The strategic management case study is the piece of writing that implies the analysis of specific companies’ performance on their way to achieving the strategic goals. Factually, by analyzing the strategic management case study, the understanding of how managers should make business successful becomes greatly improved. In addition, it allows forming the own skills of a proper handling of company’s resources. A typical strategic management case study includes several elements: identification, evaluation, and recommendations. However, the form of the strategic management case study may significantly vary due to the diversity of management challenges.
Identification
The Livarox company is specialized in designing projects of solar panels and installing them for the industrial facilities. Being founded in 2002, Livarox has already achieved a considerable recognition not only within the native Nebraska state but within the other states of the U.S. Middle-West. Importantly, the company has never had a big staff with more than 200 official employees and a single office in Lincoln. Due to that, Livarox is used to attract the independent contractors for the development of solar panel projects. According to the estimations, such an approach makes the company save nearly 5 million USD per annum since fewer funds must be allocated for employees’ social protection. At the same time, the engagement of the independent contractors allows working out the future projects better.
Evaluation
In recent years, Livarox began to experience certain difficulties in controlling the performance of the independent contractors. Specifically, the company seriously failed deadlines of a solar panel project for the Gavilon company specialized in a fertilizer production. The problem implies that the activity of the independent contractors is basically unsupervised since their functions are regulated by a contract agreement that contains only provisions about the scope of work, its characteristics, and set deadlines. What is more, Livarox’s contract agreements do not contain any specifications of a term required to analyze project’s complexity. Instead, Livarox tends to oblige the independent contractors to assign or not to assign for projects in a very limited time. However, as the recent events have shown, Livarox has the lack of appropriate management skills to make an efficient cooperation with the independent contractors. Based on this, the company determines the ambitious strategic plans to reject the usage of the independent contractors completely and start building its own official project department.
Recommendations
Apparently, the decision of Livarox to use the designers seems quite relevant since it will allow controlling a projecting process and implementing the customer’s preferences more effectively. However, the introduction of the project department will require the allocation of the significant funds to hire an additional staff. Tentatively, it will require approximately 50 project designers and one department chief to satisfy the current customer segment of Livarox. Nevertheless, while a new department is being filled, Livarox will have to expand deadlines of the existing projects greatly, what may affect the company’s reputation and its revenues accordingly. Ultimately, Livarox should devise a gradual plan of introducing the own project department to prevent the excessive financial losses. In particular, at the beginning, the company should focus only on a few projects that can be implemented by the designers with a consistent replacement of the independent contractors from the other projects in the future.
References
- Hancock, D. R., & Algozzine, B. (2015). Doing case study research: A practical guide for beginning researchers. US: Teachers College Press.
- Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management theory: An integrated approach. US: Cengage Learning.
- Rothaermel, F. T. (2015). Strategic management. US: McGraw-Hill.
- Snell, S. A., Morris, S. S., & Bohlander, G. W. (2015). Managing human resources. US: Nelson Education.
- Stake, R. E. (2013). Multiple case study analysis. US: Guilford Press.