analysis of a public traded corporation that is performing poorly

Overall Purpose: Conduct a real-time case analysis of a publicly traded corporation that is performing poorly. Performance can be defined in financial terms such as a large drop in stock price, a large decrease in net income and so forth or by looking at other measures such as very high employee turnover, a lack of or very poor environmental sustainability, disputes with a community in which the firm operates, etc.

Research the company including its financial performance and other strengths and weaknesses, the external environment (including the industry with a 5-forces analysis), ethical aspects of the strategic decision and propose two viable alternative strategies followed by your team’s recommendation of the strategic decision the company should make and why that fits best. The grading rubric shows all of the elements of your analysis.

 An article from a highly reputable business publication must form the basis for your research and it must be dated sometime in 2019. The publications you can use for this central article are: Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, New York Times, Wired, The Economist, Inc. magazine, Entrepreneur magazine or Fast Company.
 Use and integrate the concepts and tools you’re learning in the course in your analysis. For instance, the 5-forces analysis and the resource-based view should be incorporated.
 Conduct research using the library’s databases. The majority of your references should be highly reputable ones and your paper must have at least 8 of these. Your team will reference data and information used in your paper (i.e., the paper must have citations in the text) and provide a list of references at the end of the paper. Use APA format for references in the text and for the list at the end of the paper.
 Blogs, company websites, opinion pieces and Wikipedia are NOT reputable sources—they are likely biased and may contain inaccurate information. These references do not count toward the 8 reputable sources for your paper.
 Conduct financial analysis of the company, including considering any financial decisions or resource allocations over the past couple of years that may or may not support particular strategic alternatives, as well as looking for strengths in the financials and weaknesses/issues (including financial ratios). The financial analysis should fit with and relate to the other parts of your analysis versus being stuck into the paper as a totally separate section.
 Your team will propose 2 viable alternative strategies for dealing with the performance-related issue or decision you have chosen to analyze. You will evaluate each, trying to be as fair as possible in highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of each for your company.
 Your chosen strategy should be clearly stated so there is no doubt what you recommend. Then build on your analysis to explain and support your chosen strategy, including why your team thinks it fits better than the alternatives. Do not assume that you already discussed this or that your reasoning is obvious.
 Formatting:
o Double-spaced, typed with one-inch margins and 12-point font
o Use section headings to organize the paper & make it easier for readers to identify the sections
o Proofread carefully, use spell check and grammar check in Word
o Paper should be 15-20 pages in length, including the executive summary; references at the end of the paper, the title page and table of contents do not count in the page length.
 Writing skills and professionalism: write as if you are consultants making recommendations and providing an analysis to the corporation, demonstrating high quality writing skills. Correct sentence structure, punctuation, grammar and spelling should be used. The same writing style and font should be used throughout the paper.
 Add a concluding sentence or two at the end of each section of the paper, ensuring that the reader has grasped your key points or arguments in that section of the paper. Then provide a transition sentence linking the current section to the next one.