Title of Case Study: Cirque du Soleil company
How to Write the Case Study Report?
As part of your term project requirements, you must develop a written report that represents your analysis of the case study. Although, in this course, you have an opportunity to brainstorm the case with your classmates in either the Term Project Discussion Forum (available in the Term Project folder) or the Term Project Collaboration Chat (which must be accessed using the Tools button, then Blackboard Collaborate), you will be submitting an individual report; not a group report.
Note: Your report will be submitted to a Turnitin drop box which will check for plagiarism; therefore, you are well-advised to avoid duplicating other students’ reports. Should you use any quotes or passages from the case study, you must insert a citation (in parenthesis) immediately after the sentence or paragraph (within the Body of the report) where the information was used. Each citation must also be listed on the last page of the report in a page with the heading ‘Works Cited’ or ‘References.’ All citations must be formatted using the APA (American Psychological Association) citation formats. The use of URL’s is prohibited.
When you write a report of a case study, assume that your audience is a manager who has asked you to review the facts and make a recommendation. Obviously, in this course, your instructor assumes the role of the manager. The structure of your written report is critical. Generally, if you follow the steps for how to analyze a business case study (discussed in the document by the same name in the Term Project folder), you already will have a good structure for your written discussion. The body of the report (exclusive of executive summary and appendices) should be from six to 10 typewritten pages double-spaced, appropriately formatted in report form. Spelling, grammatical, and typographical errors indicate a lack of professionalism. The quality of the report matters more than its length, however.
Organizational Behavior and Effectivenes
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Overview of the Report Format –
Executive Summary (1 page, single-spaced) Report Main Body (6-10 pages maximum, double-spaced, paginated; use Headings & sub-headings
A. List of Key People Involved in the Case along with each person’s respective role
B. Outline of the Key Problem(s)
C. Describe the Corporate-level Strategy
D. Describe the Business-level Strategy
E. Develop a SWOT Analysis
F. Solutions and Recommendations
G. Conclusion
1. Additional Comments I. References/Works Cited (must use APA-formatting for all citations)
III. Appendices (tables and exhibits as appropriate)
Label each of the parts with the subheading indicated. More detail is provided below on how to write each of these sections.
What to consider as you write your case study report – (Note: This information can best be done after you have engaged in a thorough analysis of the case study. See the ‘How Analyze the Case Study’ document in the Term Project folder).
I. Executive Summary – All reports begin with an Executive Summary about the case. The executive summary is to be written in memoranda form (single-spaced) from you to the manager. It provides an overview of the report to follow. In the executive summary you outline briefly what the company does, how it developed historically, what problems it is experiencing, and how you are going to approach the issues in the case write-up. Do this sequentially by writing, for example, “First, I will discuss the environment of Company X…Third, I will discuss Company X’s business-level strategy… Last, I will provide recommendations for turning around Company X’s business.”
II. Body of the Report
A. The Key People involved in the Case and their respective roles in the organization and influence regarding the situation – (Writing about this information is straight-forward and needs no explanation).
Organizational Behavior and Effectiveness (MG-313-44) Instructor: J. Y. Flowers
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B. Statement of the Problem(s)
What I want you to be able to do is to demonstrate what you have been learning (in your college courses) by considering and associating the issues, challenges and the human dynamics in the case study (on the organizational- and individual-level) and using your understanding of organizational behavior and effectiveness; or what you have learned about human resources management and other business or management courses that you have taken (e.g. issues, concepts, models, etc.)
Discuss each problem separately along with its associated parts. Use headings and sub-headings to group associated topics and distinguish them from other items in your report.
Concisely state each key problem that you perceived in the case. State what kind of problem it is based on what you have learned in your courses. (For example, if it is a human resources problem – what are the implications to HR management regarding how the problem should be addressed? Use this same line of critical-thinking to discuss what you perceive as parallels to other areas of management that you have been exposed to in your college courses, including management principles, OB, marketing, etc.) Include any sub-parts of the problem and all requirements that have been established for a satisfactory solution (if one was discussed in the case).
Briefly indicate also any critical restrictions that have been placed on the acceptable solution such as limitation on monetary expenditures, time, distribution, or personnel. State the problems in terms of possible action to be taken (e.g., “How to improve . . . so as to achieve . . . without an undue expenditure of . . .?”)
State the problem, not the symptoms. Unless your diagnosis of the problem is correct, all subsequent decision making will be flawed. Also be sure that you have indicated the significance or importance of the problem. What will be the implications of a delay or do-nothing decision?
Sections C, D and E –
Although you will discuss these sections separately (using appropriate Headings and sub-headings), nonetheless, they are all (strategically) related. Therefore, in this second part of the case write-up, the strategic-analysis section, do the SWOT analysis, analyze and discuss the nature and problems of the company’s business-level and corporate strategy, and then analyze its structure and control systems. (Note: Use the SWOT Analysis document in the folder as a reference for the kinds of organizational aspects that (internal and external) that should be described). Make sure you use plenty of headings and subheadings to structure your discussion. For example, have separate sections on any important conceptual tool you use. Thus, you might have a section on the results of your SWOT Analysis and Porter’s five forces model as part of your analysis of the environment. You might offer a separate section on portfolio techniques when
Organizational Behavior and Effectiveness
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analyzing a company’s corporate strategy. In other words, tailor the sections and subsections to the specific issues of importance in the case.
Note: The folder contains a SWOT Analysis tool and a list of Porter’s Five Competitive Forces. You should use these tools as you ‘peel the orange’ in your analysis and to write about them in this section.
F. Solutions and Recommendations
In the third part of the case write-up, present your solutions and recommendations. Be comprehensive, and make sure they are in line with the previous analysis so that the recommendations fit together and move logically from one to the next.
Don’t try to summarize all the data in the case. Instead, focus on the key factors that will impact what recommendations you make regarding the key problems that you discussed in an earlier section of your report. Use a table in this section. Consider using sub-heads to group related items. Comment briefly on each factor. Just identify concisely why they matter at this point. Your recommendations or solutions should be stated using the language of business that you are learning and have learned in your college courses. Problem Recommendation
III. Comments – I want you to discuss the ways that this assignment has helped you grow in the ability to engage in critical-thinking through understanding how to analyze a business situation and write a report about the results of your analysis.
IV. Referenced / Works Cited – You may label this page using either Heading; however, your citations must be formatted correctly using APA-standards. I recommend that before you submit your report, that you send it to Smart inking™ for review or have it reviewed in the writing lab at the College.