Dell Inc. in 2008: Can It Overtake Hewlett-Packard as the World Leader in Personal Computers?6

C A S E

ASSIGNMENT QUESTIONS1. What is your evaluation of Michael Dell’s performance in his roles as Dell’s CEO and Chairman? How well

has he performed the fi ve tasks of crafting and executing strategy that were discussed in Chapter 2?

2. What are the elements of Dell’s strategy? Which one of the fi ve generic competitive strategies is Dell employing? How well do the different pieces of Dell’s strategy fi t together? In what ways is Dell’s strategy evolving?

3. Does Dell’s expansion into other IT products and services make good strategic sense? Why or why not?

4. Is Dell’s strategy working? What is your assessment of the fi nancial performance that Dell’s strategy has delivered during fi scal years 2000-2008? Use the fi nancial ratios presented in Table 4.1 of Chapter 4 (pages 104-105) as a basis for doing your calculations and drawing conclusions about Dell’s performance.

5. What does a SWOT analysis reveal about the attractiveness of Dell’s situation in 2008?

6. Which company is competitively stronger—Dell or Hewlett-Packard? Use the weighted competitive strength assessment methodology shown in Table 4.4 of Chapter 4 to support your answer.

7. In what respects, if any, is Hewlett-Packard’s strategy in PCs more appealing or better than Dell’s strategy?

8. What issues and problems does Michael Dell need to address?

9. What actions and strategy changes would you recommend to Michael Dell to boost the company’s performance and its prospects for overtaking HP in global sales of PCs?