U51062 Semester 1 2010 Strategic Management

A variety of books on the car industry have been placed on Short Loan (the red section near the entrance) in Wheatley Library. They can be borrowed for 4 hours only and cannot be taken from the Library. We are not attempting to recommend any, but everything on the car industry would soon be heavily reserved, so at least everyone has a better opportunity to see them. You could, perhaps, blog your opinions about titles. Full citations can be taken from the books. Scroll further down for advice on using databases:

338.292095195 STE  Steers, Richard M. (1999) Made in Korea: Chung Ju Hu and the rise of Hyundai.

338.47629222 BEC  Becker, Helmut  (2006) High noon in the automotive industry.

338.4762920973  STU   Studer-Noguez, Isabel (2002) Ford and the global strategies of multinationals: the North American auto industry.

338.47629222 MAS  Gottschalk, B. and Kalmbach, R. (2007) Mastering automotive challenges.

338.4672922 MAX  Maxton, G.P. and Wormald, J.  (1995) Driving over a cliff?: business lessons from the world’s car industry.

338.47629222 MIK  Mikler, John (2009) Greening the car industry: varieties of capitalism and climate change.

338.47629222 SEC  Freyssenet, Michael ed. (2009) The second automobile revolution.

338.476292222 ROS  Rosengarten, P.G. and Stuermer, C.B. (2006) Premium power: the secret of success of Mercedes Benz, BMW, Porsche and Audi

338.47629222094 EUR  Heneric, Oliver etc. (2005) Europe’s automotive industry on the move: competitiveness in a changing world.

338.47629222094 GLO  Freyssenet, Michael etc. eds. (2003) Globalization or regionalization of the European car industry?

338.762922220943 KIL  Kiley, D. (2004) Driven: inside BMW, the most admired car company in the world.

338.476292220947 SIE  Siegelbaum , Lewis H. (2008) Cars for comrades: the life of the Soviet automobile.

338.47629222095 GLO  Freyssenet, Michael etc. eds. (2003) Globalization or regionalization of the American and Asian Car Industry?

338.476292220951 CHI  Chin, Gregory T.  (2010) China’s automotive modernization: the party-state and the multinational corporations.

338.4796292220951 GAL  Gallagher, Kelly Sims (2006) China shifts gears: automakers, oil, pollution, and development.

338.476292220952 MEH  Mehri, Darius (2005) Notes from Toyota-land: an American engineer in Japan.

338.47662920952 OSO  Osono, Emi etc. (2008) Extreme Toyota: radical contradictions that drive success at the world’s best manufacturer.

338.476292220952 SHI  Shimokawa, Koichi (2010) Japan and the global automotive industry.

338.476292220952 SHI  Shimokawa, Koichi (1994) The Japanese automobile industry: a business history.

338.476292220954 BEC  Becker-Ritterspach, F.A.A.  (2009) Hybridization of MNE subsidiaries: the automotive sector in India.

338.476292220973 HAS  Hasegawa, Yozo  (2008) Clean car wars: how Honda and Toyota are winning the battle of the eco-friendly autos.

338.476292220973 ING  Ingrassia, Paul (2010) Crash course: the American automobile industry’s road from glory to disaster.

338.476292220973 TAY  Taylor, Alex (2010) Sixty to zero: an inside look at the collapse of General Motors – and the Detroit auto industry.

 

Look at the EBSCOhost database guide and connect to the Business Source Complete database. Enter automobile industry as a search and from the drop down menu select SU Subject Term (we clicked on the Thesaurus button and entered the search automobile and found that the subject index term used is automobile industry & trade). This retrieves well over 99,000 articles. It is possible to browse recent ones (have a look at the first batch of results,- there are some good articles in there!), but not all. So…

Scroll down to see more of the left margin. Under Source Types click on Show More, tick the Industry Profiles box and click on Update at the bottom .   This provides industry profiles, but still too many!

Go back to the search boxes and add global on the second line down.  You will have to repeat the process of selecting Industry profiles as above.

Only profiles with global in the title are retrieved and you should find the Datamonitor global profiles not very far down. These give a broad view of the global industry.

Note the company names in this report and, later, look for them amongst the Datamonitor Company Profiles by clicking on the More tab in the toolbar at the top and then on Company Profiles in the toolbar. The SWOT analyses provided will be helpful. Particularly, try Bayerische Motoren Werke as BMW will not work. Later, enter the company names in a new search screen by themselves to retrieve company news from all of the trade journals.

Next, refresh the search screen by clicking on the New Search tab. Enter automobile industry as a search and from the drop down menu select SU Subject Term again. Then enter Economist on the second line down and click on SO Publication name in the drop down menu. This retrieves 636 (at the time of writing) articles from the Economist, which is a journal that tries to look at the bigger picture. The articles will start with the most recent and you will soon be able to browse articles from the last two years.

We don’t have time just now to check out any more likely journal titles, but try to find some of the automobile industry trade journal titles in the same way. Articles in the McKinsey Quarterly look promising.

 

• Next, move on to Thomson One Banker because the Investext database is now available on this platform. The new version of Investext is a little more tricky to use than the previous Thomson Gale version, so we have produced a powerpoint demo, which we hope is fairly painless to understand, to help you. Click on (if off campus you will need to enter your student number and password): https://www2.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources/thomsonpowerpoint.ppt
• Log  on to the database, enter company searches and try to find the larger reports (it is essential to look at the powerpoint). The Analysts reports in Investext give usually give opinions on share prices and therefore cover prices only. They vary from brief 1 page statements to a full scale analysis of a company’s operations with competitor and industry analysis, SWOT analysis etc… Do not bother with 1 page reports.
• Next, click on Research in the left menu and then click on the Conduct Research Report Search option. You really are going to have to look at the powerpoint presentation so that you know how to enter an industry search for automobile and then from the lists presented, select 336111 Automobile manufacturing. Remember to reset the date to Last 2 years and select the Report Type as Industry. You should be presented with over 3272 reports on the automobile  industry. The Global Automotive Outlook by CIBC World Markets dated 24 August 2010 is particulary useful and  is listed at number 43 (aty the time of writing) under the heading  Global Automotive Outlook – A Review of the Major Drivers for the Global Market.   Note that selecting the reports by ticking the boxes next to the titles allows you in the next stage to look at the contents lists before actually downloading the report.

• Finally, look at the Factiva database which contains 10000 news sources in 22 languages. Again, you will need to look at the powerpoint presentation to really understand how it works if you want to follow the instructions below. Click on (if off campus you will need to enter your student number and password): https://www2.brookes.ac.uk/library/resources/factivapowerpoint.ppt
• Log on to Factiva and click on Industry to go into the Industry index. Then click on + Automobiles.  The entry turns pink and remains at the top of this section as part of your search (click on it again to remove it).  Click on  Subject to go into the Subject index, then click on + Corporate/Industrial News and select  + performance and + plans/strategy from the list by clicking on them. These entries will also turn pink to show they have been included in your search. Now enter car industry in the free text search box and click the Run Search button.  Unfortunately, hitting the search button retrieves over 8,668 articles, so, as always, you are going to have to be selective about the sources you read in this huge database. Click on Modify Search in the top right corner to return to the Search screen.
• Click on Source to go into the Source index. Click on the + Group: UK newspapers and scroll down the list that appears to select the Financial Times by clicking on the title to make it turn pink and run search to  find the 849+ articles that you will find this time (you really are going to need to look at the powerpoint presentation).
• The Discovery Pane in the left hand margin of the results screen shows that of the 849 articles retrieved, 61 are specifically about BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke).  Click on the name of your company to filter the results so you can look at these 61 articles.   
• Finally, click on Modify search to return to the search screen and remove the Financial Times from your search by clicking on its title.  Then return to the Source index, click on the drop-down arrow next to My source lists and select Publications by industry (note all the other listings of publications). Scroll down to Automobiles and click on it to turn it pink and add all Automobile industry to your search (click on the + to list all of the trade journals on the automobile industry) and click on Run Search to see the 640 articles retrieved.  

 

• Last of all, this is a blog. If you find something interesting, send a message and we shall add it below.