Comparative Analysis of International Strategic Alliances: Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.

Review Illustration Capsule 7.1, “Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.: Entering Foreign Markets via Alliance Followed by Merger,” found in Part 1 of your textbook. Compare and contrast the examples of international strategic alliances that are illustrated.

 

Business Consulting Analysis: Tesla, Inc.

Tentative Outline of Business Consulting Analysis*
Title
Business Consulting Analysis: Tesla, Inc.
Team number (List of team member names)
Table of Contents
Executive Summary
– Identify the main problem or strategic challenges that are the main focus of your team’s
business consulting analysis. Then what are the most critical external/internal factors
relevant to these issues? What are your team’s strategic suggestions to deal with the
challenges? What business outcomes is your team expecting by implementing the
suggested course of action?
Part I
1. Introduction
– Describe the vision, mission, and core values.
– Does your target company adopt a code of ethics (conduct)? How does the company
define its corporate social responsibility? How is the company engaging with multiple
stakeholders? Which stakeholders are the primary stakeholders for the company?
– Review the ESG (or sustainability) report of your target company. Regarding the three
pillars of ESG (environmental, social, and governance), in which area(s) is the company
leading the industry? What are the representative achievements? On the other hand, in
which area(s) is the company lagging behind its peers?
2. Strategic Challenges of the Firm
– Identify one or two strategic challenges your target company is currently facing. Teams
should focus on what particular questions, strategic issues your team’s business
consulting project will address, and why they are essential for the firm’s future
competitiveness.
3. Competitive Advantage Analysis
– To declare the target company’s competitive advantage (or disadvantage), teams will
compare the target company’s performance to that of its main competitors. First, begin
your research by choosing the two most important performance measures in the
company’s primary industry. I recommend using multiple sources, for example, the
company’s 10-K report, library databases, Bloomberg Terminal, or AI, as sources. Please
ensure to include citations for all sources and include the summary table or chart in the
appendix. Second, based on your research, teams will draw a conclusion regarding the
firm’s competitive advantage. Does your target company have a competitive advantage?
Part II
4. Assessing the External Environment
4.1. PESTEL Analysis
4.2. Five Forces Analysis
4.3. Competitor Analysis using the Strategic Group Map
4.4. Opportunities and Threats in SWOT Analysis
5. Assessing the Internal Environment
5.1. Core competencies of the firm
5.2. VRIO Analysis
5.3. Strengths and Weakness in SWOT Analysis
Part III
6. Evaluation of Current Strategies of the Firm
– What is the company’s current business-level strategy (e.g., cost leadership,
differentiation, or integration)?
– What are the major current corporate-level strategies (e.g., vertical integration,
diversification, divestiture, etc.)? How is the firm currently executing its corporate-level
strategies (e.g., internal development, M&As, strategic alliance, etc.)?
– Are the company’s current business and corporate-level strategies well integrated to
outperform its main competitors?

7. Strategic Recommendations
– Based on previous in-depth research and analysis, your team should offer 2-3 strategic
recommendations that the firm should do to gain and sustain competitive advantages.
Please present your recommendations with specific implementation details and support
your decision by arguing its merits and potential drawbacks. The strategic suggestions
should be consistent with your team’s research findings from the external and internal
analysis and current strategies review.
– Choose one strategic option and explain why it is feasible and the best choice for the
firm.
– Potential limitations of the team’s strategic recommendations

Creating a Secure Wireless Network at International Plastics, Inc.

You are part of the networking team for a plastics manufacturing company, International Plastics, Inc., reporting to the director of IT infrastructure.

The director gave you an assignment to create detailed technical plans for the creation of a secure wireless network at the corporate offices only.

The wireless network must meet the following criteria:
• Cover the entire campus with no loss of connectivity when moving from one area to the next.
• Comply with all Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations.
• Be fast enough for employees to complete normal business activities while using wireless connectivity.
• Be cost-effective—the organization wants costs to be minimized while still meeting the other requirements.
• Be secure—due to client contractual terms, the wireless network must be secure and prevent man-in-the-middle attacks.

Write a 1- to 2-page report for the director of IT describing the requirements you are considering as your team implements the wireless network. Include the following:
• Design requirements that must be addressed
• Justification to use different frequencies, channels, and antennae in the installation
• Regulatory requirements to consider in implementation
• Security requirements

Create a 1-page table summarizing possible frequency choices. Include an explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of each.

 

Implementing an Effective Policy Management System at Ima-Mess, Inc.

 

Sarah just joined the Human Resources department at Ima-Mess, Inc. She was brought on to update policies and procedures for the company. Unfortunately, her initial survey was disheartening. Documents were not updated regularly, when they were available for her initial evaluation at all. Many of the documents were not available to her because they were archived on personal hard drives, on paper in binders that were outdated or on a departmental portal that provided no corporate-wide access. Sarah considers this a compliance risk and wants to partner with you, the Chief Compliance Officer, on her plan but doesn’t quite know where to start. What advice will you have for Sarah? Please be specific about policy management elements, stages in the policy life cycle and other strategic considerations.

Relax Lines, Inc.

In the background materials you had a chance to read about the traditional “top down” approach of job redesign as well as the newer “bottom up” approach of job crafting. Before starting on this assignment, make sure you have thoroughly reviewed the readings and understand the key job redesign and job-crafting strategies. Once you have finished reviewing the background materials, apply what you’ve learned to the specific scenarios and questions below. Make sure to cite at least one of the required readings for each answer and try to cite at least four of the readings in your answer. Your paper should be 4–5 pages in length:

  1. Relax Lines, Inc. is a luxury cruise line that has hired you as a job crafting consultant for two groups of their employees. The first group is the ship crew. The crew have responsibility for safety, navigation, and maintenance of the ship. The second group is the hospitality staff. The hospitality staff is tasked with making sure the passengers are enjoying themselves and are properly entertained with various events that this staff plans and prepares. Before arriving at the cruise line to do interviews and make recommendations, you first need to do some reading on what general approach you will use. As a first step, review Dik and Duffy (2012), where they discuss task crafting, relational crafting, and cognitive crafting. Which of these three types of job crafting do you think would be most appropriate for the ship crew, and which one do you think would be most appropriate for the hospitality staff? Also, read up on “job-crafting swap meets” in Wrzesniewski (2014). Do you think a swap meet would be appropriate for either ship crew members or hospitality staff? Any other strategy from Wrzesniewski (2014) that you think would be useful for either pilots or online marketers?
  2. The ABC Corporation has a team of telemarketers. The job description for the telemarketers is pretty basic: They call up potential customers who have visited his company’s web page and requested information about the product. Telemarketers’ performance evaluations depend mostly on their monthly sales as well as customer satisfaction surveys, and they receive monthly feedback reports. Their supervisor gives them some initial training, but these telemarketers have a lot of freedom to choose how and when to call customers. For example, they are free to customize their own sales pitch as long as they don’t mislead potential customers. Also, they are not required to fill out a time card or work at the office (they can work from home, if they want). As long as they are making enough monthly sales they are free to set their own schedules. While the telemarketing team is performing well, the company is concerned about high turnover among telemarketers and wants to do some job enrichment. Which of the five core job dimensions discussed in Bauer and Erdogan (2012) or page 9 of Griffin (2007) do you think should be revised the most during a job redesign intervention? Which ones do you think do not need to be revised? Explain your reasoning and cite some of the required readings in your answer.
  3. Suppose a sports injury clinic has three main practitioners. First, there is a general practitioner doctor who does the basic diagnosis of the injury and works with the patient to come up with an overall treatment program. This doctor also prescribes medicine as needed. Then there is a surgeon who specializes in sports injuries. This doctor only does surgery. Finally, there is a physical therapist who helps patients with exercise programs to help them recover. The owner of the clinic though becomes worried that these three practitioners are becoming bored and dissatisfied with their jobs and there is concern they might all leave unless their jobs change. However, given the high degree of training required for each of their specializations management is not sure how to go about making their jobs less monotonous and more rewarding. In general, would you recommend management undergoes a traditional job redesign approach or a job crafting approach? Which specific job redesign strategy or job crafting strategy would you recommend? For example, if you choose job redesign discuss whether you would recommend job rotation, enlargement, enrichment, etc. If you choose job crafting, refer to one of the specific strategies or interventions discussed in Wrzesniewski (2014) or Dik and Duffy (2012).
  4. Create a table with the definitions of the three main types of job redesign (job enlargement, job rotation, job enrichment) and the three main types of job crafting

Forecasting at Cruise International, Inc.

Forecasting at Cruise International, Inc. Use the provided North American Cruise Data spreadsheet for the next two questions.
• Develop a forecast of the demand for cruises the year beyond the last data time period both in aggregate demand for the entire industry and also by different regions. If Cruise International Inc. (CII) captures 5.5% of industry capacity, develop forecasts for CII from spreadsheet. Write up and justify the range of historical data used for forecasting and any consolidation of regions. (Learning Objective 3.1).

• Present your results in a memo that explains the forecasting technique used and the basis for its selection, and also illustrates the reliability of your forecast using linear regression chart and derived formula. (Learning Objective 3.1

 

 

Layout Analysis at Cruise International, Inc

Layout Analysis at Cruise International, Inc. Go to Chapter 10 https://wileyassets.s3.amazonaws.com/Reid_Operations_Management_6e_EPROF12657/media/cruise_html/reid5e_virtual_comp_ch10_index.htm for the information.
• Analyze the current process and make recommendations as to how some of the waiting time might be eliminated. (Learning Objective 3.3)
• Analyze the process as if it were an assembly line. Calculate the efficiency of the line. Calculate the balance delay. (Learning Objective 3.3)

 

 

Capacity Analysis at Cruise International, Inc.

Go to Chapter HYPERLINK “https://wileyassets.s3.amazonaws.com/Reid_Operations_Management_6e_EPROF12657/media/cruise_html/reid5e_virtual_comp_ch09_index.htm”9 for the information.
• Meghan believes that she needs a 15% capacity cushion because of the variability in guests’ arrivals. Given that cushion, how many servers should Meghan plan to have for registering regular guests? How many servers for registering VIP guests? (Learning Objective 3.2)
• What other ideas do you have for smoothing out the guests’ arrivals so that the amount of capacity needed can be minimized? (Learning Objective 3.2)

 

Price of Apple, Inc

Begin by looking up the share price of Apple, Inc., on the current date. Are the company’s shares overpriced? Write a formulated 800-1000-word paper in which you explain and justify your answer to this question as well as analyze the company’s performance and status.