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please follow the Grading Rubric and 5 to 6 pages please: The outline for the cases is the following: Answer the below ones in details. Thank you.
Summary & Overview of case
Problem Statement
Analysis: SWOT Analysis
Alternatives
Recommendations
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Johnson & Johnson
CASE 27
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JOHNSON & JOHNSON*
As the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest health
care company, was quick to join the U.S. government’s Operation Warp Speed. It was
able to secure $456 million in funds to develop a vaccine for COVID and later received
another $1 billion for the manufacture and delivery of 100 million doses if it received
approval.1 Although J&J lagged behind rivals, it was believed that its vaccine would
prove to be more popular because it would require only one dose and be stable in
normal refrigeration for up to a month. Among other things, this was expected to
create a higher demand for its vaccine in many parts of the developing world.
However, as the pandemic raged and coinciding side effects of each vaccine came to
light, J&J’s vaccine came under fire with some relatively serious risks compared to its
competitors. As of January 2022, the J&J booster shot was said to put recipients at
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risk for developing immune thrombocytopenia, a bleeding disorder targeting those
with a low level of platelets. This came after the original one-and-done J&J vaccine
came with risks for developing a blood clotting disease known as thrombosis with
thrombocytopenia syndrome.2 Although developing these disorders has been said to
be rare, the CDC recommended using Moderna or Pfizer vaccines if available.
In response to this, new CEO Joaquin Duato said he planned on being active on the
medical device acquisition market, stating that they “don’t have an artificial ceiling as
far as deal size.” This and a projected $3.5 billion in sales with their vaccine will
hopefully move them back to the top of the pharma food chain.3
J&J recently has been no stranger to drawbacks regarding its health care solutions. It
has come under fire after news surfaced about settlements the firm paid for problems
with its hip replacements and for problems with a children’s drug. The lawsuits
tarnished the well-established reputation J&J developed over many years. The firm’s
reputation derived from its diversified businesses ranging from pharmaceuticals to
consumer products that have reflected its wide range of expertise and allowed it to
develop a customer base that spans from consumers to hospitals to governments. The
financial stability that resulted from its range of businesses has been J&J’s cornerstone
for decades. Its sales have risen on a regular basis, although profits have dipped a bit in
recent years (see
Exhibits 1 and
2). The firm has raised its dividends for well
over 50 years and it remains one of only two U.S. companies with an AAA credit
rating from Standard and Poor’s. “They’re in a great position,” said Kristen Stewart, an
analyst at Deutsche Bank. “They have the luxury of time and the ability to look at
different opportunities across different business units. That is what a diversified
business platform affords them.”4
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EXHIBIT 1 Income Statement (in $ millions, except per share amount)
2021
2020
2019
Sales to customers
$ 93,775
82,584
82,059
Cost of products sold
29,855
28,427
27,556
Gross profit
63,920
54,157
54,503
Selling, marketing and administrative expenses
24,659
22,084
22,178
Research and development expense
14,714
12,159
11,355
In-process research and development
900
181
890
Interest income
(53)
(111)
(357)
Interest expense, net of portion capitalized
183
201
318
Other (income) expense, net
489
2,899
2,525
Restructuring
252
247
266
Earnings before provision for taxes on income
22,776
16,497
17,328
Provision for taxes on income
1,898
1,783
2,209
$ 20,878
14,714
15,119
Basic
$
7.93
5.59
5.72
Diluted
$
7.81
5.51
5.63
Basic
2,632.1
2,632.8
2,645.1
Diluted
2,674.0
2,670.7
2,684.3
Net earnings
Net earnings per share
Average shares outstanding
Source: Johnson & Johnson, Annual Report 2021
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EXHIBIT 2 Balance Sheet (in $ millions, except share and per share
amounts)
2021
2020
$ 14,487
13,985
17,121
11,200
15,283
13,576
Inventories
10,387
9,344
Prepaid expenses and other receivables
3,701
3,132
Total current assets
60,979
51,237
Property, plant and equipment, net
18,962
18,766
Intangible assets, net
46,392
53,402
Goodwill
35,246
36,393
Deferred taxes on income
10,223
8,534
Other assets
10,216
6,562
Total assets
$ 182,018
174,894
Loans and notes payable
$ 3,766
2,631
Accounts payable
11,055
9,505
Accrued liabilities
13,612
13,968
Accrued rebates, returns and promotions
12,095
11,513
Accrued compensation and employee related obligations
3,586
3,484
1,112
1,392
45,226
42,493
Assets
Current assets
Cash and cash equivalents
Marketable securities
Accounts receivable trade, less allowances for doubtful
accounts $230 (2020, $293)
Liabilities and Shareholders’ Equity
Current liabilities
Accrued taxes on income
Total current liabilities
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2021
2020
29,985
32,635
Deferred taxes on income
7,487
7,214
Employee related obligations
8,898
10,771
Long-term taxes payable
5,713
6,559
Other liabilities
10,686
11,944
Total liabilities
107,995
111,616
—
—
3,120
3,120
Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss)
(13,058)
(15,242)
Retained earnings
123,060
113,890
113,122
101,768
39,099
38,490
74,023
63,278
$ 182,018
174,894
Long-term debt
Commitments and Contingencies
Shareholders’ equity
Preferred stock — without par value (authorized and unissued
2,000,000 shares)
Common stock — par value $1.00 per share (authorized
4,320,000,000 shares; issued 3,119,843,000 shares)
Less: common stock held in treasury, at cost (490,878,000
shares and 487,331,000 shares)
Total shareholders’ equity
Total liabilities and shareholders’ equity
Source: Johnson & Johnson, Annual Report 2021.
However, even as it has grown and become more diversified, J&J has struggled to find
a way to manage its vast portfolio of diversified businesses. Much of its growth has
come from acquisitions and it has developed a culture of granting considerable
autonomy to each of the firms that it has absorbed. Although this was intended to
cultivate an entrepreneurial attitude among each of its units, this has prevented J&J
from instilling a strong set of controls, such as for quality standards. It has also
prevented the firm from pursuing opportunities on which its various units could
combine their different areas of expertise.
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Former CEOs William Weldon and Alex Gorsky had pushed harder to weave together
the operations of the different units. The need for greater oversight became more
urgent after the firm ran into quality issues with some of its well-known products. But
like Gorsky and Weldon before him, new CEO Joaquin Duato realized that J&J must
try to find a balance between its new push for greater control and its traditional
emphasis on autonomy throughout the organization.
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Johnson & Johnson
Cultivating Entrepreneurship
Johnson & Johnson was founded in 1886 by three brothers named Johnson. The
company grew slowly for a generation before Robert Wood Johnson II decided
reluctantly to take the family business public. He fretted about the effects that market
pressures would have on the company’s practices and values, which led him to write a
307-word statement of corporate principles. This spelled out that J&J’s primary
responsibility was to patients and physicians, followed by employees, and then by
communities. Shareholders were placed last on the list. This credo is inscribed in stone
at the entrance of the firm’s headquarters and is still routinely invoked around the
company.
Over the years, as J&J has grown by acquisitions of firms engaged in some aspect of
health care, it has been guided by its credo. The task has become more challenging as
J&J has developed into an astonishingly complex enterprise, made up of over 260
different subsidiaries that have been broken down into three different divisions. The
most widely known of these is the division that makes consumer products such as
Johnson & Johnson baby care products, Band-Aid adhesive strips, and Visine eye
drops. Its pharmaceuticals division sells several blockbuster drugs such as anemia drug
Procrit and schizophrenia drug Risperdal. Its medical devices division is responsible
for best-selling products such as Depuy orthopedic joint replacements and Cypher
coronary stents.
In particular, J&J’s credo has kept the firm focused on health care, even as it has
expanded into several different business segments. Furthermore, it has pushed the
company to adopt a decentralized approach in managing its different businesses. Most
of its far-flung subsidiaries across its three divisions were acquired because of the
potential demonstrated by some promising new products in its pipeline. Each of these
units was therefore granted near-total autonomy to develop and expand upon their
best-selling products in order to better serve their patients (see
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Exhibit 3).
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Johnson & Johnson
EXHIBIT 3 Segment Information
Johnson & Johnson is made up of over 260 different companies, many of which it has acquire
the years. These individual companies have been assigned to three different divisions.
Geographic Areas
Sales to Customers
(Dollars in
Millions)
2021
2020
2019
United States
$ 6,516
$ 6,362
$ 5,839
International
8,119
7,691
8,059
14,635
14,053
13,898
United States
27,954
25,735
23,874
International
24,126
19,837
18,324
Total
52,080
45,572
42,198
United States
12,686
11,036
12,384
International
14,374
11,923
13,579
Total
27,060
22,959
25,963
Worldwide
93,775
82,584
82,059
Consumer—
Total
Pharmaceutical
—
Medical
Devices—
total
Business Segments
Income Before Tax
Identifiable Ass
(Dollars in
Millions)
2021
2020
2019
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Geographic Areas
Sales to Customers
(Dollars in
Millions)
Consumer
2021
2020
2019
$ 1,294
(1,064)
2,061
$25,081
Pharmaceutical
18,181
15,462
8,816
64,376
Medical
4,373
3,044
7,266
53,372
23,848
17,442
18,163
142,829
1,072
945
835
Devices
Total
Less: Expense
not allocated
to segments
General
39,189
corporate
Worldwide
22,776
16,497
17,328
182,018
total
It is widely believed that this independence has fostered an entrepreneurial attitude
that has kept J&J intensely competitive as others around it have faltered. The relative
autonomy that is accorded to the business units has also provided the firm with the
ability to respond swiftly to emerging opportunities. A strong enough commitment
from everyone throughout these units to the principles that have been laid out in the
credo were considered to be sufficient to provide the necessary direction.
J&J has actually been quite proud of the considerable freedom it has given to its
different subsidiaries in order to develop and execute their own strategies. Besides
developing their strategies, these units have also been allowed to work with their own
resources. Many of them have even been able to operate their own finance and human
resources departments. While this degree of decentralization has led to relatively high
overhead costs, none of the executives that have run J&J (Weldon included) had ever
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thought that this was too high a price to pay. “J&J is a huge company, but you didn’t
feel like you were in a big company,” recalled a scientist who used to work there.5
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Pushing for More Collaboration
The entrepreneurial culture that Johnson & Johnson developed over the years has
clearly allowed it to show a consistent level of high performance. Indeed, J&J has topnotch products in each of the areas in which it operates. It has been spending heavily
on research and development for many years, taking its position among the world’s top
spenders (see
Exhibit 4). It has been spending about 12 percent of its sales on
about 9,000 scientists working in research laboratories around the world. This allows
each of the three divisions to continually introduce promising new products.
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EXHIBIT 4 Research Expenditures (in $ millions)
2021
14.7
2020
12.2
2019
11.4
2018
10.8
2017
10.6
2016
9.1
2015
9.0
2014
8.5
2013
8.2
2012
7.7
2011
7.5
2010
6.9
2009
7.0
2008
7.6
2007
7.7
Source: Johnson & Johnson, Annual Report 2021.
In spite of the benefits that J&J has derived from giving its various enterprises
considerable autonomy, there have been growing concerns that they can no longer be
allowed to operate in near isolation. Shortly after Weldon had taken charge of the firm,
he realized that J&J was in a strong position to exploit new opportunities by drawing
on the diverse skills of its various subsidiaries across the three divisions. In particular,
he was aware that his firm may be able to derive more benefits from the combination
of its knowledge in drugs, devices, and diagnostics, since few companies were able to
match its reach and strength in these basic areas.
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This had led former CEO Weldon to find ways to make its fiercely
independent units work together. In his own words: “There is a convergence that will
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allow us to do things we haven’t done before.”6 Through pushing the various far-flung
units of the firm to pool their resources, Weldon believed the firm could become one
of the few that may actually be able to attain that often-promised, rarely delivered idea
of synergy. In order to pursue this, he created a corporate office that would get
business units to work together on promising new opportunities. “It’s a recognition
that there’s a way to treat disease that’s not in silos,” Weldon stated, referring to the
need for collaboration between J&J’s largely independent businesses.7
For the most part, however, Weldon confined himself to taking steps to foster better
communication and more frequent collaboration among J&J’s disparate operations.
He was convinced that such a push for communication and coordination would allow
the firm to develop the synergy he was seeking. But Weldon was also aware that any
effort to get the different business units to collaborate must not quash the
entrepreneurial spirit that had spearheaded most of the growth of the firm to date.
Jerry Caccott, managing director of consulting firm Strategic Decisions Group,
emphasized that cultivating those alliances “would be challenging in any organization,
but particularly in an organization that has been so successful because of its
decentralized culture.”8
These collaborative efforts did lead to the introduction of some highly successful
products (see
Exhibit 5). Even the company’s fabled consumer brands have started
to show growth as a result of increased collaboration between the consumer products
and pharmaceutical divisions. Its new liquid Band-Aid is based on a material used in a
wound-closing product sold by one of J&J’s hospital-supply businesses. And J&J has
used its prescription antifungal treatment, Nizoral, to develop a dandruff shampoo. In
fact, products that have developed in large part out of such a form of cross-fertilization
have allowed the firm’s consumer business to experience considerable internal growth.
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EXHIBIT 5 Significant Innovations
Antiseptic Surgery (1888)
Three brothers startup a firm based on antiseptics designed for modern surgical practices.
Band-Aids (1921)
Debuts the first commercial bandages that can be applied at home without oversight by a
professional.
No More Tears (1954)
Introduces a soap-free shampoo that is gentle enough to clean babies’ hair without
irritating their eyes.
Acuvue Contact Lenses (1987)
Offers the first-ever disposable lenses that can be worn for up to a week and then thrown
away.
Sirturo (2012)
Gets approval to launch a much-needed treatment for drug-resistant tuberculosis, the first
new medication to fight this disease in more than 40 years.
Covid-19 Vaccine (2021)
FDA and CDC approved vaccine to protect individuals 18 or older against the spread of
COVID-19 as a single primary vaccine dosage
Sources: Johnson & Johnson, Annual Reports, Bluestein, Will Johnson & Johnson’s New Innovation Centers Point The Way
Toward Its Future? Fast Company, February 10, 2014; FDA, Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine, FDA.gov, 2021.
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Facing Quality Concerns
Even as Johnson & Johnson had been trying to get more involved with the efforts of its
business units, it ran into problems with quality control with two of its divisions. Its
medical devices division had run into problems with its newest artificial hip. Although
it did eventually recall the device, it was not before rumors had begun to circulate that
company executives may have concealed information out of concern for firm profits.
The problems with the medical devices unit were compounded by serious issues that
arose with the consumer products unit, which led it to recall many of its products,
including the biggest children’s drug recall of all time.
Quality problems had arisen before, but they were usually fixed on a regular basis.
Analysts suggest that the problems at J&J’s McNeil division may have become
exacerbated in 2006 when J&J decided to combine it with the newly acquired
consumer health care unit from Pfizer. The firm believed that it could achieve $500 to
$600 million in annual savings by merging the two units together. After the merger,
McNeil was also transferred from the heavily regulated pharmaceutical division to the
marketing-driven consumer products division, which was not subjected to the same
level of quality control.
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Much of the blame for J&J’s stumbles fell on William C. Weldon, who
stepped down as CEO in April 2012 after presiding over one of the most tumultuous
decades in the firm’s history. Critics said the company’s once vaunted attention to
quality had slipped under his watch. Weldon, who had started out as a sales
representative at the firm, was believed to have been obsessed with meeting tough
performance targets, even by cutting costs that might affect quality. Erik Gordon, who
teaches business at University of Michigan, elaborated on this philosophy: “We will
make our numbers for the analysts, period.”9
In April 2012, J&J appointed Gorsky to lead the health care conglomerate out of the
difficulties with quality that it had faced over the past few years. He had been with the
firm since 1988, holding positions in its pharmaceutical businesses across Europe,
Africa, and the Middle East before leaving for a few years to work at Novartis. Shortly
after his return to J&J in 2008, he took over its medical devices unit that made the
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problematic hip implants. Since he took over, Gorsky has been dealing with the
various lawsuits the firm faced over the problems with its hip replacements, paying out
over $2.5 billion in settlements.10
Even as J&J was trying to get over its problems with the hip implants, there were rising
concerns about the asbestos that might have contaminated its talcum powder-based
products. Memos that were obtained during the court cases revealed that the firm may
have known about this problem for years, but it tried to deny the charge and downplay
any possible health threats from the use of their Baby Powder and other similar
products.11 This ongoing problem with quality issues also forced Gorsky to find ways
to gain more oversight over the firm’s 260-odd units. He wanted to push further than
Weldon to work with the various units of the firm to establish standard practices that
would allow the firm to pursue opportunities without posing risks to the firm’s longestablished reputation.
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Pushing for Tighter Integration
In order to gain more oversight over all of its units, Gorsky lured Sandra Peterson from
Bayer and gave her the position of group worldwide chairman. The newly created
position gave Peterson sweeping responsibility to oversee technology across the entire
firm. Gorsky believed that the very nature of the job required him to hire an outsider
who had not had much exposure to J&J’s existing culture. Because decentralization
had allowed each of the business units to make all of their own decisions, there had
been no consistency in their different practices. Gorsky wanted to bring order to this
unwieldly machine. “Sometimes a customer doesn’t want to deal with 250 J&J’s,” he
said.12
Peterson worked feverishly to align everything from HR policy to procurement
processes from the 250 business units that had been making their own decisions
independently. She covered everything from the timing of financial forecasts to
employee car policies. She also consolidated all of the firm’s data from all of its
120,000 employees to a single HR database. Her efforts to process tons of data each
day led to the creation of a warehouse, which contained upwards of 500 terabytes of
data. By the time Peterson decided to leave J&J in October 2018, she claimed that her
streamlining process would save the firm about $1 billion. Since Peterson’s departure,
the company has been able to reconfigure her position by separating it based on
product focus. J&J now has 3 separate Worldwide Chairmen responsible for running
the company’s 3 distinct product segments: Consumer Health, Pharmaceuticals, and
Medical Devices.
A far more significant effort had already been initiated by former global head of
pharmaceuticals Paul Stoffels when he was appointed to the position a few years ago.
All of the units that operated within the pharmaceutical division had also operated
with complete autonomy. In particular, J&J’s seven different drug R&D organizations
had operated in completely siloed fashion. In some cases, multiple companies pursued
the development of the same drugs and each had its own system for handling clinical
or regulatory development. Stoffels merged all of the units under his purview into one
group and organized it to target 11 different diseases. In the process, 12 of the
division’s 25 facilities were shuttered and nearly 200 projects were slashed.
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This new integrated unit developed a streamlined development process, a highly
coordinated system that Stoffels called Accererando. Under this model, global teams
(statisticians in China, data managers in India, regulatory folks in Europe) work 24/7
to speed drugs to market. The assembly-line approach has cut months and, in some
cases, years off the development time. Its increase in drug approvals put J&J in a
league of its own. “No other company has come close to that,” said Bernard Munos, a
pharmaceutical innovation consultant.13
Stoffels had accomplished more than just reducing the time needed to bring drugs to
market. He had begun to look for ideas from all sources, whether from any of J&J’s
own business units or from entrepreneurs or scientists outside the firm. He set up four
innovation centers in biotech clusters (Cambridge, MA; Menlo Park, CA; London; and
Shanghai) around the world, places where scientific entrepreneurs can interact with
J&J’s own drug and technology scouts. His flexible approach with these outsiders lets
J&J work with them more casually and helps build stronger relationships. Since 2013,
the firm has reviewed more than 3,400 opportunities through these centers, leading to
200 partnerships.
After Stoffels announced his retirement at the end of 2021, new appointee Jennifer
Taubert will look to continue his legacy and J&J’s mission helping relieve patients with
a variety of issues such as cancer and mental illness.
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Page C260
Is There a Cure Ahead?
Gorsky’s biggest challenge had come from a demand that Johnson & Johnson might
be better off if it was broken off into smaller companies, perhaps along the lines of its
different divisions. There were growing concerns about the ability of the conglomerate
to provide sufficient supervision to all of its subsidiaries that were spread all over the
globe. Gorsky dismissed this, claiming that J&J drew substantial benefits from the
diversified nature of its businesses. Given the enormous shifts in the health care
industry and the large number of government and institutional customers and partners
involved, he believed that the firm’s huge scale could be a rare asset for negotiating
deals.
In support of this belief, Gorsky pointed to J&J’s acquisition of Auris Health for
approximately $3.4 billion in cash. The acquisition would accelerate the firm’s entry
into surgical robotics and other interventional applications that have shown
considerable potential for growth. “We believe the combination of best-in-class
robotics, advanced instrumentation, and unparalleled end-to-end connectivity will
make a meaningful difference in patient outcomes,” said Ashley McEvoy, executive
vice president, who is in charge of J&J’s medical devices division.14 In another step,
the firm has been working on an app in collaboration with Apple for its watch that can
provide better data on cardiac issues.
Even as the now former CEO Gorsky plotted a course for the future of J&J, he was
aware that its stock had been struggling recently because of some slower-growing
segments of its business. He realized that it might not be possible to count on much
growth from its existing model that granted considerable autonomy to each of its
businesses. Above all, he had begun to feel strongly that he must provide more
direction for these units, partly to encourage them to collaborate with each other in
order to pursue emerging opportunities. He also understood that it is critical for J&J to
take steps to develop sufficient controls that can minimize problems with quality
control in the future.
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However, it seems that J&J has once again run into trouble with a once-deemed prime
opportunity for expansion. In late 2021 it was asserted that J&J made false claims and
false promises during acquisition negotiations with Auris Health. J&J allegedly
“misrepresented their intention for the robotic surgery” when they acquired Auris in
2019. The complaints cited the release of reserves related to payments within the
agreement, as well as J&J’s promising autonomy and not granting autonomy postmerger.15 J&J has denied any and all misconduct.
As did much of the economy, J&J experienced pandemic slowdowns in 2020-2021, as
well as a delay in a new MedTech production called Ottava. With their reputation
continuing to decline, experts are starting to express their discontent with the health
care giant’s future. “This is a company that was purer than Caesar’s wife, this was the
gold standard, and all of a sudden it just seems like things are breaking down,” said
William Trombetta, a professor of pharmaceutical marketing at Saint Joseph’s
University in Philadephia.16
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ENDNOTES
1. Congressional Research Service. 2021. Operation warp speed contracts for covid-19
vaccines and ancillary vaccination materials. March 1, p. 2.
2. Robbins, R. et al. 2022. J&J pauses production of its Covid vaccine despite
persistent need. New York Times. February 8,
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/08/business/johnson-johnson-covidvaccine.html.
3. Mishra, Manas, and Carl O’Donnell. J&J expects jump in COVID vaccine sales in
2022, eyes device deals. Reuters. January 25,
https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/jj-expects-up-35-blncovid-vaccine-sales-this-year-2022-01-25/.
4. Fry, E. 2016. Can big still be beautiful? Fortune, August 1, p. 84.
5. Thomas, K., and R. Abelson. 2012. J&J chief to resign one role. New York Times,
February 22, p. B8.
6. Thomas, K. 2012. J&J’s next chief is steeped in sales culture. New York Times,
February 24, p. B.1.
7. Loftus, P., and S. S. Wang. 2009. J&J sales show health care feels the pinch. Wall
Street Journal, January 21, p. B1.
8. Johnson, A. 2007. J&J’s consumer play paces growth. Wall Street Journal, January
24, p. A3.
9. Thomas, K. 2012. J&J’s next chief is steeped in sales culture. New York Times,
February 24, p. B.6.
0. Bellon, T. 2019. J&J, U.S. states settle hip implant claims for $120 million. Reuters,
January 22, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-johnson-johnson-settlement/jj-u-sstates-settle-hip-implant-claims-for-120-million-idUSKCN1PG26K.
11. Girion, L. 2018. Powder keg. Reuters, December 14,
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/johnsonandjohnson-cancer/.
2. Fry, E. 2016. Can big still be beautiful? Fortune, August 1, p. 86.
3. Ibid., p. 88.
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4. Press release. 2019. Johnson & Johnson announces agreement to acquire Auris
Health, Inc. February 13.
5. Newmarker, C. 2021. J&J must face lawsuit in $3.4B Auris Health acquisition.
December 15, https://www.therobotreport.com/jj-must-face-lawsuit-auris-healthacquisition/.
6. Singer, N. 2010. Hip implants are recalled by J&J unit. New York Times, August 27,
p. B1.
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Content Rubric MGMT 495 Case Analysis
Content Area
Executive Summary/
Overview
Issue Statement
(Problem Statement)
Analysis
Alternatives
Recommendations
Conclusion
Meets
Expectations
Effective summary of
the case analysis
paper (not the case itself).
Information is relevant.
Includes
recommendations for the
company. Overview of the
facts of the case.
Focuses on a strategic
issue within the scope of
the guiding question. Does
recognize nuances of the
issue such as filling in
important information,
stating assumptions, or
assigning responsibilities.
Effective analysis helping
to identify causes of the
strategic issue or helping
to formulate effective
solutions. Use of concepts
(such as SWOT), theories,
or research covered in the
course.
Provides strategic
solutions that address the
strategic issue. This should
be a subset of your
recommendations. These
alternatives must address
the issues presented in
your problem statement.
Strategic solution is
recommended. Effective
course of action is
provided describing
implementation. May be
divided in short-term
“quick wins” and longterm actions.
Dedicated Summary
Conclusion of the case
study. With forward
looking statements.
Approaches
Expectations
Simple outline of the case
analysis paper. No
recommendations
included.
Does not
Meet Expectations
Simple overview of the
case itself and/or
overview of company
history.
Focuses on strategic issues
mentioned in the case but
may be
