• Axel Springer And The Quest For The Boundaries Of Corporate Responsibility Pdf
• Axel Springer And The Quest For The Boundaries Of Corporate Responsibility Case Analysis

.Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Case Study Solution & AnalysisIn most courses studied at Harvard Business schools, students are provided with a case study. Major HBR cases concerns on a whole industry, a whole organization or some part of organization; profitable or non-profitable organizations. Student’s role is to analyze the case and diagnose the situation, identify the problem and then give appropriate recommendations and steps to be taken.To make a detailed case analysis, student should follow these steps:STEP 1: Reading Up Harvard Case Study Method Guide:Case study method guide is provided to students which determine the aspects of problem needed to be considered while analyzing a case study.

The publishing house Axel Springer AG serves as good example as it wonders about the scope of their responsibility: After making the strategic decision to move aggressively into the field of. Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Harvard Case Study Solution and Analysis of Case Study Solution & AnalysisIn most courses studied at Harvard Business schools, students are provided with a case study.

It is very important to have a thorough reading and understanding of guidelines provided. However, poor guide reading will lead to misunderstanding of case and failure of analyses. It is recommended to read guidelines before and after reading the case to understand what is asked and how the questions are to be answered. Therefore, in-depth understanding f case guidelines is very important.

Harvard Case Study SolutionsSTEP 2: Reading The Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Harvard Case Study:To have a complete understanding of the case, one should focus on case reading. It is said that case should be read two times.

Initially, fast reading without taking notes and underlines should be done. Initial reading is to get a rough idea of what information is provided for the analyses. Then, a very careful reading should be done at second time reading of the case. This time, highlighting the important point and mark the necessary information provided in the case.

In addition, the quantitative data in case, and its relations with other quantitative or qualitative variables should be given more importance. Also, manipulating different data and combining with other information available will give a new insight. Pest analysisPEST FACTORS:POLITICAL:. Next political elections and changes that will happen in the country due to these elections. Strong and powerful political person, his point of view on business policies and their effect on the organization.

Strength of property rights and law rules. And its ratio with corruption and organized crimes. Changes in these situation and its effects. Change in Legislation and taxation effects on the company.

Trend of regulations and deregulations. Effects of change in business regulations. Timescale of legislative change. Other political factors likely to change for Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged.ECONOMICAL:. Position and current economy trend i.e. Growing, stagnant or declining. Exchange rates fluctuations and its relation with company.

Change in Level of customer’s disposable income and its effect. Fluctuation in unemployment rate and its effect on hiring of skilled employees. Access to credit and loans.

And its effects on company. Effect of globalization on economic environment. Considerations on other economic factorsSOCIO-CULTURAL:. Change in population growth rate and age factors, and its impacts on organization. Effect on organization due to Change in attitudes and generational shifts. Standards of health, education and social mobility levels.

Its changes and effects on company. Employment patterns, job market trend and attitude towards work according to different age groups.

Porter’s five forces modelThese forces refers to micro environment and the company ability to serve its customers and make a profit. These five forces includes three forces from horizontal competition and two forces from vertical competition.

The five forces are discussed below:. THREAT OF NEW ENTRANTS:. as the industry have high profits, many new entrants will try to enter into the market.

However, the new entrants will eventually cause decrease in overall industry profits. Therefore, it is necessary to block the new entrants in the industry. Following factors is describing the level of threat to new entrants:. Barriers to entry that includes copy rights and patents. High capital requirement.

Government restricted policies. Switching cost. Access to suppliers and distributions. Customer loyalty to established brands.

THREAT OF SUBSTITUTES:. this describes the threat to company. If the goods and services are not up to the standard, consumers can use substitutes and alternatives that do not need any extra effort and do not make a major difference. For example, using Aquafina in substitution of tap water, Pepsi in alternative of Coca Cola. The potential factors that made customer shift to substitutes are as follows:. Price performance of substitute. Switching costs of buyer.

Products substitute available in the market. Reduction of quality. Close substitution are available. DEGREE OF INDUSTRY RIVALRY:. the lesser money and resources are required to enter into any industry, the higher there will be new competitors and be an effective competitor. It will also weaken the company’s position. Following are the potential factors that will influence the company’s competition:.

Competitive advantage. Continuous innovation. Sustainable position in competitive advantage.

Level of advertising. Competitive strategy.

BARGAINING POWER OF BUYERS:. it deals with the ability of customers to take down the prices. It mainly consists the importance of a customer and the level of cost if a customer will switch from one product to another. The buyer power is high if there are too many alternatives available. And the buyer power is low if there are lesser options of alternatives and switching.

Following factors will influence the buying power of customers:. Bargaining leverage. Switching cost of a buyer.

Buyer price sensitivity. Competitive advantage of company’s product. BARGAINING POWER OF SUPPLIERS:. this refers to the supplier’s ability of increasing and decreasing prices.

If there are few alternatives o supplier available, this will threat the company and it would have to purchase its raw material in supplier’s terms. However, if there are many suppliers alternative, suppliers have low bargaining power and company do not have to face high switching cost. The potential factors that effects bargaining power of suppliers are the following:. Input differentiation. Impact of cost on differentiation. Strength of distribution centers. Input substitute’s availability.STEP 7: VRIO Analysis of Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged:Vrio analysis for Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged case study identified the four main attributes which helps the organization to gain a competitive advantages.

The author of this theory suggests that firm must be valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable and perfectly non sustainable. Therefore there must be some resources and capabilities in an organization that can facilitate the competitive advantage to company.

The four components of VRIO analysis are described below:VALUABLE: the company must have some resources or strategies that can exploit opportunities and defend the company from major threats. If the company holds some value then answer is yes. Resources are also valuable if they provide customer satisfaction and increase customer value. This value may create by increasing differentiation in existing product or decrease its price. Is these conditions are not met, company may lead to competitive disadvantage. Therefore, it is necessary to continually review the Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged company’s activities and resources values.RARE: the resources of the Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged company that are not used by any other company are known as rare. Rare and valuable resources grant much competitive advantages to the firm.

However, when more than one few companies uses the same resources and provide competitive parity are also known as rare resources. Even, the competitive parity is not desired position, but the company should not lose its valuable resources, even they are common.COSTLY TO IMITATE: the resources are costly to imitate, if other organizations cannot imitate it. However, imitation is done in two ways. One is duplicating that is direct imitation and the other one is substituting that is indirect imitation.Any firm who has valuable and rare resources, and these resources are costly to imitate, have achieved their competitive advantage. However, resources should also be perfectly non sustainable.

The reasons that resource imitation is costly are historical conditions, casual ambiguity and social complexity.ORGANIZED TO CAPTURE VALUE: resources, itself, cannot provide advantages to organization until it is organized and exploit to do so. A firm (like Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged) must organize its management systems, processes, policies and strategies to fully utilize the resource’s potential to be valuable, rare and costly to imitate.STEP 8: Generating Alternatives For Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Case Solution:After completing the analyses of the company, its opportunities and threats, it is important to generate a solution of the problem and the alternatives a company can apply in order to solve its problems. To generate the alternative of problem, following things must to be kept in mind:. Realistic solution should be identified that can be operated in the company, with all its constraints and opportunities. as the problem and its solution cannot occur at the same time, it should be described as mutually exclusive. it is not possible for a company to not to take any action, therefore, the alternative of doing nothing is not viable. Student should provide more than one decent solution.

Axel Springer And The Quest For The Boundaries Of Corporate Responsibility Pdf

Providing two undesirable alternatives to make the other one attractive is not acceptable.Once the alternatives have been generated, student should evaluate the options and select the appropriate and viable solution for the company.STEP 9: Selection Of Alternatives For Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Case Solution:It is very important to select the alternatives and then evaluate the best one as the company have limited choices and constraints. Therefore to select the best alternative, there are many factors that is needed to be kept in mind.

The criteria’s on which business decisions are to be selected areas under:. Improve profitability. Increase sales, market shares, return on investments. Customer satisfaction.

Brand image. Corporate mission, vision and strategy. Resources and capabilitiesAlternatives should be measures that which alternative will perform better than other one and the valid reasons. In addition, alternatives should be related to the problem statements and issues described in the case study.STEP 10: Evaluation Of Alternatives For Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Case Solution:If the selected alternative is fulfilling the above criteria, the decision should be taken straightforwardly. Best alternative should be selected must be the best when evaluating it on the decision criteria. Another method used to evaluate the alternatives are the list of pros and cons of each alternative and one who has more pros than cons and can be workable under organizational constraints.STEP 11: Recommendations For Axel Springer and the Quest for the Boundaries of Corporate Responsibility Abridged Case Study (Solution):There should be only one recommendation to enhance the company’s operations and its growth or solving its problems.

The decision that is being taken should be justified and viable for solving the problems.

The case deals with the quest for boundaries of corporates' social and environmental responsibility. It poses the question where the responsibility of a company might start or end in a given context and once the company has been able to assess the extent to which it holds itself responsible, what action it ought to take in this regard. In the case of Axel Springer the question is focused on the aspect how much responsibility the company might have for its supply chain: how far and how deep down the supply chain does or should responsibility of a corporation reach? On what facts does this responsibility depend?

Axel Springer And The Quest For The Boundaries Of Corporate Responsibility Case Analysis

The publishing house Axel Springer AG serves as good example as it wonders about the scope of their responsibility: After making the strategic decision to move aggressively into the field of digital news and media, the company wonders about their responsibility for digital devices, in particular with respect to conflict minerals that are extracted for the production and use of such electronic devices under highly problematic conditions.