MIS 44285 002 Spring 2010

LAST UPDATED 01/01/2010

Kent State University

College of Business Administration

Business Policy and Strategy

MIS 44285, Spring 2010

BSA A325

Required Text:

Hunger, J. David and Wheelen, Thomas L., Essentials of Strategic Management, 4th Edition.  Prentice Hall, 2004.  ISBN: 0-13-148523-7.

Students are also required to register for GLO-BUS, an online business simulation.   Registration is completed at http://www.glo-bus.com . The cost is $37.50 and paid by credit card.  Do NOT attempt registration until discussed in class.  The required company registration code and instructions for registration will be provided in class.

Course Overview:

Unlike other business courses that concentrate narrowly on a particular function or piece of the business -accounting, finance, marketing, production, human resources, or information systems, strategic management is a big picture course. It cuts across the whole spectrum of business and management. The center of attention is the total enterprise–-the industry and competitive environment in which it operates, its long-term direction and strategy, its resources and competitive capabilities, and its prospects for success.

Throughout the course, the spotlight will be trained on the foremost issue in running a business enterprise: “What must managers do, and do well, to make the company a winner in the game of business?” The answer that emerges, and which becomes the theme of the course, is that good strategy-making and good strategy-execution are the key ingredients of company success and the most reliable signs of good management. The mission of the course is to explore why good strategic management leads to good business performance, to present the basic concepts and tools of strategic analysis, and to drill you in the methods of crafting a well-conceived strategy and executing it competently.

You will probe, question, and evaluate all aspects of a company’s external and internal situation. You will grapple with sizing up a company’s standing in the marketplace and its ability to go head-to-head with rivals, learn to tell the difference between winning strategies and mediocre strategies, and become more skilled in spotting ways to improve a company’s strategy or its execution.

In the midst of all this, another purpose is accomplished: to help you synthesize what you have learned in prior business courses. Dealing with the grand sweep of how to manage all the pieces of a business makes strategic management an integrative, capstone course in which you reach back to use concepts and techniques covered in previous courses. For perhaps the first time you’ll see how the various pieces of the business puzzle fit together and why the different parts of a business need to be managed in strategic harmony for the organization to operate in winning fashion.

No matter what your major is, the content of this course has all the ingredients to be the best course you’ve taken—best in the sense of learning a lot about business, holding your interest from beginning to end, and enhancing your powers of business judgment. As you tackle the subject matter, ponder Ralph Waldo Emerson’s observation, “Commerce is a game of skill which many people play, but which few play well.” The overriding intent of the course is to help you become a savvier player and better prepare you for a successful business career. I sincerely hope this course will prove to be instrumental in making you “competitively superior,” successful in your career, and much wiser about the secrets of first-rate management.

Specific Course Objectives:

1.   To develop your capacity to think strategically about a company, its present business position, its long-term direction, its resources and competitive capabilities, the caliber of its strategy, and its opportunities for gaining sustainable competitive advantage.

2.   To build your skills in conducting strategic analysis and competitive situations and, especially, to provide you with a stronger understanding of the competitive challenges of a global market environment.

3.   To give you hands-on experience in crafting business strategy, reasoning carefully about strategic options, using what-if analysis to evaluate action alternatives, and making sound strategic decisions.

4.      To integrate the knowledge gained in earlier core courses in the business school curriculum, show you how the various pieces of the business puzzle fit together, and demonstrate why the different parts of a business need to be managed in strategic harmony for the organization to operate in winning fashion.

Communications:

Distance learning classes provide many advantages to students but also have unique challenges, not the least of which is communication outside of class time between the student and the instructor.  E-mail is one solution to this, and I encourage you to use it.  To make sure that I will promptly answer any email, you must use "MIS44285" as the first part of any subject heading.

The Following Policies Apply to All Students in this Course.

A.    Students attending the course who do not have the proper prerequisite risk being deregistered from the class.

B.     Students have responsibility to ensure they are properly enrolled in classes.  You are advised to review your official class schedule (using Web for Students) during the first two weeks of the semester to ensure you are properly enrolled in this class and section.  Should you find an error in your class schedule, you have until Sunday January 31, 2010 to correct the error with your advising office.  If registration errors are not corrected by this date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised now that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester for any class in which you are not properly registered.

C.    Academic Honesty:  Cheating means to misrepresent the source, nature, or other conditions of your academic work (e.g., tests, papers, projects, assignments) so as to get undeserved credit.  The use of the intellectual property of others without giving them appropriate credit is a serious academic offense.  It is the University's policy that cheating or plagiarism result in receiving a failing grade for the work or course.  Repeat offenses result in dismissal from the University.

D.    For Spring 2010, the course withdrawal deadline is Sunday, April 4, 2010.   Withdrawal before the deadline results in a "W" on the official transcript; after the deadline a grade must be calculated and reported.

E.     Students with disabilities:  University policy 3342-3-18 requires that students with disabilities be provided reasonable accommodations to ensure their equal access equal access course content.  If you have 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).

Class:  While attendance is not mandatory, you are encouraged to attend all classes. Class time will be devoted to lectures, discussion, team conferences and projects.  If you are absent from class, it is your responsibility to obtain information. Obviously, your team/class participation grade will suffer if you do not attend.

Performance Evaluation:

This class will use the plus/minus grading system with letter grades assigned as shown below.   If you have questions about this, please see Plus/Minus Grading System – FAQ at http://business.kent.edu/news/plusminus.asp

Points are earned from the following components.

Exams 1 and 2 will cover the assigned text chapters and class lectures. The exams will include True/False, Multiple Choice and short essay questions. Quizzes will include True/False and Multiple Choice questions.  All Exams and quizzes will be taken in class using the Pamela class management system on-line testing feature.  Unless arrangements are made in advance, there are no make-up exams.

Teams, comprised of 2-4 members, will participate in the GLO-BUS Simulation.  Of the 40 total points available, 20 points are earned based on the final team (company) standings.  The top team will receive 20 points; other teams will receive points on a sliding scale based on their performance relative to the best team.  IF ALL DECISIONS AND TEAM PROJECTS ARE TURNED IN ON TIME, the lowest number of points earned will be 12.  The remaining 20 possible points for the simulation component will consist of two individual quizzes, a strategic plan for your company, and team discussion of decisions.

 M&IS 44285     Tentative Schedule             Spring 2010

***** OAT*****

The Outcomes Assessment Test (OAT) must be completed to receive credit for MIS 44285.  Your course grade does NOT depend on your OAT score, but the OAT must be completed to receive course credit.