment. 4. Give your team’s recommendation on how to respond to the opportunities and threats (no response

may be valid if you can justify it). 5. Identify a city in a foreign country that provides an opportunity for the company to expand

internationally. 6. Conduct a PESTEL analysis for this city. 7. Identify and explain one opportunity and one threat from the foreign business environment. 8. Give your team’s recommendation on how to respond to the opportunity and threat. 9. Make a go/no go decision if the firm should pursue this international opportunity and why 10. Conduct any additional research to fill gaps and missing information from your prior analyses or as

instructed via formal and informal feedback

What to deliver Your final report should reflect all the work of your team, from the beginning of the semester. It should read as one document, not a collection of disparate papers. Teams are free to use any content from the interim reports in the final report — interim reports are to be treated as early drafts of the final report. Format: Projects should employ a business report format. Consider how this report may be useful in your career someday and write it for a broader audience. I discourage reports addressed to an audience of one: the course instructor. The report could fit in your job market portfolio, along with other applied, experiential, or immersive projects you have completed as a business student (e.g., client-based work, senior experience, etc.). All reports should have an executive summary of approximately 1 page. The text narrative should be structured using headings and subheadings, for readability. Although references should be formatted using APA style, the structure and appearance of the report should not follow the APA guidelines. If figures or tables are used, you may insert them in the body, or at the end as appendix. I encourage you to develop visuals to synthesize complex information. Explore corporate white papers as examples of applicable formatting styles. Formatting should be double spaced and size 12 Times New Roman font.

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Suggested page length is around 15 pages, not counting the executive summary, references, and appendices. There is no penalty for paper lengths above or below 15 pages. Each paper is graded on the quality of research and analyses relative to the scope of the problem tackled. The process of carefully curating what content to include in the final report will help you develop superior business analysis and writing skills. (i.e., work to avoid the everything but the kitchen sink problem). All reports should contain the following elements, in whatever order you decide to include them:

1. Executive summary 2. Statement of project scope or problem, and issue analysis 3. Firm strategic approach and position (part 2) 4. Firm Environmental Analysis

a. Firm general environment /PESTEL b. Opportunities and threats c. Recommended response to opportunities and threats

5. Foreign opportunity environmental analysis a. Foreign city general environment /PESTEL b. Opportunities and threats c. Recommended response to opportunities and threats d. Recommendation on go/no go to pursue this foreign opportunity

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Part 4: Peer evaluations Estimated time to complete: variable Due: May 12 Percentage of Total Project Grade: 10% Goal: Improve your team’s performance through constructive and developmental feedback. Steps:

- Keep notes on your team’s dynamics throughout the semester. Items to include are: professionalism, timeliness, quality of work completed, etc.

- Compile your information in a report to the instructor (form will be provided) - Two reports are due from each individual team member. Evaluative, positive and constructive

feedback are all welcome. Your report is protected by confidentiality, between you and the course instructor.

What to deliver Peer evaluation forms will be provided to you. Fill those out and submit to instructor.

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Project & Team Management Best practices As suggested by teams that have met or exceeded expectations in the past:

- Get to know each other as individuals and professionals. It’s typical to underestimate the role played by individual personalities in a professional project. Getting to know each other allows you all to anticipate how your strengths and weaknesses will affect the team dynamics along the way.

- Decide on the tech platform(s) that everyone is comfortable with. The typical needs of this project are, communication, manuscript development, and file sharing. You will need to share files as your manuscript evolves, as well as create a repository of your research findings, in order to avoid overlap. Platforms such as Dropbox, Google Docs, Slack, Zoom can be incredibly helpful in dealing with the difficulty of planning in-person meetings. The university provides you with licenses for a number of enterprise platforms — take advantage of those and do let instructor know if you have questions or require any assistance.

- Develop a routine of convening either physically (not this semester) or virtually, once a week as a group, starting in week two through the end of the semester. Additional meetings will probably be added during the busy periods, but the once/week meeting is paramount.

- Evaluate the work to be done, create a task plan, and revise as needed during each meeting. - Use advance deadlines to ensure sufficient time is allowed for contingencies. High performers typically

allow for 3+ days ahead of a deadline for interim reports and 7+ days for final report. - Discuss disciplinary issues as soon as they occur. Early signs of work imbalances will almost always lead

to uneven contributions in the final project. There is no substitute to mediating issues right away, instead of waiting until a conflict develops. If you notice potential for a ‘freeloader problem’ to develop in your team, please contact me as soon as possible. At times, these are just miscommunications that can be easily fixed. Do not wait until the final project is due to let me know that there is a team performance issue.

- Do something on this project every week. You cannot throw together a good report during the week before the deadline.

- Related to the above, use the project as an application for everything you learn in class, during lectures and case studies.

Policies regarding team restructuring and personnel changes

- Teams should use conflict resolution policies agreed upon in the team contract to mitigate any issues. The instructor should be notified when conflict resolution procedures are triggered. Teams may invite instructor to mediate any team issues.

- Hiring and firing: In exceptional circumstances, teams may restructure partially or completely at any time before the end of the semester.

- Individuals may seek employment with another team at any point in the semester. Teams should agree on termination details, including last day of contribution for each departing member. Hiring teams should discuss an explicit proposal of compensation for past performance, upon hiring a new member.

- All personnel changes and details thereof must be communicated with the instructor in a timely manner.

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Project management template Students who completed this project in the past note that an unexpected amount of time was spent administratively (planning, scheduling, organizing, communicating, etc.), in addition to the more typical work of researching, writing, etc. Estimations of time to complete are on a per- team basis. Past students of this class have been surveyed regarding their time spent on the project. Actual time spent on this work will differ from team to team, depending on commitment and skill level. Be sure to give yourselves as much time as needed to achieve the objectives of your team. Feel free to use the table below and expand your team’s own project management approach.

WEEK

# Ref Objective Deliverable Due 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

1 Form teams -

2 Negotiate team agreement Team contract 10-Feb X

3 1A Decide project scope One-page essay 10-Feb X

4 Master research tools and strategies Attend library workshop 10-Feb X

5 1B Draft external analyses Interim report 1 24-Feb X

6 2 Draft company research Interim report 2 19-Mar X

7 6 Evaluate team performance Peer evaluation 19-Mar X

8 Gain feedback for final project Attend capstone workshop 23-Mar X

9 3 Communicate your findings in writing Final report 22-Apr X

10 4 Communicate your findings verbally Final presentation 27-Apr–6May X

11 5 Provide a value-added review Present friendly review 27-Apr–6May

12 6 Evaluate team performance Peer evaluation 6-May X

Legend: ‘X’ = due | [ ] = written work | [ ] = presentation

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Team Contract Template Due: Feb 17 Team Name: ______________________________ These are the terms of group conduct and cooperation that we agree on as a team. Participation: We agree to.... Communication: We agree to... Meetings: We agree to.... Conduct: We agree to... Conflict: We agree to... Deadlines: We agree to... Decisions: We agree to make decisions using a (unanimity)(majority rules)(autocratic)(other) process.

Team Member’s Name Signature

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