Topic
British Petroleum – An International Business Assessment and Analysis
Instructions
For this assignment, you need to choose one multinational enterprise (MNE) from the
2019 Fortune Global 500 list operating in one of the following industries*.
• Airlines
• Internet services and retailing
• Household and personal products
• Motor vehicles and parts
• Petroleum refining
*The 2019 Fortune Global 500 list is available from https://fortune.com/global500/2019/.
You must use the industry filter (not sectors) available at
https://fortune.com/global500/2019/search/ to shortlist and choose your MNE.
N.B. You are encouraged to conduct preliminary data search about the potential MNE to
ensure that you can obtain relevant and recent information enabling you to conduct wellsupported analysis.
Answer Preview
Resources and Capabilities
The strategies used by a company in pursuit of its objectives, mission, and goals are often developed by matching a firm’s resources and capabilities to the external factors and opportunities (Verbeke & Kano 2016). Therefore, resources and capabilities play a central role in the formulation and implementation of business strategies. The resource-based view of the firm provides that a firm can drive its strategy and performance by leveraging specific resources and capabilities; the heterogeneous combination of resources and capabilities (Xie et al. 2016).
BP’s specific resources include financial resources as a result of increased sales and operating revenues which amounted to $278.4 billion in 2019, making BP the seventh-largest company globally in terms of revenue (BP 2020). It also has approved amounting to about 19,341 million barrels of oil accessible in about 58,000 square kilometres. The resources allow for a throughput of 1.7 million barrels a day sold through its 18,900 retail sites (BP 2019). The company also has tangible resources in the renewable energy sector, including photovoltaic and solar energy through the BP solar segment that mostly handles the production and distribution of solar energy and solutions such as solar panels (BP 2020).
Word Count: 3000