The paper is on Oracle Corporation and has to follow the following guidelines and answer the following questions.
Organize your paper using these headings and section content:
1. Career and Company Analysis (50 points)
Think about the company you most would like to work for where you can fulfill your ultimate career aspiration. In the past, students have chosen businesses and
organizations such as Accenture, Ernst and Young, Target, Nike, Prada, the FBI, the American Ballet Theatre, Goldman Sachs, and Merck. If you really do not know where
you might like to work, think about some company that you’ve heard about that interests you, or some company that has products you like. If you are considering
starting your own business, choose a business that you particularly admire, and that you might use as a model for your own business. Another common aspiration is to be
an attorney in a law firm. Although you may not have a specific firm in mind, think in terms of a prototype firm you can research—perhaps a firm that specializes in
mergers and acquisitions in a large city or a criminal defense specialty firm. Larger, public firms will often have more information available through their website
and other publicly available sources.
Your first task in preparing your Management Portfolio is to study this company during the semester in terms of its management processes–its strategy, mission, goals,
structure, and human resources practices. At the end of each chapter are Management Portfolio questions designed to guide you in this task. Much of the information is
available on-line, but you should feel free to use whatever resource, including in-person interviews and research, to gain as much information that you can about the
company. Be sure to keep detailed records of your sources for all this information and follow APA format for the citations within the paper and the Reference List.
The whole point of answering the Management Portfolio questions from chapters 1-10 is to be able to describe and analyze your chosen company and to demonstrate that
you can apply relevant course concepts and models from these chapters. Therefore it is not enough to just give the history and background of your company in this
section.
2. Needed Skills and Abilities (30 points)
Based on your company research and analysis, describe the skills and abilities likely desired by this company. Much of this information can be obtained directly from
company websites, but can also be inferred from the strategy and structure of the organization. Given a particular business strategy, what kinds of skills and
abilities will be most prized in this company?
3. Gap analysis (35 points)
The next step is to do an honest inventory of your current skills and abilities. This part of the paper is not designed to persuade the company that you are the best
possible candidate for the job, but rather is the basis for developing an action plan for becoming the best possible candidate. So, for example, if you find that entry
level positions at an accounting firm require a degree in accounting and a 3.0 grade point average that will not be sufficient. What will distinguish you from the
thousands of other students graduating with a degree in accounting with a 3.0 grade point average? How will you separate yourself from the rest? The third part of the
paper is thus to define the “gap” between what the company would want from it’s top candidate, and what you currently have in your bundle of skills and abilities. In
doing so, there needs to be some discussion that explains your gap analysis table. In particular you need to give a detailed description of your past job experiences
as they relate to the specific skills and abilities required for your chosen job.
4. Develop an action plan (35 points)
Create a plan outlining what you are going to do between now and when you go out on the job market to acquire the skills and abilities that you will need to become the
company’s most attractive recruit. As with your gap analysis, avoid simplistic statements such as “get my degree in accounting.” Think in terms of skills, abilities
and competencies rather than majors, courses, or job titles. This section of the paper represents an action plan for obtaining the competencies necessary to be the
most attractive candidate applying to your chosen company.
5. Plan the artifacts that will represent your portfolio of skills and abilities (30 points)
A portfolio contains physical representations, or artifacts, of your skills and abilities. For example, to demonstrate your presentation skills, you might include a
copy of a PowerPoint presentation, a photograph of you chairing a meeting of a service club or organization, or even an instructor’s comments about an in-class
presentation. If you wish to provide evidence of your ability to analyze financial data, you can include a paper or report you have done in a finance course. To
demonstrate your writing skills, you might include a paper from this course. As part of this plan, describe how you will provide evidence of or demonstrate your skills
and abilities to the company. For example, what evidence will you use to show that you are capable of teamwork, leadership, or perseverance? That you know how to
design a website, audit a tax return or develop a market survey? In this section, you will describe the evidence you will present to the company that you have achieved
these competencies.
6. References (30 points): Include a Reference List with at least 10 references. Referencing multiple pages from the same organization’s web site only count as one
citation (e.g., Apple.com). When using more than one page from the same company, provide a URL that links to the home page or entry page for the document. Also, if
there isn’t a date available for the document use (n.d.) for no date.
All citations in the reference list should be cited in the body of your paper (use APA style guidelines).
Management Portfolio Questions
Chapter 1 – Managing and Performing
1. Describe the firm. How old is it? In what industry (or industries) is the firm active?
What products or services does it sell? Who are its principal competitors? Is it active internationally? How many employees does it have? What are its sales and
profits?
2. How well has the firm performed recently compared to rivals? Has it outperformed rivals or underperformed them? Why?
3. Who is the CEO? How long has she or he been in this position? What has been the career track of the CEO?
4. Can you find examples of how the CEO has performed the basic tasks of management-strategizing, planning, organizing, controlling, developing, and leading his or her
organization?
Chapter 2 – The External and Internal Environments
1. Describe the nature of the macroenvironment the firm is facing. What are the opportunities here, and what are the threats?
2. How has your company been influenced by trends in the competitive environment over the last decade? If so, what are these trends and how have they changed things?
3. Describe the internal environment of your organization in terms of its culture and climate. How does your organization’s culture and climate affect its response to
its external environment?
Chapter 3 – Managerial Decision Making
1. Research and find an example of a significant strategic error or a significant strategic success that managers at the organization have made over the last decade?
What role did the characteristics of managerial decisions play in these errors (Figure 1.1)?
2. Apply the stages of decision making. Was there any particular stage that was the source of this error or that led to this success?
3. What barriers to effective decision making did the organization face?
Chapter 4 – Planning and Strategic Management
1. Find out as much as you can about the mission, vision, values, and major goals of the organization. Do you think the firm is living up to these? What evidence do
you have to support your conclusion?
2. What are the strengths of the organization? What are the weaknesses? Opportunities? Threats?
3. What is the business-level strategy of this firm? (For a multi-business firm, focus on the largest business unit). In your opinion, does this strategy create
additional value, boosting the profitability of the enterprise, or is it destroying value and lowering profitability? Why or why not?
Chapter 5 – Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility
1. How would you characterize the ethical climate of your company? What evidence is there to support your conclusion?
2. Find out if the organization has been the focus of any adverse ethical issues in recent years (look at historic news reports). If it has, try to determine whether
this was due to the isolated actions of rogue managers or to more systemic, organization wide problems’
3. Does the organization undertake investments related to corporate social responsibility or the natural environment and sustainability that go beyond its narrow
economic self-interest? If so, what kind of investments has it made? Whom do these investments benefit? Do you approve of these investments?
Chapter 6 – International Management
1. Outline how the processes of globalization have impacted your firm and might affect it in the future. What challenges is globalization creating? What opportunities
are emerging as a result of globalization?
2. Is your firm active outside its home market? How much of its business comes from foreign sales? What is its global strategy?
3. What is the largest foreign market of your firm? How does it do business in that market (through wholly owned subsidiaries, joint ventures, exporting)? Why do you
think managers at the firm chose that entry mode?
Chapter 8 – Organization Structure
1. Describe the basic vertical and horizontal organization structure of your company.
2. Does the organization have a tall or flat management hierarchy? What is the span of control of the CEO? In your judgment is this span too narrow, too wide, or just
right?
3. What decisions within this organization are centralized at the head office? What decisions are decentralized to subunits? Does the approach toward centralization
and decentralization make sense?
Chapter 9 – Organizational Agility
1. What is your organization’s core competence? Describe how it organizes around this core capability.
2. How your firm organize to meet customer requirements? Describe your organization’s approach to customer relationship management (CRM).
3. What is the primary technology your organization utilizes to produce its products and/or services? What strategies has it adopted to organize for speed to meet
customer needs as quickly as possible through time-based competition?
Chapter 10 – Human Resource Management
1. What is your company’s strategy for human resource management? Based on available information, does it appear that the company will have a sufficient supply of
staff in various job groups over the next five years? Why or why not?
2. What is your company’s main approach for staffing the organization? What environmental conditions, if any, make it easier or more difficult for this company to
estimate its future supply of and demand for employees?
3. To what extent does this organization emphasize development of its workforce? What training methods seem to be most widely used in this organization? Do its
training programs seem to be above or below average for this industry?
Chapter 12 – Leadership
1. What can you find out about the vision of the chief executive officer? How would you characterize his or her way of leading and managing?
2. Is the leadership approach he or she has adopted more traditional or contemporary. Describe this approach in detail using one of the leadership models from your
text?
3. Would you characterize the CEO as an effective leader? How would you explain his or her success or lack thereof?
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