Nucor Corporation was the largest manufacturer of steel and steel products in North America, with a production capacity of approximately 27 million tons. On an international scale, Nucor was ranked as the 14th-largest steel company in the world based on tons shipped in 2013. Amongst the five generic business strategies, Nucor is known as a low-cost producer, with a known competitive advantage of innovative steelmaking technology. The purpose of this paper is to perform a business analysis of Nucor Corporation by analyzing it using management tools such as SWOT, PESTEL, and Porter’s Five Forces (Thompson, Peteraf, Gamble, & Strickland III, 2014).
This corporation was not always known for its manufacturing of steel. During the 1950s and 1960s
Andrew Carnegie was a Scottish American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He built a leadership role as a philanthropist for America and the British Empire. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away to charities, foundations, and universities about $350 million – almost 90 percent of his fortune. His 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and it stimulated a wave of philanthropy.
For decades, the steel industry has been one of the toughest markets on a global scale with most steel corporations ending up in bankruptcy. Foreign and domestic competitors, management issues, environmental issues, political agenda’s and technology have had much to do with the demise and more so of the success of the steel industry. The issues that this case focus on Nucor Corporation was of:
The big business leaders of the Industrial Revolution like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Leland Stanford were certainly captains of industry. They each contributed innovations that made this era extremely significant for its advanced modernization. These renovations include: the opening of a steel plant, the Standard Oil Company finding, and the development of the railroad system in California. While these implementations are mostly associated with their names, they certainly did not create them on their own.
Industry Analysis – Nucor has established itself as a leader in the steel industry through efficiency and innovation.
When testing if a corporate strategy is leading the company to success, there are techniques that can be used to project data collected from the company. Long term attractiveness, competitive strength, and the nine cell industry attractiveness/business strength matrix are used to highlight strategic positions of each business in a diversified company. The industry attractiveness gages the prospects for long-term performance. Competitive strength measures how strong the units are positioned in a business in their industry. Lastly, the nine cell industry attractiveness/business strength matrix merges information on attractiveness and competitiveness to show where in the industry does a unit fit when it comes to long-term success. Walt Disney
Just contrary to Porter’s five forces model, the SWOT analysis deals with both internal and external variables and forces of the company. The main quality of this analysis is that it is helpful in tracing out the real position of the company along with its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats or the self-assessment. Consequently, it offers the company a proper framework to formulate, vision plans, strategies and goals. Here, it should also be assumed that the SWOT analysis includes both internal and external factors, whereas Porter’s five forces model only deal with external factors ignoring the internal factors.
This paper will first discuss the development of the steel industry. Next, it will examine steel, and in the impact it had on the transportation industry. Finally, it will discuss systematic management practices of this time and how they gave birth to the scientific approach that is still in use today.
Because the subject matter of strategic management is so inherently complex and because each one of us brings his own personal biases to the analysis, it was suggested early on that virtually all case material in the field be analyzed from the perspective of more than one methodology. Profit theory and industrial chains were selected as the first of a number of viable approaches to the analytical process. It would have been equally correct to select the Five Competitive Forces analysis refined by Michael Porter, one of the major figures in the field of strategic management. This methodology addresses the same issues but differs only in the language that they use to describe corporate behavior. The five forces are:
As illustrated by Hill, Jones, & Schilling (2014), to assist organizations in choosing future strategies, they can perform a SWOT analysis to determine its strengths; weaknesses, opportunities and threats (p. 17). Hill, Jones, & Schilling (2014) not that, in order to determine future strategies, it is important an organization perform this analysis to “build on and protect company strengths, and eradicate
. SWOT analysis is used for companies to analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This information can give some insight to improve internal weak areas and build on strong ones. External opportunities and threats will also be analyzed and potential strategic decisions can be made according to these results. This paper will produce a comprehensive SWOT analysis for our organization which will then be implemented in the overall strategic plan.
Both Porter and Miles and Snow’s strategy typologies are based on the concept of strategic equifinality, or the ability for firms to be successful via differing managerial strategies (Hambrick, 2003, p. 116). Porter 's strategy is more generic while Miles and Snow’s is more specific in nature. Porter’s generic strategy typology is based on economic factors centering on the source of a firm’s competitive advantage and the scope of a firm’s target market (González-Benito & Suárez-González, 2010). Porter’s typology emphasizes a firm’s cost, product differentiation or non-differentiation and market focus. When utilizing Porter’s strategy typology, a firm must first decide to target its products toward the mass market versus a market niche or focus. Secondly, a firm will determine if it wishes to minimize costs or differentiate its products with differentiation meaning that firms will most likely forego lower costs (Parnell, 2014, p. 184). This can lead a firm to develop a myriad of strategies between these options. Strategies which may have or not have focus, may or not be differentiated, may or not be low cost or any combination of strategies. In contrast to Porter, Miles and Snow’s typology is more specific in nature.
In this study we analyses the company using a S.W.O.T analysis, P.E.S.T analysis and Porter¡¦s Five Forces.
...lopment industry as well as the strengths and weaknesses within the company. The Business Strategy should reflect the main issues that determine the long-term
I work for the Bethlehem Steel Company founded by Charles M. Schwab. The Bethlehem Steel Company is one of the largest steel producers in the United States. This company is actually the second largest in America and the largest shipbuilder. As a worker of this company I discovered what a monopoly is along with the many difficulties of working conditions and living conditions.
For assessing the industry profitability, Porter 5 Forces analysis tools were used to analyze one organization evaluation. In this case, the technique were used to analyze 7-Eleven Convenience Store specifically in Malaysia. Porter 5 Forces consists of 5 important area which is Threat of New Entrants, Bargaining Power of customers, Threat of substitute Products and services, Bargaining Power of suppliers, and competitive rivalry within the industry. Theoretically, the more powerful these forces in an industry, the lower its profit potential. The strength of each force differs by industry and changes over time. The competitive advantage that 7-Eleven has using these five forces is it has raised the barrier of entry for other competitors to enter the convenience store market as new competitors will require a huge capital investment in order to implement the information technology in their business in order to be competitive. Also, hypothetically being the first in the market, 7-Eleven could have made contracts with the Malaysia government to not allow other 24-hour convenience stores in the market for a certain time period, such as Astro had done, thus having a monopoly market in the beginning of their operations which will allow them to target a bigger market share.