Organizations draw specific and directive plans that are aligned to Essay

Organizations draw specific and directive plans that are aligned to specific and strategic objectives and goals - Essay Example An overall organizational analysis will yield substantial information that will help in understanding the strategies and their effectiveness in deriving the desired results. Hence, an analysis and evaluation of these strategies at various levels will be conducted. These would include an industry analysis, analysis of competitors and competition, analysis of strategic capabilities including resources, skills abilities etc, an analysis of Starbucks market position and its products’ success rates. These analyses will be carried out on the basis of established tools and techniques. Industry perspective: Despite its immense success and rigorous growth, Starbucks is experiencing increased pressure from various external forces. Through PESTEL analysis, the impact of these external forces namely, political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legislative entities can be assessed. Competition perspective: Competition always remains a rapidly growing threat for any busine ss. Hence, business owners need to be aware of the nature of these threats in order to remain sustainable in the market. Porter’s five force model helps in assessing the nature of competition. This model considers five forces namely, threat of substitutes, bargaining power of buyers, bargaining power of suppliers, threat of entry of new competitors and degree of rivalry between existing competitors. An analysis based on this model will give a comprehensive idea of the position of Starbucks and the direction and/or steps it needs to take in order to remain competitive. Capabilities perspective To sustain competitive position and grow, businesses require certain prerequisite attributes in their resources that are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. These attributes together are referred to as the VRIN, and provide value-creating strategies. An assessment of the resources and capabilities of Starbucks on this model will provide a clear picture of its strengths and weaknesses. Market perspective: An organization that produces diversified products and services needs to be constantly assessed and evaluated for its products and services in comparison with the market. Such an analysis can be accomplished using the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix in which businesses/product lines are categorized into four categories namely, question mark, star, cash cow, and dog. This tool shows products’ performance in terms of market share and market growth; thereby, it assists in managing specific business components in a manner that minimizes loss and maximizes profits. Recommendations and conclusions: Based on the analysis, recommendations for products/services that should be offered by Starbucks and the markets they should target will be proposed. Probable References Porter, M.E. 1979. How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy. Harvard Business Review. Hill, C and Jones, G. 2009. Strategic Management Theory: An Integrated Approach. 9th ed. OH: Cengage Learning. Kotler, P and Armstrong, G. 2003. Principles of Marketing. London: Prentice Hall. Silver, D. 2009. The Social Network Business Plan: 18 Strategies That Will Create Great Wealth. NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Zhang, W-B. 2010. Economic Growth and Gender Division of Labour with Creativity, Knowledge Utilization, and Capital Accumulation. In Rodrigues, S.

1. The different forms of currency regimes and their impact on Essay

1. The different forms of currency regimes and their impact on economic activity - Essay Example The currency regime that a country adopts may have an effect on its economic growth; this is collaborated by the breakdown of Breton Woods’s countries, which adopted different types of regimes after the collapse of their union. The different types of regime that countries adopt have, largely affect their economic performance depending on their magnitude of their external trade or liberalization of their economy. Initially, there were two widely accepted currency regimes, which included floating and fixed exchange rates. However due to the dynamics in the international economic system and the desire of states to balance between independent monetary policy, rigidly fixed exchange rates and completely fixed capital mobility, several other monetary regimes have cropped up, these include float, dollarization, pegged float, currency boards and fixed currency regimes. In this paper, I am interested to study the different kinds of currency regimes and their impact on economic activity . In the next section, I will discuss the different forms of currency regimes and their use; in section three, I will analyse how these currency regimes have influenced economic activities of countries. This type of currency regime allows a currency’s value to fluctuate depending on the exchange rate market; in the current economic system, most of the currencies such as the United States dollar, the Japanese yen and the euro are floating currencies. However, in some instances, central banks of the respective countries enter the market in order to influence the exchange rates. The use of floating currency regime enables a country to be able to mitigate the effects of shocks in the international economic system (Miles, 2006, p91). Dollarization can be viewed as currency substitution where another country uses dollar as its only currency or alongside another currency. The United States dollar is the currency that is most used as a substitute