Company Assigned: Daily Journal Corporation
Company Assigned: Daily Journal Corporation
Class text: Wheelen, T. L. and Hunger, David J. Strategic Management and Business Policy:
Globalization, Innovation, and Sustainability. 15th ed. Upper Saddle River: NJ: Pearson, 2018.
** Refer to the company as “client” **
Google the home website of the firm you assigned to your team. Next, click on Investor
Relations. When that opens up, click on financial documents (or SEC fillings). Next, look for a
10-K Report. The firm must have five prior years of this report (2020, 2019, 2018, 2017 2016).
Additionally, you need two publicly traded firms that are similar in size (revenue and market
share) for your financial ratio comparative analysis, and the competing firms must have 10-K
Reports for five prior years as well.
Other reports to be reviewed for the project are (1) 10-Q which is the quarterly reports of the
firm, and (2) 8-K which is for major decisions made by the firm as well. These reports are
submitted to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (sec.gov) which is the U.S.
government agency that regulates publicly traded firms.
** APA citations **
Sections to be completed:
1. The Internal Environment (ch. 5 + 10)
a. This section should be in bullets format (see Appendix 13.C) BUT WRITE
MORE.
i. You would start with Corporate Structure. Evaluate and discuss the
current organizational structure of the firm, to determine if the
structure enables speedier decision-making, or not(review the
corporate officers’ titles to see, if there are too many of them in
each department that might lead to a bloated bureaucracy with too
many layers of management and approval sign-offs that impedes
faster decision-making).
ii. For more information on the appropriate corporate structure for
your client firm based on the firm’s stage of corporate development
see Table 10-1 in the class text.
b. Next, you would evaluate and describe the firm’s Corporate Culture, and
how it affects the competitiveness (or non-competitiveness) of the firm.
Please note that the evaluation of corporate culture is your analysis here.
c. Next, is the Corporate Resources subsection, where you evaluate the
resources of the firm starting with the marketing strategy. You must do all
of the six (6) subsections (see Corporate Resources in Appendix 13.C in
the class text)
i. Use the Four Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) “to evaluate”
the marketing strategy of your client firm.
d. For the Finance Section, do the following ratio analysis: Current Ratio,
Gross Profit Margin Ratio (or operating Profit Margin Ratio), Net Profit
Margin Ratio, Return on Equity, Days of Inventory, Average Collection
Period, Fixed Asset Turnover Ratio, Debt–to-Asset Ratio, Interest
Coverage Ratio. Contact me immediately, if any of these ratios are not
available for your assigned firm.
i. Re: Finance subsection*. It is imperative that you compare the
results of your ratio analysis with two competitors for the last three
years and discuss the implications for your client. The two
competitors must be publicly traded firms of the same size (revenue
and market share), with published and current 10-K, 10-Q, and
Annual Reports
ii. Professor will not accept ratio data obtained from the Internet that
are not the product of your own work.
iii. Finance Sub-Section of the Report
iv. Please refer to Table 13-1 for information on these ratios. You
should also compare the results of your ratio analysis with two
competitors.
v. The exact format for the Finance subsection of the Internal
Environment section is an additional file named “Sample Financial
Ratio Analysis and Discussion for a Research Case Study”
vi. Start from 2020 and go backward
1. Need 3 years of 10K report for both your company and your
competitors
e. The subsection called R&D might be called Innovation Center, Idea Lab,
or Product Development by some companies.
f. Operations and Logistics are called Supply-Chain, Warehousing, and
Distribution by some companies as well. Let me know, how the above
activity categories are named by your client.
g. The rest of the subsections under Internal Resources are:
i. Human resources, and Information Systems. State and discuss
EACH one separately (see Appendix 13.C) Don’t Forget!!
ii. Please do not forget to explain why a statement or sentence is a
strength or weakness, and avoid making general statements that
are not specific to your firm or industry.
iii. Again, follow the format for the entire Internal Environment section
as presented in Appendix 13.C in the class text but, WRITE
MORE!!
2. Strategic Issues
a. This section is called “Analysis of Strategic Factors” in the class text, but I
renamed it as stated above (see Appendix 13.C). This section should be
in bullet format.
b. The focus here is to select your top two or three opportunities, threats,
strengths, and weaknesses, (NO MORE THAN THAT FOR EACH SWOT
FACTOR) and explain why each one is an important issue with long-term
implications for the firm.
c. The other subsection here is the Review of Mission and Objectives (see
the format for this section in Appendix 13.C). This section has two
subsections (A & B).
Appendix 13.C
Table 10-1
Table 13-1
