I've chosen the Starbucks Corporation on which to do my case assignment for the session. I first became interested in Starbucks while working on a paper for a previous marketing class. I became intrigued at the entrepreneurial spirit that such a large corporation had managed to maintain throughout its massive expansion. Starbucks corporation, unlike many of its now-defunct rivals, has done an outstanding job since its meager beginnings in 1970 with the execution of its strategic process; resulting in it currently owning 40% of the specialty coffee market and boosting annual sales exceeding $7 billion according to Burt Helm. Historic successes and recent turmoil within the company, including a near 40% decline in 2007 in profits (Sullivan 1), has once again piqued my interest in this American company.
For this first assignment, our tasks start with identifying the need for diagnosis, moving on to evaluating several organizational models that are used and have been developed for just such analysis, and finally determining if these models would be effective if used by Starbucks to determine its way ahead.
The importance of Diagnosis
In conducting research I found an interesting quote that I believe sums up the importance of the essential task analysis. "Knowing yourself is one of the most challenging and important tasks of your life. If you know who you are and what you want, you will have a better chance of figuring out how to achieve your own success, happiness and personal fulfillment" (Berkeley.edu, 1). One can easily substitute all personal references with a business perspective and ascertain the importance of analysis. If a business does not know who it is, it will not know what chan ...