MGT 499 (Prof. Leah Ndanga) Term Project - Company Research Paper Guide

Where to find the company's strategy?

1. Company Website: a public company may directly disclose their corporate and/or business strategy on their website (such as BD, Barclays, Moncler Group),
2. Annual Reports, or Form 10-K (Item 1 "Business"; Item 7 MD&A), 10-K is available on the company's website under Investor Relations, SEC Edgar Database, or Mergent Online Library Database.
3. Conference Calls with investors or analysts. The conference call transcripts may be available on the company's website under investor relations.
4. Events (e.g. Walmart's CFO's discussion on 2021 Morgan Stanley Virtual Global Consumer & Retail Conference and other events). 
5. Executive Interviews from magazines and news outlets. Search [company, executive name or role] AND [Strategy]

Where to find articles analyzing the company's strategy?

• Magazines, Newspapers, and Journals: 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). Through library databases Business Source Complete and U.S. Major Dailies you can search these sources altogether. Search [company name] AND [strategy]

The followings are examples of Magazine or Scholarly articles that can help you with the internal analysis:

Ritala, P., Golnam, A., & Wegmann, A. (2014). Coopetition-based business models: The case of Amazon. com. Industrial marketing management, 43(2), 236-249.

Podolny, J. M., & Hansen, M. T. (2020). How Apple is organized for innovation. Harvard Business Review, 98(6), 86-95.

Hoeft, F. (2021). Auto makers and radical innovation: culture, capital and talent form road blocks. Journal of Business Strategy. (mentioned Tesla)

• Online articles: When conducting an online search, 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.