MIS 44285 Spring 2010 Smas
SYLLABUS
INTEGRATED BUSINESS POLICY AND STRATEGY
M&IS 44285
SPRING 2010
HOURS: T&R / 10:00 – 11:00 AM
T&R / 1:30 – 2:30 PM
OFFICE: BSA A415
PHONE: 330-672-1155
EMAIL: mjsmas@kent.edu
|
SECTION |
CALL NO. |
DAY / TIME |
ROOM NO. |
|
003 |
14214 |
TR / 11:00 AM – 12:15 PM |
BSA 110 |
|
001 |
12320 |
TR / 2:15 – 3:30 PM |
SFH 122 |
NOTE: The material in this syllabus should be considered nominal and is subject to change by the instructor at any given time due to various constraints on the class, such as weather, illness of the instructor, or other such issues. Final exam times are listed in the college catalogue and it is the student’s responsibility to know when these exams are scheduled.
COURSE DESCRIPTION
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’ll be called on to probe, question, and evaluate all aspects of a company’s external and internal situation. You’ll 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.
The next few weeks will be exciting, fun, challenging, and filled with learning opportunities. 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. We 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.
REQUIRED TEXTS AND MATERIALS
· Essentials of Strategic Management, Second Custom Edition,, by Hunger and Wheelen, Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2007
ISBN: 053 63479 80
· Management Simulations, Inc., The Capstone Business Simulation, version 2010C. I will hand this out on the first day of class.
· Readings from the Harvard Business Review: These are on electronic reserve through the library. You can download and print them at your leisure. I have referenced these articles in the course schedule.
· Strategic Planning, a Practical Guide fo Competitive Success, Stanley C. Abraham, Southwestern, 2006.
o ISBN Book + CD 0-324-23255-1
COURSE OBJECTIVES
· 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..
· To build your skills in conducting strategic analysis in a variety of industries and competitive situations and, especially, to provide you with a stronger understanding of the competitive challenges of a global market environment.
· 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.
· To acquaint you with the managerial tasks associated with implementing and executing company strategies, drill you in the range of actions managers can take to promote competent strategy execution, and give you some confidence in being able to function effectively as part of a company’s strategy-implementing team.
· 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.
· To develop your powers of managerial judgment, help you learn how to assess business risk, and improve your ability to make sound decisions and achieve effective outcomes.
· To make you more conscious about the importance of exemplary ethical principles, sound personal and company values, and socially responsible management practices.
GRADING FOR CLASS
GRADING:
I will use plus / minus grading this semester. Thus the grading for the course is as follows:
Based on Percentage Points Scored
92.5 – 100 % POINTS A
89.1 – 92.4 A –
86.0 – 89.0 B+
82.5 – 85.9 B
79.1 – 82.4 B-
76.0 – 79.0 C+
72.5 – 75.9 C
69.1 – 72.4 C-
<69.0 D
<59.0 F
According to new University Guidelines the grades are converted to your grade point average by the following rules:
A = 4.0
A- = 3.7
B+ = 3.3
B = 3.0
B- = 2.7
C+ = 2.3
C = 2.0
C- = 1.7
D+ = 1.3
D = 1.0.
F = 0.0
GRADING PLAN / PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS
There are 1000 available points for the semester broken down as folows:
Exams (3 @ 100 pts) 300 points
Performance on simulation: 250 points
1. Actual perfomance of team in simulation (250 pts.)
a. The winning team from each industry is awarded the
Full 250 points.
o The winning team from each industry is awarded the full 200 points. The remaining teams will be awarded points per the following schedule: A = 250; A- = 235; B+ = 225; B = 210; B- = 200; C+ = 190; C = 180; C - = 170; D = 160; F = 150
2. Peer Review of ind. team members 50 points
3. Bonus Points will be awarded to best team in the US.
They will receive 25 bonus points.
Class Presentation of Assigned Reading 50 points
Case Presentation in class 100 points
Written Case 100 points
Final Project: 150 points
Total Points Available 1000 Points
THE APPROACH TO TEACHING/LEARNING
1. Lectures by the instructor .
2. Presentation of cases in class by teams and discussion of the case afterwards.
3. Presentation of materials from the Harvard Business Review by teams in class.
4. Practicing the task of managing via the management simulation Out-of-class exercise. Teams of students must run their own company in a team-meetings, vigorously competitive industry environment (grade based on results achieved and degree of company success).
5. Exams
6. Examination or real operating companies.
.
THE CAPSTONE SIMULATION
- The focus of the first ten weeks of this course is on managing a “real “company that is competing in a “real” industry. There will be three industries in this simulation: IT, C34924; automotive, C34925; and appliance, C34926. You will be part of a management team, which will be in charge of a specific company. Your team will be constantly analyzing the external, competitive environment, monitoring internal factors and making decisions for your company. You will compete against 3 – 6 teams in a world industry the winning team in an industry receives 250 points for team standing. The teams will be drawn by lot.
- You will do two practice rounds after mastering the Internet web site for Capstone and the relevant software. It will take some time for your team to ramp up and be comfortable with the inputting of decisions and uploading to the web site. All calculations of spreadsheets and financial ratios are done by Capstone and can be downloaded after each round for further analysis. After the practice round, you will then do Eight (8) rounds of decisions, which will represent one year per round. Capstone will determine which team did the best against various criteria and rank the teams accordingly. All judging will be done by Capstone, not the professor. Your points earned will be determined by your place in your industry at the end of the simulation
- Management teams will consist of 5 -6 students. You should try to obtain some degree of diversity among skills, like having computer, finance, marketing, and operation management skills available to the team.
- Each team member must log onto the website as a team member. The fee for the simulation per person is $43.99. Each team member is expected to contribute his/her fair share of work. At the end of the simulation, a peer review will be taken in complete confidence to assure that all players contribute equally.
- Company decisions must be uploaded to the www.capsim.com web site no later than 12 Noon on each Friday of the simulation. Results should be available by that evening. The dates of the various rounds are listed below:
- Practice round 1deadline: Feb. 5
- Practice round 2 deadline: Feb. 12
- First round deadline: Feb 26
- Second round deadline: Feb. 26
- Third round deadline: Mar. 5
- Fourth round deadline: Mar. 12
- Fifth round deadline: Apr. 9
- Sixth round deadline: Apr. 16
- Seventh round deadline: Apr. 23
- Eighth round deadline: Apr. 30
- The web site also offers the opportunity for teams to meet and discuss their pending decisions. There are numerous tutorials and help is available from Capstone help line 877-477-8787.During normal business hours.
- Initial Situation Analysis Each team will prepare a concise report on the status of their company at the start of the simulation. This report will clearly detail the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT.) There is a chapter in the team member guide on the situation analysis. This report should be limited to four typed pages of text with as many charts as you deem appropriate at the end of the report.
TEAM PRESENTATIONS OF READING ASSIGNMENTS
In order to further your knowledge of the field of Strategy and Policy, I have placed a number of articles on electronic reserve at the library. The process for down loading these is to go the library’s web page and click on electronic reserves, go to my name as instructor and use the super secret password: strategy20 and the list of papers will be available to you for down loading. Your team will be responsible for making a presentation on one paper. The team should make good quality slides and have handouts for the entire class covering your analysis of the paper. The schedule for the presentations is on the class schedule part of this syllabus.
CASE WORK
You and your team will present one case during the semester. You and I will lead the class in a discussion of the case after your presentation. The amount of time for the presentation should be no more than 30 minutes. The case presentation will be judged by the class and myself using the guidelines of the Molson MBA Case competition in Montreal. Cases will be assigned by chance after teams have been formed.
EXAMS
There will be three semester exams, which will be of the multiple-choice type with perhaps a single essay question, or two. The first exam will cover the material in Chapters 1-4 and the Capstone Materials. The second exam will cover the material from Chapters 5 – 7 and chapter 11 on the case method, and all other material covered in this period. Exam three will cover Chapter 8 – 10. Students are held accountable for all material in the chapters cited regardless if they are covered in lecture. This includes any case work materials and all assigned readings from the Harvard Business Review.
PREPARATION OF WRITTEN CASE ASSIGNMENT
The written case assignment is to be prepared on Individual Basis. The written case will be given to you in class. The case format described in class must be used in the written case analysis. More will be said during class on how to do this.
Some guidelines for the written case are:
The written case is due, Thursday, April 22, 2010.
Cases turned in after the due date are eligible for a grade no higher than a C (and that only if the paper is otherwise an A or B+ paper). No late papers will be accepted if submitted more than 2 class days past the scheduled due date (except by prearranged consent of the instructor).
All written cases are to be typed (1.0 spaced) and should incorporate correct form, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, and communication skills.
Papers which, in the opinion of the instructor, employ disproportionately poor grammar and poor quality written communication skills will be assigned a grade that is a full one-letter lower than would otherwise be assigned.
The topic for the written case will be determined at a later date.
TERM PROJECT
The term project for this class will be an on-going analysis of a company of your choosing. You must choose a company by Friday, February 5, 2010. You may choose a company on the Fortune 500, or some other index, or you may choose a small company that you are familiar with. You must have access to all financial data however, and this is a key criterion. If you can’t have access, then chose another company to study.
The study will be made up of three phases:
Due Friday February 5, 2010
a. General Company information …Essentially pick out the company you want to study and give some background information on it. Use the Abraham book as a guide.
Phase One: Due Friday, March 5, 2010 (General Company Information must be attached)
b. Industry and Competitive Analysis
o Industry Analysis
o Competitive Analysis
o Porter’s Five forces
o Strategic Group Map
o GE Matrix
c. Market Analysis
d. Environmental Analysis
Phase Two: Due Friday April 16, 2007 (Note Phase One must be attached)
a. Financial Analysis
b. SWOT Analysis
c. TOWS Matrix
d. General Internal Analysis
e. Core Competence Assessment
f. Value Analysis
g. SPACE Chart Analysis
Phase Three: Due Moday, May 11, 2007 (Note: Phases one and Two must be attached.)
a. Strategic Analysis and Choices
o 0Strategic Alternatives and Analysis of Criteria
b. Recommendations
c. Mission Statements
d. Vision Statements
e. Implementation and contingency analysis
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 Friday, January 29, 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, March 28, 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).
