Read the case and answer the questions below.1. With the Hayek family controlling nearly 40 percent of The Swatch Group, how do you think the family influence impacts the type of corporate culture in the company? What about the company’s international culture being impacted by the Hayek family?2. Many of the Swatch brands have become cultural icons among a strong core following of customers in the global marketplace. Some even talk about the “Swatch Revolution” that began when Nicolas Hayek founded the company. Why do you think Swatch has such a strong cultural following?3. Swatch wants you to create your own unique way of accessorizing by the use of a Swatch watch. A person can showcase his or her individualized Swatch use by tagging #MySwatch. Is a watch a way to show who a person is culturally? Does a watch get embedded into a person’s culture? Can a watch create a cultural image?4. According to the company, “Swatch is an attitude, an approach to life, a way of seeing. The sight of a Swatch excites emotion. Wearing one is a way to communicate, to speak without speaking. Heart to heart.” Do you buy this overarching “branding” of a Swatch watch as a cultural icon?

Scenario You work for Hoorah Corporation, which produces autonomous electric cars. It has committed to both internal and external stakeholders that the first autonomous electric car will come off the assembly line by the end of the next 24 months. Your department is to design and deliver a working prototype of the key component of electric cars, a microchip, or as they say in your industry, the “brains” of the autonomous car. As the key member of the technology department, you have been directed to align your departmental strategic goals to the organizational goals. The projected timeline is that mass production of the cars will begin in 24 months and that your microchip will be completed in 18 months. You are tasked with presenting your plan to Hoorah Corporation’s board of directors in three months, bearing in mind the organizational goal of a 24-month time frame for the first cars coming off the production line. Your specific task is to create a presentation to highlight key elements of your departmental strategic plan. Include speaker notes that detail your thinking, so the board of directors can clearly see why they should believe and trust in your presented plan. Directions In your presentation, the board of directors would like to see your departmental strategic goals and how they align to organizational goals, as well as the tactical steps you will take to achieve those goals. In addition, they want to see that you’ve amended your initial concept based on the findings from your completed conceptual gap analysis. To orient the board of directors to your plan, explain the purpose of your departmental strategic goals. In your explanation, consider the following: What is the reason the department exists? How would you articulate the intent of your department’s strategic plan? What are your department’s core capabilities? How does your department create value for the organization? Create your goals and align them to the organization’s goals: Decide which two or three of the organization’s goals relate best to your department. Then create one or more goals that align to that organizational goal. You do not need to include all organization goals, and one organizational goal may have more than one departmental goal aligned with it. For example, if one organizational goal is to reach 25% market share, what goal in your departmental strategic plan relates to that organization goal? In addition, if an organizational goal is to make the competition irrelevant, what goal in your departmental strategic plan relates to that organization goal? Explain what tactical action steps you will take to align to the organizational strategic plan. As you create these steps, consider the following: What specific actions does your department need to complete in order to achieve organizational goals? What steps would you need to take in order to ensure the deliverables are on time? What does the organization expect of your department in order to reach the organizational goals? Develop how you will measure goal attainment for each of your departmental strategic goals. How will you know if your tactical action steps will achieve what you expect? What is the best method or metric to hold your department accountable to its strategic goals? Perform a conceptual gap analysis to identify the opportunities and needs of the department with regard to the departmental strategic goals. There is no need to create a graph. As you perform this analysis, consider the following: Look at the departmental plan and organizational goals: What is missing in order for the department to meet its obligations? What are some roadblocks that may keep you from reaching your plan?