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MBA 699 Strategic Plan Research Guide

Where to Look for Information?

These are the potential information sources for analyzing the company's current situation:

  • Corporate Overview: The Corporate's Website (About Us/Our Story/Corporate History); the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Filing Form 10-K (Item 1 "Business").
  • Current Strategies: a public company may directly disclose their corporate and/or business strategy on their website (such as BD, Barclays, Moncler Group), in their Annual Reports, in Form 10-K (Item 1 "Business"; Item 7 MD&A), Conference Calls with investors or analysts, or Events (e.g. Walmart ), etc. A large corporate's current strategy may be analyzed by analysts, researchers, scholars, etc. and you will probably find these analyses in leading business magazines (e.g. Forbes, Fortune, Harvard Business Review) and newspapers (e.g. Wall Street Journal). An online Google search may also work, but pay attention to the timely analysis from reputable sources (e.g. What the latest iPhone reveals about Apple’s strategy - Financial Times; Walmart Challenges Amazon With ‘Less Is More’ Strategy - Forbes), and stay away from the (not-so-current) analysis likely done by students as an assignment (example 1, example 2). When you hit the paywall, you can consult the database/sources from this library guide or contact the research help at the library.
  • Corporate Governance: company's website - Investor Relations page; or Form 10-K (Item 10 “Directors, Executive Officers and Corporate Governance” )
  • Ethics and Social Responsibility: company's website - Investor Relations page or press release. But you are more likely to find the breaches of the ESR from sources outside of the corporation in public news outlets (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal) or Form 10-K (Item 3 “Legal Proceedings”).

Finding Investor Relations and 10-K

The company's website - Investor Relations page is the most convenient and updated source for finding the company's Form 10-K, Annual Report, conference call recordings/transcripts, and events. In the case that the company's investor relations page is difficult to find on the company's public-facing website such as Google, Amazon, Walmart, an online search with the company's name and Investor Relations would easily get you to the right place.

You can also find the company's SEC filings and Form 10-K through SEC Edgar. More information is available at the library guide SEC Filings Edgar.

Mergent Online

Mergent Online provides a snapshot, summary, and also detailed report of a public company's business and financial backgrounds and conditions. It harvested the company's key information from its SEC filings and also provide access to the copy of its annual report, Form 10-K, Conference Call materials, and some news sources and event updates.

Magazines and Newspapers

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