CASE STUDY ASSIGNMENTS

 Due Date:  Day of the Final  - Minimum Length = 10 doublespaced pages. 

Conduct a case study on the company listed beside your names.    This assignment  is worth 20% of your grade so make sure that you do an excellent and impressive job.  

Answer the following questions for each company.  Data should be collected from 1994 to 2010 and should include as many sources as possible.  Here is a list of things that must be include in your case study.  Focus on the technology aspects of the organization and put more effort into the technological changes in the organization since 1985.  That would include people, hardware, software, networks, and data! 

1. Organizing Arrangements:  “Hard” items, such as organization structure, policies and procedures, systems, rewards and incentives, ownership structure, and general business strategies and activities of the company.

2. Social Factors:  “Soft” items, such as the company’s cultural practices, atmosphere, norms, rituals, mythology and stories, group dynamics, and management style.

3. Physical Setting:  Significant aspects of the way the company handled physical space, such as plant and office layout or new facilities.  This included any significant decisions regarding the geographic location of key parts of the company

4. Technology:  How the company used technology:  information technology; state of the art process and equipment, advanced job configurations and related items.

5. Leadership:  Leadership of the firm; the transition between key early shapers of the organization and later generations, leadership tenure, the length of time the leaders were with the organization; leadership selection processes and criteria

6. Products and Services:  Significant products and services in the company’s history.  How did the product or service ideas come about?  What guided their selection and development?  Did the company have any product failures, and how did it deal with them?

7. Vision:  Core Values, Purpose, and Visionary Goals:  What are they?  Do they remain intact or have they changed over time?

8. Financial analysis:  Sales and profit growth, gross margins, return on assets, return on sales, return on equity, debt to equity ratio, cash flow and working capital, dividend payout ration

9. Markets/Environment:  Significant aspects of the company’s external environment:  major market shifts, dramatic national or international events, government regulations, industry structural issues, dramatic technology changes, and related items.