Reference no: EM133539714

Paper Assignment

Topic: Business Research Project

Company/Organization: Johnson & Johnson

Organizational Analysis

Using the DAFT text and other resources, you will perform an organizational analysis for the organization of your choosing according to the proposal outlining. This analysis will be written in the form of a consultant's report, including a title page, table of contents, executive summary, headings, citations, references, etc. The document should be single-spaced.

Topics covered in the analysis will include:

1. A brief description of the company
2. Organizational strategies
3. Organizational structure
4. External environment
5. Internal environment
6. Organizational design for an international environment (if applicable)
7. Brief overview of products and services being offered
8. Information technology and control systems
9. Organization size, life cycle, and possible decline
10. Organizational culture
11. Ethical values
12. Innovation and change
13. Decision making processes
14. Conflict, power, and politics
15. Recommendations

Remember to not only describe what the organization is doing in each of these areas, but also to analyze how well they are doing in each area, which includes looking at how the competition might be doing.

Complete the organizational analysis according to the above main structure and answer the questions.

A good executive summary usually comes in 4 parts, which for the purposes of this report is likely in 4 paragraphs: (i) a brief summary of the company being studied (not a repeat of the company overview), (ii) a brief summary of the purpose of this organizational analysis, (iii) a brief overview of the key findings of this report, and (iv) a few closing remarks about the company going forward based on the findings of this report.

I. For the overview of the company, the purpose is simply to give the reader(s) some context about the company, such as its products, revenues, number of employees, where it is headquartered, etc.

II. For the strategies section, how would Miles and Snow classify the company? What about Porter's competitive strategies model? What are the company's goals/objectives? What strategies have they been implementing to meet those goals/objectives? Have these strategies been effective?

III. For the organizational structure, how is the company currently structuring its operations? What type of structural model best describes what they do: functional, divisional, matrix, virtual, etc.? Is the current structure working for them? Show an organizational chart.

IV. For the external environment, describe and analyse how the macro external issues impact the company, using the external sectors we looked at in material (i.e. the economy, the human resource sector, the financial sector, etc.).

V. DO NOT use a SWOT analysis to describe the external or internal environments.

VI. For the internal environment, determine if the company has any distinct competencies that could be exploited to gain and sustain a competitive advantage. What is the company good at? What is the company not particularly good at? Expand on the items we covered in class for the internal analysis.

VII. For the international environment section, if the company has international operations, how does it run those international operations? Does the head office make all the decisions, and the international parts of the company are just treated like branch offices? Or do the international operations have a fair degree of autonomy in running their operations? Are the international operations stand-alone profit centers?

VIII. For the products and services section, briefly outline the products, services, brands, etc., sold by the company.

IX. For the information and control systems section, outline what the company is doing with IT in the company. How do they control inventory levels? Do they have a CIO? What security measures have they taken to protect both company and customer data? Are they using enterprise management software? How does IT impact the decision-making within the company?

X. For the life-cycle section, outline what is meant by organizational life cycles. Where does your company fall? What factors contributed to you placing the company where you have in the life-cycle model?

XI. Describe the organization's culture using the factors discussed in the material and in the textbook.

XII. Describe the organization's ethical values. Have they consistently lived up to these ethical values? Are there gaps between what they say and what they do when it comes to ethical values?

XIII. For the innovation and change section, describe some of the ways in which they have been innovative as a company. Have they handled change well as a company? Give some examples.

XIV. How are decisions made within the company? Is it a "top-down" decision making model, or are employees empowered to make decisions in their areas? Are people given the authority and responsibility to make decisions? Give examples.

XV. For the conflict, power, and politics section of the paper, outline how conflict is handled within the company. How is power handled within the company? Is it a very political environment? If so, why is that? If not, what are they doing to eliminate the political factor?

XVI. Finally, for the summary of key findings section, outline the key organizational variables that the company can use to position itself to succeed in the marketplace going forward, and conversely, what are the issues or weaknesses the company will need to fix in order to succeed going forward.