Building a Stratgic Audit

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In accordance with BrainMass rules this neither an essay nor a completion of assignment. This is only background help.
STEP 1
Current Situation:
Past Corporate Performance Indexes:
Corporate governance quotient of Russell 3000 companies is better than 86.3%. On the other hand, corporate governance quotient of retailing companies is better than 79,6%
The corporate governance quotient is extremely low in case of retailing companies. Amazon.com should be among the top retailing companies in the world. Its performance must improve if it has to perform well in the global environment.
Current Corporate Governance:
Board of Directors and Top management: the corporate governance committee looks at the candidature of each person and selects him for the board appointment. Even after the person leaves his position he previously held he may continue to be a member of the board. The board forms committees like the Audit Committee, the Leadership Development and Compensation Committee, and the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee. Then it is mandatory for each member of the board to purchase Amazon.com shares. In the global environment it is important to avoid mandatory purchasing of shares.
Strategic Posture
It has launched a search engine a9.com, a movie database imdb.com and even a Mechanical Turk at mturk.com. On the other hand the company is not having any strategic direction and is having an amoebic movement. Its policies do not align with its strategic goals. This weak strategy of Amazon.com is reflected in falling profitability even though its sales are increasing. In the global environment increasing sales must be complemented with increasing profitability.

STEP 2

Related to SWOT analysis:
Corporate Governance:
Board of Directors: If we look at the insider roster then most of the boards of directors are shareholders of the company. This is a positive aspect of Amazon.com. However, If we take a look at the insider roster almost every one has sold their stocks in the recent past. It is not understood why most of the directors and officers who are shareholders have sold their shares. Have they lost confidence in Amazon.com? Or does it mean that they had information that the profits of the company are likely to fall and this would adversely affect share prices?

STEP 3

1. Marketing:
Strong cross selling and high customer satisfaction. These are the positive ...