Video guide to accompany Strategic Management, Canadian edition
Video Guide and Program Descriptions
The U.S. video series that accompanies Strategic Management: Creating Competitive Advantages consists of fifteen programs that enhance and bring to life the chapter material. They cover a wide range of topics and use real world examples to illustrate key strategic management concepts. The videos provide a useful supplement to lectures and text materials that can stimulate class discussions and enrich the learning experience.
The Video Grid that follows lists the programs and running times and identifies the Canadian edition chapters associated with each video.
This is followed by Program Descriptions that can be used as teaching notes. These descriptions are designed to maximize the benefits of using the video series by offering summary discussions of how each video relates to the chapters in the textbook.
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Video guide to accompany Strategic Management, Canadian edition
Video Grid – Use of U.S. videos with Canadian 3rd edition text
ProgramName / Length / Chapter 1
Strategic
Mgmt, Creating Competitive Advantages / Chapter 2
Analyzing the External
Environment of the Firm / Chapter 3
Analyzing the Internal
Environment of the Firm / Chapter 4
Assessing the Intellectual
Assets of the Firm / Chapter 5
Business-Level
Strategy, Creating and Sustaining Competitive Advantages / Chapter 6
Corporate-Level
Strategy, Creating Value through Diversification / Chapter 7
International
Strategy, Creating Value in Global Markets / Chapter 8
Industry Change and Competitive Dynamics / Chapter 9
Creating Effective Organizational Designs / Chapter 10
Strategic Control and Corporate Governance / Chapter 11
Strategic Leadership, Creating a Learning, Ethical, and Socially Responsible Organization / Chapter 12
Managing Innovation and Fostering Entrepreneurship
Case 9 (a)
Kmart & Sears Merger / 2:20 / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 9 (b)
RETAIL Marriage between Kmart & Sears / 6:19 / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 10 (a)
Day in Court: Enron Trial & Corporate Crime / 2:10 / x / x / x / x
Case 10 (b)
Sherron Watkins Discusses Enron Verdict / 4:18 / x / x
Case 11 (a)
American Red Cross: Blood and Money / 10:08 / x / x / x
Case 11 (b)
Troubles at the American Red Cross / 12:01 / x / x / x
Case 12
Whole Foods Market / 11:57 / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 16 JetBlue Airway: High Touch / 10:31 / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 17
Panera Bread / 11:01 / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 18 (a) Southwest Airlines: LUV in the workplace / 9:54 / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 18 (b) Southwest CEO Gary Kelly / 4:00 / x / x / x / x
Case 19
Leading a Global Organization featuring Johnson & Johnson / 3:01 / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
Case 23 Linda McMahon, WWE / 4:25 / x / x / x / x / x / x / x / x
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Video guide to accompany Strategic Management, Canadian edition
Program Descriptions
Program 1 (Specialized Bicycle Components #1)
“DEVELOPING A STRATEGIC PLAN” Length: 10:14
This video is the first of two about the company Specialized Bicycle Components, Inc. (SBC) that builds parts and accessories for use in recreational and competitive biking. The company manufactures a line of innovative, high quality products. Emphasis in the first video is on strategy formulation.
Chapter 1
The video begins by highlighting the importance of vision, mission, and goals in strategic plan development. Its mission: “Provide the best ride possible.” Communicating and acting on that overarching mission is considered central to its success.
Chapter 2
The video emphasizes the importance of conducting external analysis to understand suppliers, customers, and competitors when developing a strategic plan. The founder describes the competitive climate in terms of strategic issues such as entry barriers, size, and agility.
Chapter 3
Techniques such as SWOT are suggested as part of the strategy formulation process (Sections of the film are divided into the four SWOT categories—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). In interviews, SBC managers state the company’s core competencies and address how the company builds on these to remain competitive. The video also emphasizes the importance of logistics and distribution and how the company competes with bike manufacturers overseas.
Chapter 5
The video describes its strategy of differentiation focus. It emphasizes quality and innovation and applies these goals toward three different customer categories —enthusiast technical riders, sports/fitness riders, and recreational riders. Another major customer is the bike retailers that sell SBC’s components. The strategy, therefore, must balance appealing to end users with building products that helps make retailers profitable.
Chapter 11
SBC reinforces its values and goals by stating them for all to see in the lobby of its headquarters. These include customer satisfaction, quality, innovation, teamwork, and profitability. The firm also seeks employees who are avid bikers and sponsors many bike-related and outdoor events.
Chapter 12
Located near Silicon Valley, SBC is a small business that began as an entrepreneurial start-up based on the vision of its founder Mike Sinyard. It began with a single product—a rugged, long-lasting tire. SBC continues to grow and has built its reputation on the motto, “innovate or die.” The founder says that its entrepreneurial approach makes it emphasize design and marketing, but that strategic planning and improving internal processes would strengthen the company.
Program 2 (Specialized Bicycle Components #2)
“IMPLEMENTING A STRATEGIC PLAN” Length: 9:52
This video is the second of two about the company Specialized Bicycle Components, Inc. (SBC) that builds parts and accessories for use in recreational and competitive biking. Emphasis in the second video is on control, leadership, responding to change and implementing strategy.
Chapter 1
The video describes how goals and plans evolve from its mission and how long-range planning is used on an annual basis to identify and implement new goals.
Chapter 4
SBC is idea-intensive rather than capital-intensive. It relies on the knowledge, insights, and enthusiasm of its employees to drive innovation and new product initiatives.
Chapter 7
As an international company that manufactures some parts overseas and sells its products in 13 different countries besides the U.S., SBC is sensitive to how its product lines and marketing messages are being received. It pursues a global strategy, but also endeavors to tailor products, pricing, and promotions to local markets as well.
Chapter 9
SBC recruits employees with drive and passion, most of whom love biking, and gets them involved in the company culture. It relies on trust and openness to manage the firm and generate new ideas. The culture helps maintain strategic control. SBC also believes that having measurable objectives is an effective way to compare itself to the competition. This includes measures such as tracking phone calls from customers, credit department performance, product quality and availability, and warehouse turnaround.
Chapter 10
Everyone at SBC, including CEO Mike Sinyard, has offices without barriers. The company emphasizes an open door policy as part of its management system. It describes two strategic product units—bikes and accessories—and addresses how these areas coordinate with the R&D, marketing, finance, and human relations functions.
Chapter 11
The video states that implementation begins with leadership. It describes how the company had to respond quickly after gathering feedback from its retail dealers that indicated one of its products did not meet its quality standards. How companies learn and implement “course corrections” and the role of leadership in being responsive to change is discussed.
Program 3 (Alligator Records)
“ALLIGATOR RECORDS” Length: 11:39
This video provides an overview of the entrepreneurial firm, Alligator Records. It began by releasing a single album and grew into one of the most respected labels in the world of blues music. The video emphasizes the importance of marketing in strategic positioning.
Chapter 1
Alligator Records founder Bruce Iglauer describes how his love of blues music guides the vision and mission of the business. He explains the “bringing the music forward” has always been more important than making a lot of money.
Chapter 3
The video emphasizes the importance of creating value as a key to success. It addresses the primary value chain activities of marketing and sales and service, and describes “value-driven marketing” activities aimed at understanding customers and building long term relationships with them.
Chapter 4
The video demonstrates how a record label leverages intellectual property. “We create sales for the records by making the artists visible.” This effort also involves developing artists’ skills to increase their appeal to audiences.
Chapter 5
Alligator Records is successful because it has effectively focused on the blues music niche. It follows a differentiation focus strategy by showcasing its artists in many venues, producing high quality records, and aggressively promoting them.
Chapter 9
Alligator faces a unique challenge in terms of strategic control. Appearances by the artists have to be managed and coordinated with store promotions and music releases in order to maximize sales and enhance the artists’ appeal. A full time staff is used to achieve this. Additionally, the music business is not “traditional” in terms of how the work is accomplished and must rely on more boundary-less approaches to management.
Chapter 12
Alligator has taken a “do it yourself” approach from the start. From the start, it has relied on its own bootstrapping efforts to grow and promote the business. Founded in 1971 with $2500 received as an inheritance, it began by producing one record per year. Today, although it has been nominated for over 30 Grammy awards, it is still a small business in an industry dominated by large companies. It has remained successful by commanding high respect for its quality work.
Program 4 (Various Women Executives)
“WOMEN MAKE BETTER UPPER LEVEL MANAGERS” Length: 3:10
This video discusses the reasons why women are often highly effective top managers. It notes that there are only three females CEOs in the Fortune 500 and in the 1990s, only five percent of senior managers were women. Based on results of a study presented briefly in the video, however, that may be changing.
Chapter 4
Some of the stereotypes about women were refuted by the study presented in the video, suggesting that the contribution of women in terms of human and social capital may need to be reconsidered. Women executives emphasize teamwork but are also good at giving direction and feedback. This quality should enhance women’s ability to “combine and leverage” resources—
a key to value creation in the knowledge economy. Women are also good at organizing, but find it difficult to compromise in business situations.
Chapter 11
Women executives outscored their male counterparts in a study of senior managers. Among the categories where women excelled were leadership and problem solving. “What emerged was the picture of women executives as having a more appropriate style for managing in the new millennium.” Among other things, women in the study were found to be more decisive and direct.
Chapter 12
Women, according to the video, are “more likely to step up to the plate and be willing to take charge.” However, they are not as aggressive and are less likely to be risk takers, which may impact their effectiveness as entrepreneurs.
Program 5 (Southwest Airlines)
“SOUTHWEST AIRLINES” Length: 9:48
This video describes Southwest Airlines’ (SWA) strategic management process that consists of strategy “formulation, implementation, and control.” A major emphasis in the video is on the role and importance of human resources.
Chapter 2
When it was founded, Southwest Airlines perceived an opportunity in regional markets. They also found that passengers appreciated strong customer service.
Chapter 4
Southwest determined early on that human and social capital could be a source of competitive advantages. By making SWA a great place to work, the company got the best from its employees. It also created a workplace environment that supports human development and fun among employees. Southwest’s workforce is one of its most valuable assets.
Chapter 5
The video emphasizes Southwest’s low cost strategy and describes the importance of strategic thinking and management in maintaining the success of this approach.
Chapter 9
Employee unity and company pride contribute to the success of SWA. Employees are able to identify with the culture, which motivates their positive attitude, encourages teamwork, and strengthens performance. The video presents the concept of culture as consisting of underlying assumptions, espoused values, and artifacts.
Southwest places strong emphasis on strategic control. By measuring performance and comparing it to a standard, managers can make corrections as needed. The video references financial outcome controls, input controls, and behavioral controls.
Chapter 10
Employees are involved in the organizational design process. Even though the company has grown large, it still tries to maintain a small company perspective based on teamwork. Involving employees in design and creating a flexible structure contributes to Southwest’s competitiveness.
Program 6 (Brinker International)
“AN INTRODUCTION TO BRINKER INTERNATIONAL:
IT’S STRUCTURE AND STRATEGIC PLAN” Length: 8:53
This video presents the business strategy and scope of restaurant conglomerate Brinker International. It describes a period when Brinker divested low performing restaurants and acquired new ones. The video consists of an interview with President and CEO Ron McDougall.
Chapter 2
The video begins with a brief description of the “food away from home” industry.
Chapter 3
Brinker uses a value-added approach designed to increase customer appeal and exceed the product offerings of competitors. It has used world-class chefs to strengthen its menus and has won many awards for outstanding performance. They have built a management system in which primary and support activities work together to focus efforts on each concept, but also allows for high flexibility to shift resources as necessary.
Chapter 5
Concept teams are being used to develop business level strategies for each restaurant. These teams address the vision and mission, concept personality, image and culture, operational and culinary expertise, and marketing skills of each restaurant concept.