You will submit an individual paper based on Current Topics in the News case. You will review three articles for this assignment. The articles should be drawn from the press from sometime in the past 18 months. Article sshould be drawn from widely read sources. This includes but is not limited to local, national, or global newspapers (e.g.,New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times), widely read magazines (e.g., Fortune, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Wired, New Yorker), or comprehensive blogs or electronic media (e.g., Vox, Business Insider, Axios). If you have a question about whether an article is acceptable please let me know. The paper should be approximately 9 pages (Times 12, typed and double-spaced). It should focus on and be structured by case-specific questions, but also reflect knowledge of the topic and models discussed in class. This paper will be due on April 13th.
Please do the following for the Current Topics Case:
Please select three (3) articles that prominently features an organizational decision related to strategy.
For each article, write approximately three pages, so nine total pages (Times New Roman, 12 Font Double spaced) in which you answer the questions provided below. You should draw upon course concepts to provide a rigorous analysis based on well supported arguments
o What does this organization do and what is their business strategy (e.g., low cost, differentiator)? Provide a brief summary.
o What was the strategic decision? Provide a short description or summary and a citation for the article.
o Why do you think the organization made this decision?
o Was this a good or bad strategic decision and why? Take a clear stance and argue for it.
o You will want to use material and theory from the class to support your claims regarding the companies, strategic decision. My suggestion would be to use a minimum of two frameworks from the class for this.
Case will be evaluated out of 100 points as follows:
1) Case Required questions (25 points)
a) Did the writer clearly address the questions required? (15 points)
b) Were the answers to those questions, more or less, correct? (15 points)
2) Use of Course Content (25 points)
a) Did the writer use course content and/or theoretical frameworks and connect it directly to matters in the case or in the article(s)? (10 points)
b) Did the writer use the course content and or theoretical frameworks correctly? (15 points)
3) Clarity and Technical Aspects (30 points)
a) Was it easy for the reader to see that case questions were answered? (5 points)
b) Was the document well written and clear? (10 points)
c) Was the document free of spelling errors, grammatical errors? (10 points).
d) When using materials outside of the case or the class did the author provide a citation or link showing where they drew the evidence? (5 points)
i) Any format for citation, – APA, MLA, Chicago, is acceptable.
ii) OWL/Purdue is a great resource for citations, https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html
4) Backing (20 points)
a) Did the writer point to evidence in either the case, the article(s), the course material to draw a conclusion and support the claims being made in the writeup? (10 points)
b) Did they writer take a clear and defensible stance where appropriate? (10 points)
NB: I want to see your strategic analysis of this case, not someone elses Please do not look up strategic analyses of companies on the internet. Use your heads and do great strategic work.
NB: Your articles may not be about the companies featured in the cases over the course of the semester.
companies NOT to use: Ducati, Trader joes, Wii, Apple, Walt Disney
THEORIES to be used: i attached 5 pdfs, those are the theories that discusses throughout the class.
ANALYSIS: use Porter 5 forces ( discussed in the attachment under industry analysis. PESTLE ( political, environmental, social, technological … etc).