Project 1: Mission, Vision, Social Responsibility, Strategic Planning  

Instructions:

Please select one of the following pairs of companies:

• General Motors and Toyota
• Wal-Mart and Target
• Bank of America and Wells Fargo
• Marriott Corporation and Hyatt
• Google and Yahoo

Using the companies’ investor Web sites, annual report, or other reliable web source (not a Wiki file), find the mission statement of each of the two companies.

• Prepare a well – reasoned analysis of the similarities and differences of the two organizations based on the mission statement.
• Discuss the quality of each mission statement based on concepts from the text. 
• Assess whether the mission statement clearly defines the organization and drives strategic decisions?
• Provide recommendations to the leadership team for improving the quality of the current mission statement.
• Discuss the “vision for each company.  Do the companies appear to be heading in the same direction? Explain your rationale and provide support for your position.

Select one of the companies in the pair and respond to the questions below.  Ensure that correlations are drawn between your responses and concepts discussed in the text.

·         How does the company respond to the issue of social responsibility? In what kinds of activities does the organization participate? Do you think its activities are appropriate? Explain you answer.

·         Prepare a SWOT analysis of the selected company, including at least two strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats each.

·         Based on concepts discussed in class, provide your recommendation for turning the weaknesses into strengths and the threats into opportunities.