Monitoring competitors’ performance and strategies is a key aspect of an external audit. This exercise is designed to give you practice evaluating the competitive position of organizations in a given industry and assimilating that information in a CPM. Instructions Step 1 Join with two other students in class and prepare an EFE Matrix for Nestlé. Refer back to the Cohesion Case and to Exercise 1B, if necessary, to identify external opportunities and threats. Use the information in the Standard and Poor’s Industry Surveys that you copied as part of Assurance of Learning Exercise 1B. Be sure not to include strategies as opportunities, but do include as many monetary amounts, percentages, numbers, and ratios as possible. Step 2 On a separate sheet of paper, prepare a CPM that includes Michelin and its two leading competitors: Bridgestone Corporation and Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Step 3 Turn in your CPM for a class work grade.

Facebook (A) Miranda Shaw was stymied. She had been on the verge of hiring a highly talented recent business school graduate, Rick Parsons, as a senior analyst for her project team. It had been a choice between Parsons and Deborah Jones, another very promising hire. Both Parsons and Jones had graduated from the same highly ranked business school that Shaw had attended, had the appropriate work backgrounds, and had performed well in their multiple rounds of interviews. From their conversations, Shaw believed either one would be a good choice for the company. While she had had a hard time deciding, she was leaning toward hiring Parsons because of his leadership skills and his reputation for tireless energy and great communication skills. Before making her final decision, Shaw- almost in desperation, because she needed to submit her recommendation to human resources immediately–had “Googled” both of the candidates. What she had discovered about Parsons both in her Google search results and on Facebook, while not necessarily a deal breaker, was disturbing enough that she had to rethink her opinion. Shaw was a manager at a leading consulting firm. She had worked her way up from intern after four years and was on the fast track to making partner. Her company was a special place, and, as she had seen over the past few years, it took a special type of consultant to work there. She remembered plenty of cases where new hires had left the company in the first few months because they did not fit in with the high-energy and high- commitment work environment. She had seen several projects delayed or worse because of personnel issues. This high turnover was not good for the company, because it invested significant time, energy, and funds to train and mentor new hires. Shaw believed in the adage that “you are only as good as the people who work for you,” and she knew that making the right hiring decisions was critical to her success at the firm. Shaw had to take these factors into consideration as she decided between two equally qualified candidates for the position.