Suncor Energy Case Study

PESTEL, Porter’s Five Forces Analysis, SWOT,  and VRIO Company Analysis of Suncor Energy 
Write A Report With the Following Guidelines
Assignment is on Suncor Company 

• 7 page report of their company and its strategic situation and recommended possible course of action to address course of action.
• The report will be in APA format,
• use a minimum of 3 credible sources (each source must be cited in-text within the paper as well as listed at the end).
• .  A great source of information on this report, in addition to the information below, is the class textbook and pages 528-533  (Rothaermel, 4th ed.) which provides tips on doing case analysis.

Additionally, write the report with the following headers:

• Company Name and Industry:
• Mission statement: (direct quote expected)
• Vision statement: (if available and as direct quote)
• Basic facts: Year of founding, annual revenues, number of employees, major products and/or services
• Company Background: this portion will be the beginning of the company’s narrative, as told in the student’s own words.  Quotes may be sparingly used, paraphrasing should be the norm.  The background should go back at least 5 -10 years, but be aware longer time frames may be relevant. especially for long-standing, “brick and mortar” businesses (WalMart, Target, IBM, etc.).

Part 2
Your Report Should Also Include:

• A Qualitative Analysis (see page 529 of Rothaermel, 4th ed):
  Students should include in the narrative any relevant PESTEL external factors that appear in the research as impacting the company as well as internal competencies under VRIO framework and make note of them for the reader.  One short case study showing the use of VRIO analysis is in Chapter 4 of the text, detailing the rise and fall  of Groupon.
• Business and corporate-level strategies. For more specifics, see items 1,2, and 3 on page 529.
• Major Strategic Issues and Challenges:  This is the second part of the narrative that zeroes in on struggles for the company and its leadership.   Issues could come from PESTEL-related factors or ones internal to the company (alleged corruption, sexual harassment scandals, lack of innovation, etc.).
• Part 3
• recommendations of possible courses of action that the company should take to address their strategic challenges.
• The recommendations should be informed after thoughtful consideration of subject matter from the course textbook as well as insights gleaned from your own research.

 
Page 529 from Rothaermel, 4th ed
How to Conduct a Case Analysis
THE CASE STUDY is a fundamental learning tool in strategic management. We carefully wrote and chose the cases in this book to expose you to a wide variety of key concepts, industries, protagonists, and strategic problems.
In simple terms, cases tell the story of a company facing a strategic dilemma. The firms may be real or fictional in nature, and the problem may be current or one that the firm faced in the past. Although the details of the cases vary, in general they start with a description of the challenge(s) to be addressed, followed by the history of the firm up until the decision point, and then additional information to help you with your analysis. The strategic dilemma is often faced by a specific manager, who wonders what he or she should do. To address the strategic dilemma, you will use the AFI framework to conduct a case analysis as well as the strategic management tools and concepts provided in this textbook. After careful analysis, you will be able to formulate a strategic response and make recommendations about how to implement it.
Why Do We Use Cases?
Strategy is something that people learn by doing; it cannot be learned simply by reading a book or listening carefully in class. While those activities will help you become more familiar with the concepts and models used in strategic management, the only way to improve your skills in analyzing, formulating, and implementing strategy is to practice.
We encourage you to take advantage of the cases in this text as a “laboratory” in which to experiment with the strategic management tools you have been given, so that you can learn more about how, when, and where they might work in the “real world.” Cases are valuable because they expose you to a number and variety of situations in which you can refine your strategic management skills without worrying about making mistakes. The companies in these cases will not lose profits or fire you if you miscalculate a financial ratio, misinterpret someone’s intentions, or make an incorrect prediction about environmental trends.
Cases also invite you to “walk in” and explore many more kinds of companies in a wider array of industries than you will ever be able to work at in your lifetime. With this strategy content, you will find MiniCases (i.e., shorter cases) about athletes (Michael Phelps), mass media and entertainment (Disney), technology (Apple), and entertainment (Cirque du Soleil), among others, as well as longer cases with complete financial data about companies such as Facebook, Lululemon, McDonald’s, to name just a few. Your personal organizational experiences are usually much more limited, defined by the jobs held by your family members or by your own forays into the working world. Learning about companies involved in so many different types of products and services may open up new employment possibilities for you. Diversity also forces us to think about the ways in which industries (as well as people) are both similar and yet distinct, and to critically examine the degree to which lessons learned in one forum transfer to other settings (i.e., to what degree are they “generalizable”). In short, cases are a great training tool, and they are fun to study.
You will find that many of our cases are written from the perspective of the CEO or general manager responsible for strategic decision making in the organization. While you do not need to be a member of a top management team to utilize the strategic management process, these senior leaders are usually responsible for determining strategy in most of the organizations we study. Importantly, cases allow us to put ourselves “in the shoes” of strategic leaders and invite us to view the issues from their perspective. Having responsibility for the performance of an entire organization is quite different from managing a single project team, department, or functional area. Cases can help Page 529you see the big picture in a way that most of us are not accustomed to in our daily, organizational lives. We recognize that most undergraduate students and even MBAs do not land immediately in the corporate boardroom. Yet having a basic understanding of the types of conversations going on in the boardroom not only increases your current value as an employee, but also improves your chances of getting there someday, should you so desire.
Finally, cases help give us a long-term view of the firms they depict. Corporate history is immensely helpful in understanding how a firm got to its present position and why people within that organization think the way they do. Our case authors (both the author of this book and authors of cases from respected third-party sources) have spent many hours poring over historical documents and news reports in order to recreate each company’s heritage for you, a luxury that most of us do not have when we are bombarded on a daily basis with homework, tests, and papers or project team meetings, deadlines, and reports. We invite you not just to learn from but also to savor reading each company’s story.
STRATEGIC CASE ANALYSIS
The first step in analyzing a case is to skim it for the basic facts. As you read, jot down your notes regarding the following basic questions:

• What company or companies is the case about?
• Who are the principal actors?
• What are the key events? When and where do they happen (in other words, what is the timeline)?

Second, go back and reread the case in greater detail, this time with a focus on defining the problem. Which facts are relevant and why? Just as a doctor begins by interviewing the patient (“What hurts?”), you likewise gather information and then piece the clues together in order to figure out what is wrong. Your goal at this stage is to identify the “symptoms” in order to figure out which “tests” to run in order to make a definitive “diagnosis” of the main “disease.” Only then can you prescribe a “treatment” with confidence that it will actually help the situation. Rushing too quickly through this stage often results in “malpractice” (that is, giving a patient with an upset stomach an antacid when she really has the flu), with effects that range from unhelpful to downright dangerous. The best way to ensure that you “do no harm” is to analyze the facts carefully, fighting the temptation to jump right to proposing a solution.
The third step, continuing the medical analogy, is to determine which analytical tools will help you to most accurately diagnose the problem(s). Doctors may choose to run blood tests or take an X-ray. In doing case analysis, we follow the steps of the strategic management process. You have any and all of the following models and frameworks at your disposal:

1. Perform an external environmental analysis of the:
   • Macro-level environment (PESTEL analysis).
   • Industry environment (e.g., Porter’s five forces).
   • Competitive environment.
2. Perform an internal analysis of the firm using the resource-based view:
   • What are the firm’s resources, capabilities, and competencies?
   • Does the firm possess valuable, rare, costly to imitate resources, and is it organized to capture value from those resources (VRIO analysis)?
   • What is the firm’s value chain?
3. Analyze the firm’s current business-level and corporate-level strategies:
   • Business-level strategy (product market positioning).
   • Corporate-level strategy (diversification).
   • International strategy (geographic scope and mode of entry).
   • How are these strategies being implemented?
4. Analyze the firm’s performance:
   • Use both financial and market-based measures.
   • How does the firm compare to its competitors as well as the industry average?
   • What trends are evident over the past three to five years?
   • Consider the perspectives of multiple stakeholders (internal and external).
   • Does the firm possess a competitive advantage? If so, can it be sustained?