MGT 498 Online
Strategy & Policy
Overview
This course explores the links between firm performance and corporate/business strategy and presents the basic concepts and tools of strategic analysis.
Text
Essentials of Strategic Management. 2008. Charles Hill and Gareth Jones. Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 0618605363.
Grading
Each grade level requires an increasing number of assignments as explained below.
Grade of C
• Answer all end-of-chapter discussion questions.
• Answer all end-of-chapter case questions.
• Complete a voice recording regarding an ethical situation in strategic management.
Grade of B
• Complete all “C” activities.
• Complete all expansion exercises.
Grade of A
• Complete all “B” and “C” activities.
• Write a competitive analysis.
Criteria for Acceptance of Written and Oral Assignments
• Coherence and organization
• Delivery
• Grammar and syntax
• Proper use of materials and mechanics =
End-of-Chapter Discussion Questions
Each chapter contains several discussion questions. Please use Microsoft Word and place your completed discussion questions in the Assignments section of Blackboard. Email attachments do not receive credit.
End-of-Chapter Case Questions
Each chapter contains a closing case followed by several case questions. As with the end-of-chapter discussion questions, please use Microsoft Word and place your completed discussion questions in the Assignments section of Blackboard. Email attachments do not receive credit.
Voice Recording Regarding an Ethical Situation in Strategic Management
Many strategic management courses require presentations. However, because this is an online course, we will substitute a 3 – 5 minute voice recording.
To complete this, choose any ethical situation that pertains to strategic management. Use the following for an outline:
A. Introduce yourself (name, work experience, and major).
B. Briefly introduce the ethical situation in a 2 – 3 sentence overview.
C. Discuss the links between the ethical issue and at least one strategic management concept from the text.
D. Conclusion
You can use any voice recording software you prefer but if you do not have a preference, Audacity is free, easy-to-use software you can download for free at:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
Expansion Exercises
The intent of the expansion exercises is to broaden your comprehension of strategy and policy concepts beyond those contained in our text. Each expansion exercise includes an article that is related to the chapter but provides a deeper understanding or sometimes contradicts chapter content. You can download expansion exercise articles from Blackboard.
Please use Microsoft Word and place your completed discussion questions in the Assignments section of Blackboard. Email attachments do not receive credit.
Use the following guide to complete expansion exercises after reading each expansion article.
Chapter 1 The Strategy-Making Process At least in some organizations, we could go through all the steps in the “Model of the Strategic Management Process” shown in Figure 1.2 on page 7 and still not have a concrete strategy. For example, what would guide the speed and sequence of our strategic moves? How would we make money; that is, what is our economic logic? How do we choose among alternative businesses or geographic regions to compete in at the corporate level? Consider how the strategy diamond developed by Donald C. Hambrick and James W. Fredrickson can help sort these types of questions out so that our results are a more solid, well-developed strategy. You can find Hambrick and Frederickson’s article, “Are You Sure You Have a Strategy?” in the Academy of Management Executive. After reading the strategy diamond paper, find a way to integrate Figure 1.2 with the strategy diamond in a way that would increase the likelihood of having a sound strategy after working through your model. Next, select a firm and apply your model to your firm to show the results. You can do this on PowerPoint slides or any other drawing software you prefer.
Chapter 2 Stakeholders, the Mission, Governance, and Business Ethics Our text suggests a mission statement can grow out of (1) knowing who is satisfied, (2) knowing what is satisfied), and (3) determining how customer needs are being satisfied (see Figure 2.2 on page 29). Now I don’t have any problem with any of this until we move away from individual businesses. Then the framework needs help.
Compare and contrast the article “Sex, Lies, and Mission Statements” by Christopher Bart (1997) with our text’s explanation of mission statements in a 500-word essay.
Chapter 3 External Analysis: The Identification of Opportunities and Threats This chapter introduces you to industry analysis and highlights the five forces model of industry analysis shown in Figure 3.1 on page 54. Notice that the bargaining power of suppliers is one of the five forces. Our text defines this as “the ability of suppliers to raise the price of inputs or to raise the cost of the industry in other ways: (page 61). However, might there be ways for firms to reduce this threat? A Harvard Business Review article, “Building Deep Supplier Relationships” (2004) by Liker and Choi, addresses how and why firms would want to create long-term relationships with suppliers. Please critique the main arguments in this article and suggest how our text authors might rewrite the bargaining power of suppliers section on pages 61-62 to include the ideas in Liker and Choi’s article.
Chapter 4 Building Competitive Advantage The latter portion of this chapter addresses organizational capabilities on pages 101-104. A common approach to strategy is to build from existing capabilities—“a company’s skills at coordinating its resources an putting them to productive use” (page 102). Sayan Chatterjee at Case Western Reserve University takes a different approach as he explains in his article on competitive clarity. Here, he develops a framework that reasons from customer outcomes to corporate capabilities rather than the conventional approach of reasoning from capabilities to products innovations. Please rearrange Figure 4.6 on page 103 in a way that correspond’s to Chatterjee’s framework and write a comparison of your rearranged framework with that of our text and Chatterjee and discuss which of the three frameworks you believe would work best in the industry you are working or one in which you hope to work.
Chapter 5 Business-Level Strategy and Competitive Positioning Our text outlines four strategies in Figure 5.1 on page 117 that are commonly called “generic strategies.” An implicit assumption is that product positioning requires staking out a specific competitive position in targeted industries on one of the four quadrants of Figure 5.1. On the other hand, Chan Kim and Renée Maughbourne at INSEAD suggest a both/and approach rather than an either/or approach. In other words, firms can successfully position products that straddle industries and competitive positions instead of success being dependent on targeting constricted definitions of industry boundaries. A second article by Clayton Christensen and his colleagues in the Spring 2007 MIT Sloan Management Review suggests yet another approach. Customers “hire” products and traditional marketing research may sometimes overlook this hiring process. Please develop a diagram that incorporates both perspectives (Kim and Maughborne with Christensen and others). That is, develop your own single diagram that incorporates both diagrams. Compare and contrast your diagram with Figure 5.1 in your text.
Chapter 6 Strategy in the Global Environment Chapter 9 discusses the relationship between a firm’s strategy and the global environment. Think about this in terms of a nation’s strategy rather than an organization’s strategy. For example, could we view nations as having a competitive advantage over other nations? Certainly if multiple nations compete for the same resources, the same distribution channels, and the same customers, wouldn’t a nation eventually arise with a competitive advantage?
“The Competitive Advantage of Nations” by Michael Porter illuminates these and other points. Write an essay that uses Porter’s ideas to evaluate the competitive advantage of three nations in a single geographic region (for example, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile in South America or Bulgaria, Turkey, and Romania in South Central Europe). Explain which nation has a competitive advantage relative to the other nations in your analysis and discuss the future conditions necessary to sustain this competitive advantage.
Your essay must be a minimum of 600 words.
Chapter 7 Corporate-Level Strategy and Long-Run Profitability Our text chapter gives the basics of corporate restructuring such as mergers and acquisitions, but it’s nearly silent on how to proceed once corporate restructuring has been completed. Kunal Basu’s 2006 California Management Review article, “Merging brands after mergers,” gives us some advice on how to proceed. Integrate Basu’s work into Figure 7.3 on page 174. Explain the choices and trade-offs you made when developing your diagram.
Chapter 8 Strategic Change: Implementing Strategies to Build and Develop a Company Our text explains how organizations can change for strategic reasons. However, there’s a trend among some organizations to change simply for the sake of change. What if you’re organization is doing pretty well but would just like to take that next step of continuous improvement without a complete overhaul. California Management Review presents, “Managing learning curves in factories by creating and transferring knowledge.” This interesting article outlines a more incremental approach to change by capturing and leveraging the knowledge that’s constantly being created among your employees. Please address the contingencies based on the article that our text authors should have incorporated in their discussion of strategic change on pages 189-193.
Chapter 9 Implementing Strategy through Organizational Design No expansion exercise required for Chapter 9.
Competitive Analysis
This is a four-part project. The first three parts each analyze one industry competitor using the strategy diamond. The fourth part is the conclusion of your analysis as explained below.
Each of the four parts of the analysis must be a minimum of 800 words. There is no partial credit for project parts that are less than 800 words.
The strategy diamond has five parts:
• Arenas
• Staging
• Vehicles
• Differentiators
• Economic logic
Choose an industry you're interested in and complete a competitive analysis of the three main industry competitors using each component of the strategy diamond.
The citation for the strategy diamond is the same as for the Chapter 1 expansion exercise: Hambrick, Donald C. and James W. Fredrickson. 2001. Are you sure you have a strategy? Academy of Management Executive, November, pages 48-59.
Conclude your analysis by answering the following questions once you've completed your analysis of each of the three competitors:
• Have any of the firms in your analysis experienced a sustained competitive advantage? (Provide quantitative evidence to support your answer).
• What is your profitability outlook for the industry as a whole? (Use a five-forces analysis to support your answer).
• Which one of the firms in your analysis has the most favorable long-term competitive position and why?
You may find the following links helpful:
The Street (www.thestreet.com)
CNNMoney (www.money.cnn.com)
Business Week Company Insight Center (www.businessweek.com)
One way to begin your project is by entering the stock ticker symbol of a firm in the industry you're analyzing using one of the links above to see what's available. Both sites have considerable information on publicly-traded firms. The Business Week Company Insight Center also includes quick links to competitor information that will help you write your conclusion. CNNMoney has a large number of business stories that let you drill deeper with connected links. The Street is a good source of very current information and analyst recommendations. Read a few of these if you're having trouble getting started on how to analyze a firm.
If you don't know the ticker symbol of a firm you're interested in, you can use either site to look up the ticker symbol. Type the name of the firm in "Symbol Lookup" in CNNMoney or "Company Lookup" in Business Week Company Insight Center; the website will give you the ticker symbol.
Business Week Company Insight Center also provides limited information on select privately-held firms. You're free to analyze privately-held firms for your analysis although you may find it difficult to quantify competitive advantage because obtaining financial data will often be more difficult. Just keep this in mind when you initially choose the industry for your analysis.
PLEASE NOTE: When you turn in parts of your project to the "Assignments" section of Blackboard, please turn in all previous parts with new part. For example, when you turn in Part 2, copy and paste Part 2 in front of part 2 so that by the end of the project you'll turn in all four parts as a complete whole.
Assignment Quality
All assignments must be of quality sufficient that the assignment would be acceptable to corporate level Fortune 500 managers. Assignments below this level of quality do not count toward the final grade.
Turning in Assignments
All assignments must be Microsoft Word documents and placed in the "Assignments" section of Blackboard to receive credit. Hard copies, email attachments, and other formats other than the Blackboard's "Assignments" area do not receive credit.
Partial Completion of Assignments
Assignments are graded on a complete/incomplete basis. There is no credit available for partially complete assignments.
Due Dates
Please see the course schedule below for due dates. There is no credit available for late assignments under any circumstances.
Wednesday, February 18, 9 a.m.
• Chapter 1, 2, and 3 assignments
• Part 1 of competitive analysis
Wednesday, March 11, 9 a.m.
• Chapter 4 and 5 assignments
• Part 2 of competitive analysis
• Voice recording regarding an ethical situation in strategic management
Wednesday, April 8, 9 a.m.
• Chapter 6 and 7 assignments
• Part 3 of competitive analysis
Wednesday, May 6, 9 a.m.
• Chapter 8 and 9 assignments
• Part 4 of competitive analysis
Assignment Substitution
Assignments may not be substituted for one another. For example, you can't substitute a completed expansion exercise for an end-of chapter closing case assignment.
Grades of D or F
All assignments listed under the grading section above must be complete to receive each grade; there's no credit for completing some, but not all, assignments for a particular grade level. Students who do not fully complete any one of the “C” requirements by the due date receive a final course grade of "D." Students who do not fully complete two or more of the “C” requirements by the due date receive a final course grade of “F.”
Business Core Learning Objectives
MGT 498 addresses the core learning objectives of the Gordon Ford College of Business. The following shows how each of these objectives is assessed in this course.
Objective 1: Students will demonstrate communication skills in written and oral forms. Students will be evaluated on coherence and organization, delivery, grammar and syntax, and proper use of materials and mechanics in their communication samples.
Assessment Method: To assess written communication, students will satisfactorily answer all end-of-chapter discussion questions and all end-of-chapter closing case questions. To assess oral communication, students will complete a voice recording regarding an ethical situation in strategic management.
Rubric: The written assignments are assessed based on the following grading rubric:
Coherence and organization = 25% (Are the assignments logically coherent and organized?)
Delivery = 25% (Are the assignments delivered professionally? This includes neatness and professionalism of the written assignments).
Grammar and syntax = 20% (Is proper grammar and syntax used throughout the assignments?)
Proper use of materials and mechanics = 25% (Is the assignment presented in a way that incorporates strategic management concepts and analytical tools? Do the written assignments address ethical issues when appropriate?)
Objective 2: Students will demonstrate an awareness of ethical issues in business and society.
Assessment Method: Chapter 2 (Stakeholders, the Mission, Governance, and Business Ethics) end-of-chapter and closing case questions. Voice recording of an ethical issue regarding strategic management.
Objective 3: Students will demonstrate the ability to strategically employ information technology.
Assessment Method: Completion of a voice recording of an ethical issue regarding strategic management.
Objective 4: Students will demonstrate the ability to solve problems through critical, reflective, and integrative thinking.
Assessment Method: Closing case questions (all chapters)
Objective 5: Students will demonstrate an awareness of the global business environment.
Assessment Method: End-of-chapter and closing case questions for Chapter 6 (Strategy in the Global Environment)
Objective 6: Students will demonstrate knowledge in each of the basic business disciplines including accounting, business statistics and quantitative methods, economics, finance, information systems, management (organization a
Assessment Method: End-of-chapter questions (all chapters)