1a

COURSE PROCEDURE

                                                This type of course cannot be ingested passively, but requires your active participation in and before class.  It has to become an interactive course.  This will render it more rather than less interesting, since what you get out of a course is in direct relation to the effort that goes into it.  Students will organize themselves into teams of 4 people (our version of "quality circles") for class and project preparation, as well as class discussion.  More importantly, the class discussion is an integral part of this course.  Students will be expected to reflect on their readings from the following four sources:

i)                              The theories and rationales found in the course material or presented in class.

ii)             The theoretical knowledge derived from your earlier courses.

iii)            Information gleaned from reading the business press (e.g., Business Week).

iv)                 General knowledge gleaned from your prior organizational experience.

           Due to the fact that a number of best-selling books and even movies on business, business takeovers and restructurings, entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and even corporate responsibility issues have been broadly publicized, this session will not rely on video presentations.  They tend to constrict the time available; since many of you have already been exposed to this information, class time could be better used for reflecting upon and digesting the overload of information to which you are exposed.

CLASS ATTENDANCE & PARTICIPATION

                                                                An interactive class presupposes regular attendance buttressed by beforehand preparation.  A 90% attendance rate will allow you to make allowance for emergencies.  In such eventuality, do not call your instructor; simply ask your group or quality-circle teammates to take notes for you.

STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

        University policy 3342-3-18 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access to course content.  If you have a documented disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester to make arrangements for necessary classroom adjustments.  Please note, you must first verify your eligibility for these through the Student Accessibility Services (contact 330-672-3391 or visit  www.kent.edu/sas  for more information on registration procedures).  [Also visit <http://www.registrars.kent.edu/disability/>]

ACADEMIC HONESTY  

     Plagiarism is the misrepresentation of the source, nature or conditions of one’s academic work.  The use of the intellectual property of others without giving them due credit is considered a serious academic offense.  Cheating also occurs when two or more people cooperate in such misrepresentations.  It is the University’s policy that cheating or plagiarism results in receiving a failing grade for the work or course.  Repeat offenses result in dismissal from the University.

THE NOT-GRADED BUT STATE-MANDATED EXAM

                   Outcomes Assessment is a College requirement for M&IS 44285, Integrated Business Policy/Strategy.  Therefore, if you are enrolled in this course, you must complete this senior satisfaction survey as a part of your class, regardless of when you are actually graduating.  The survey itself is not graded, yet it is required you take it for you to receive your final grade in M&IS 44285.

GRADUATION INFORMATION FOR SENIORS

   It is your responsibility to apply for graduation before the set deadline. If you apply after the deadline you will be assessed a $200 late fee. Please see your academic advisor as soon as possible if you are uncertain as to your progress toward graduation.  The graduation application deadlines are follows:

May Graduation:                  Apply before September 15^th

August Graduation:              Apply before December 15^th

December Graduation: Apply before March 15^th

To apply for graduation complete the following steps:

  0. Log onto your Flashline account

1.       Click on the Student Tools tab

2.       Look in the Graduation Planning Tool Box

3.       Click on Application for Graduation

** If an error message appears, you should contact your advisor in order to graduate in time.

GRADING

Individual Grades  

·         Class participation = 20 pts

·         Quiz 1 = 10 pts

·         Quiz 2 = 10 pts

·         Quiz 3 = 10 pts

·         Quiz 4 = 10 pts

                Group Grades

·         Short Case 1  =  5 pts

·         Short Case 2  =  5 pts

·         Long Case 1  = 10 pts

·         Long Case 2  = 20 pts

                    *          Team members should complement each other.  It would be wasteful or even infeasible for them to duplicate each other's work.  To provide for greater choice and flexibility, teammates do not all have to end up with the same grade.  Each team member will be evaluated by his or her peers by means of the division of a pie of 10 points (or 1.00 in decimal notation) in among the team members [see attached example].  This will allow the instructor to derive a multiplier to scale the group grade up or down for each individual according to his/her peer review.

                    *          Alternatively, groups who unanimously make this choice may simply submit together a sheet signed by all members listing EACH person's percentage contribution to the group work.

                The final grading will conform to (or possibly be more lenient than) the following numeric scale conversion:

·         A   :  92 <= X <=100

·         A-  :                  90 <= X <= 91

·         B+ :                  88 <= X <= 89

·         B   :   82 <= X <= 87

·         B- :   80 <= X <= 81

·         C+ :                  78 <= X <= 79

·         C  :    72 <= X <= 77

·         C- :   70 <= X <= 71

·         D+:   68 <= X <= 69

·         D  :    60 <= X <= 67

·         F  :     0  <= X <= 59

OPTIONAL PRESENTATIONS

                To allow the students to participate even in designing the course contents, extra credit can be earned through class presentations approved by the instructor (maximum: 2 presentations per student).

                - Individual presentation: up to 4 extra points;

                - Group presentation      :    up to 2 extra pts for each presenter.

LAST DATE TO WITHDRAW         Sunday 6 November 2011

WRITING THE CASE REPORTS

       The group work, that carries 40% of the grade, will be expected to respond to directives to be communicated to you later in the course. It should be written in unambiguous grammatical English not lending itself to several interpretations. Please use 11-pt Times New Roman font with 1.5 spacing between lines, and clearly identify your sections and subsections through a visually clear hierarchy of headings and sufficient white spaces separating them.

TIMING OF THE CASE REPORTS

      Case reports should be turned in at the beginning of the class in which they are due.  Class absences due to working on late reports will not be excused.

Dr W. Acar                                                                                                                 4 September 2011

TENTATIVE

COURSE CALENDAR

PART  I:  BASIC CONCEPTS OF S.T. & BUSINESS-LEVEL STRATEGIES

8-30     Introduction to the course and structuring the class into study groups (or “quality circles”).

9-1       Class discussion of Ch. 1 of Hill-Jones’ Essentials text in S.T. (strategic theory).

9-6       Presentation of the concept of scenario analysis and in-class discussion of the Green Grow case.    

9-8       Class discussion of Ch. 2:  a firm’s mission and governance, its stakeholders and ethics.

9-13     Quiz 1 on Chs 1 and 2, and further discussion of their fundamental concepts of the course.

9-15     Class discussion of Ch. 3:  External analysis: the identification of opportunities and threats.

9-20     Class discussion of Ch. 4:  Building competitive advantage.

9-22     Intragroup review of chapters 1 to 4 in preparation of Quiz 2.

9-27     Quiz 2 on Chs 1 to 4, and further discussion of their fundamental concepts of the course.

9-29     Presentation of writing up the cases for this course.

10-4     Class discussion of Ch. 5:  Business-level strategy and competitive positioning.

PART II:  CORPORATE-LEVEL & GLOBAL STRATEGIES, AND STRATEGY IMPLEMENTATION

10-6     Class discussion of Ch. 6:  Strategy in the Global environment.

10-11   Intragroup preparation of the first short case, the Starbucks case (p. 113).

10-13   The Starbucks case to be turned in and discussed.

10-18   Class discussion of Ch. 7: Corporate-level strategy and long-run profitability.

10-20   Intragroup review of chapters 1 to 7 in preparation of Quiz 3.

10-25   Quiz 3 on Chs 1 to 7, and further discussion of their fundamental concepts of the course.

10-27   Class discussion of Ch. 8:  Implementing strategies to build and develop a company.

11-1     Class discussion of Ch. 9:  Implementing strategy through organizational design.

11-3     Intragroup preparation of the second short case, the Nike case (p. 142).

11-8     The Nike case to be turned in and discussed.

11-10   Review of Chs 1 & 2.

11-15   Review of Chs 3 & 4.

11-17   Intragroup preparation of the first long case, the McDonald’s case (p. C53).

11-22   McDonald’s case to be turned in and discussed.

11-24   Thanksgiving Day – NO CLASS

11-29   Review of Chs 5, 6 & 7.

12-1     Review of Chs 8 & 9.

12-6     OPEN AGENDA:  Speaker session?

12-8     The combined Global Automobile Industry case (p. C66) and General Motors case (p. C78) to be turned in and discussed.

12-13   No meeting because this is the exam week.  Intragroup preparation of the fourth quiz.

12-15   The final Quiz 4 on Chs 1 to 9, and further discussion of their important concepts of the course.

PLEASE NOTE  that the timing of the final exam (12:45 on Dec 15^th) is not under the control of your instructor, but has been posted long ahead of time on the University Registrar’s website.  Its timing, as well as that of your other exams, can be verified by accessing the official Registrar’s website at:  http://www.kent.edu/registrar/calendars/fall_finalsched.cfm

Do check again closer to the exam date.

Business Policy                                                                                                   Group #                                                                Full Name

W. Acar

TEAMMATE EVALUATION

You are to evaluate your team members three different ways. You also can provide individual or personal comments. When evaluating your colleagues, you need to be careful, fair and objective. Base your evaluation on: personal effort/hard work, team cooperation (being present at meetings, working together), leadership, quality of ideas, analytic methodology and teaching teammates.

Evaluation Framework

A.    Distribute a pie of 1.00 point among your team members, including yourself, down to the second decimal of a point. Points are to be given on the basis of performance on the joint project work.

B.     Rank-order each team member on the basis of the project work (1 the best, 4 the worst). Note: no two members can receive the same ranking.

C.     Rank each member’s class participation on a scale of 0-10 (with 10 being high). This time, performance evaluation is relative to all teams and individuals in this class; here it is possible to score everyone high or low or mixed.

Team Members:                                                                               A                                                                                 B                                                                                             C

                                                                                                                        Score of relative                                                          Tie-breaking                    

    performance in group                  ranking on                                     Contribution

        project work.                                                       project work.                         to class.

E X A M P L E

(This is an example of a “peer review” or “teammate evaluation” sheet, which will serve to determine each student’s personal multiplier. This multiplier will transform the student’s group grade into his or her personal grade for the group projects.)  

ABOUT YOUR INSTRUCTOR

                   William ACAR  (Dipl. Ing.; M.A.Sc.; Ph.D., the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) is currently a Professor of Management & Information Systems at the Graduate School of Management of Kent State University.  In addition to the periods of research included in his graduate studies, he brings a prior experience consisting of six years of engineering consulting, five years of evaluative analysis of nonprofit programs and three years of university teaching in another language (in French, at the Ecole Polytechnique of Université de Montréal).  His experience with nonprofit program analysis has further developed his interest in methodological issues.

                   Dr. Acar has consulted to a number of business firms and nonprofit agencies, and is active in several learned societies.  For example, he served as an internal consultant to nonprofit agencies for several years in Toronto, and taught managerial seminars on Management by Objectives.  He supported himself during his doctoral years at the Wharton School by consulting and setting up seminars to large businesses as an associate of the Busch Center of U-Penn, and later of the Applied Research Center of LaSalle University in Philadelphia.  Also, he was active for several years with Kent State University’s Small-Business Institute as he supervised consulting projects carried out by his student teams.

                   Dr. Acar was admitted to the graduate faculty of Kent State University soon after joining in late 1983 and became a full member of it in 1986.  Since that time, he has chaired a dozen doctoral dissertations. He has taught doctoral, masters-level and undergraduate classes in several areas, and has pioneered an approach to teaching large classes in an interactive manner reminiscent of the desirable small-class setting.  He has also served on a large number of university-level, college and departmental bodies, task forces and committees, from the Faculty Senate to the Departmental FAC (Faculty Advisory Committee) and the current Departmental Self-Study & Review Committee.

                   His principal teaching focus is on strategic management, knowledge management, organization theory and supply-chain management.  His research focus is on strategic management and its interface with information science, financial theory, entrepreneurship, corporate responsibility, and operations and supply-chain management.  He has developed a number of conceptual and methodological approaches for management theory and practice.  For instance, he has developed a causal mapping method for the analysis of complex business situations called CSM (Comprehensive Situation Mapping), and coauthored a book on organizational learning entitled Scenario-Driven Planning published by Quorum Books.  His approach has been used to co-develop a computerized GDSS (group decision-support system) for solving strategic and “collaboration engineering” problems.  Another methodological interest of his resulted in the development of measures of diversity better calibrated than the Herfindahl and Entropy measures still widely used in a variety of applications.

                   Dr. Acar has published in many journals, including the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the Journal of Management Studies, Decision Sciences, the Journal of Knowledge Management, the European Journal of Operational Research, Knowledge Management Research & Practice, the Journal of Management, Decision Sciences, OMEGA, the Canadian Journal of Operational Research & Information Processing, the Journal of Information Systems, Systems Research, Behavioral Science, the International Journal of Production & Operations Management, the Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, the International Journal of Organizational Analysis, the International Journal of Operational Research, the Journal of Psychology & Financial Markets, FUTURES, the Journal of Enterprise Management, Strategic Change, INTERFACES, the International Journal of Strategic Decision Sciences, the International Journal of Entrepreneurial Venturing and the International Journal of Commerce & Management.