M&IS 44285 Summer 2006 Weinroth
M & IS 44285: Integrated Business Policy/Strategy
Summer One 2006: Section 011
100 BSA Monday, Wednesday 6:00 to 9:50 p.m.
Instructor: Dr. Jay Weinroth
330 672-1150
A421 BSA
Office hours: Monday, Wednesday 4:40-5:40 p.m.
TEXTBOOK: The textbook for this course is the Custom Edition of Hunger and Wheelen, Essentials of Strategic Management, Pearson Custom Publishing, Prentice-Hall, Boston, MA. 2004. The book is available at the university bookstore. All assigned readings shown in the class schedule are from this book.
STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: In accordance with University policy, if you have a documented disability and require accommodations to obtain equal access in this course, please contact the instructor at the beginning of the semester or when given an assignment for which an accommodation is required. Students with disabilities must verify their eligibility through the Office of Student Disability Services (SDS) in the Michael Schwartz Student Service Center (181 MSC) (672-3391).
ENROLLMENT: It is the student's responsibility to ensure proper enrollment in classes. You are advised to review your official class schedule during the first week of the semester to ensure proper enrollment. Should you determine an error in your class schedule, you have a limited time to correct it with your advising office. If registration errors are not corrected by the appropriate date and you continue to attend and participate in classes for which you are not officially enrolled, you are advised that you will not receive a grade at the conclusion of the semester. Last day to drop an individual class. July 3, 2006 is the last date to drop an individual class without special permission. If you stop attending a class without officially dropping, the probable result will be a grade of F.
Cheating -- any form of copying another student's work and submitting it as your own will result in one or more of the consequences specified in the university regulations, for all students responsible for the incident. Obviously where students are given a team assignment the two or more persons both attach their names to the work.
Enrollment on ORION. Entirely apart from your official university enrollment in this course, you must be enrolled in the course section on Orion in order to participate in the course and receive a grade. Go immediately to http://orion.kent.edu and select Enroll in a course. Select this course and follow the instructions.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
Attendance 20 points
Team in-class exercise 5 points
Essay quizzes, 7.5 points each 30 points
Team strategic audit 25 points
2 Team critiques 20 points
Grading scale: A 89, B 79, C 67, D 55 F 0
Plusses and minuses will not be used.
Attendance. Think of this as a free 20 points of your grade. 2 points will be awarded for each class session you attend. There are specifics about this component of your grade. You must be in your assigned seat no later than 6:15 (although the instructor will start class promptly at 6:00 – this allows for traffic mishaps and the like), you must be present in class for all the activity of that evening, including returning on time from breaks, you must remain until the end of class (or until you have finished your quiz), and you must remain awake (don’t laugh – I have seen people who can blissfully sleep through class – sometimes even instructors – okay, you can laugh). This is an all or nothing point award – you won’t get one point for showing up for half of class, etc. Legitimate excuses, with documentation, may be accepted, if judged appropriate by the instructor. While you are in class, asking questions and offering comments for discussion is highly encouraged, in order to avoid the boredom of listening to an instructor monologue. There are no dumb questions. If the instructor does not know the answer to your question, perhaps someone else in class does, or you can be directed to a source where you can find the answer. You won’t learn if you don’t ask.
Team in-class exercise. This will be explained during the first class session. All students in the team will receive the same grade given to the team in general for this exercise.
Essay quizzes. There are 4 essay quizzes, each 50 to 60 minutes in length. Clearly legible handwriting and coherent full sentences are part of the requirement. If a legally recognized disability will present a problem for you, please notify the instructor immediately and alternate arrangements will be made. Each essay quiz will relate material of the textbook chapters for that class to information you will have from your study of your team’s chosen firm for the strategic audit. Quizzes are open book, open notes. Teams will meet during each class, to discuss ongoing work on the strategic audit and to compare notes on how the information for their chosen firm relates to the topics of the textbook chapters.
Important – good answers, in the instructor’s judgment, are those that present relevant facts, intelligently chosen and helpfully organized, that focus on strategic issues for the firm, and that display creative and independent thinking.
Strategic Audit. The continuing theme of the textbook is the strategic audit. Your team will perform a complete strategic audit of its chosen firm, following all the details as presented in the textbook chapters. The purpose of a strategic audit is to provide verifiable computations of the expected results of one choice versus others for the firm’s future strategic direction. A rough guess is that a good strategic audit at the level appropriate to a class of this nature will run about 30 pages. More is acceptable, less may put your grade in peril. Note from the schedule that your team’s strategic audit is due to the instructor’s e-mail almost one week before we will begin hearing oral presentations. This is to enable another of the teams to prepare a competent critique of your strategic audit. Even though the teams will present over a three week period, all strategic audits are due on the same date, to provide fairness in grading.
The instructor will grade the strategic audits on the following basis (not necessarily equal points to all items):
· accurate, highly relevant, and well organized presentation of facts concerning the firm’s strategic situation
· continuing focus on the history of the firm’s efforts to attain strategic advantage against its competition, particularly in the way it chooses to compete
· complete presentation of all the components of a strategic audit as shown in the textbook
· spell-checked writing, free of grammatical errors, and fairly free of clumsy writing (avoid unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, avoid unnecessary sentences, for example “Now we are going to present the next part of this material.” and so on.).
· time taken to think through what is interesting about the case and effort at original and creative solutions to problems, as shown in your arguments and conclusions
· major focus on three alternative strategic directions for the firm’s future and your demonstration, via the pro forma financial statement, of the preferred choice
· presentation of financial data in a format easy to understand and see at a glance.
The grade for the strategic audit will work as follows. The instructor assigns a grade between 0 and 100 based on the items just indicated. Suppose your team earns a grade of 90 and you have 7 team members. The assignment is worth a total of 25 points if done perfectly. The instructor gives the team a total of 157.5 points to distribute among the team members – 90% times 25 points times 7 members. The team makes any distribution it chooses to individuals so long as this totals to 157.5. The points distributed to you are your grade for this assignment.
Team critique of another team’s strategic audit. Each team will critique another team’s strategic audit. The critique must keep in mind the seven criteria specified above for a good performance of a strategic audit, and in addition the critique shall test the plausibility of the assumptions made in the strategic audit, giving argument either in support of the critiqued team’s assumptions or in support of alternative views. The critique shall be in writing and presented to the critiqued team and to the instructor, but it will not be posted on the web site. Each member of the team receives the same grade for the critique. A rough guess at the appropriate length of the critique is ten pages.
Extra credit. I have nothing in mind. Make me an interesting offer. Up to 10 points maximum.
Web sites for annual reports.
Your team may select from among the following firms for your strategic audit: Cisco Systems Inc. (network technology); The Allstate Corporation (insurance); Target Corporation (discount chain); The Walt Disney Company (entertainment/theme parks); Fedex Corporation (shipping); The Best Buy Company, Inc. (electronics retailer). These are all Fortune 100 firms based on 2003 revenue. The web sites for these firms follow:
The firm’s corporate home page is your main source of information for the strategic audit, especially the annual reports for several years, the link on corporate governance, and any other links provided for financials. Your other sources for information are any online databases available to you through KSU library services – contact reference librarians for help on specifics – and your favorite web search engine (Google, Altavista, etc.). Two recommended sources through KSU library services are Business & Industry (1994 - Current) and Business Source Premier. These sources may be accessed through the following link:
Business & Industry is a non-academic database. Your searches will be rewarded with multiple news articles only if you use the names the database compiler happens to have chosen. Use the following:
Target Corporation
Allstate Insurance
Walt Disney
Best Buy Company
Fedex
Cisco
Business Source Premier is an academic database and usually either full or partial corporate names will work for your search. Many of the journals are practitioner and you should definitely see what you might be able to use for your work.
Schedule.
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Monday
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Wednesday
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Class 1. June 12
Introduction to the course – formation of teams – seating chart!
Chapter 1. Basic Concepts of Strategic Management.
Eight step exercise – KSU as the organization to be analyzed – then same exercise for your teams
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Class 2. June 14
Scan the Maytag Case – pages 225 – 257 for the history and strategic situation of the firm at the date of the case study, in order to understand textbook examples using Maytag
Chapter 2. Corporate Governance
Chapter 3. Environmental Scanning – be prepared to apply the table on page 44 to KSU.
Teams meet for customary one hour to share notes on the ongoing strategic audit and strategic situation of chosen firm to use for quiz questions. Discussion this evening will include preparation for quiz 1 on June 19.
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Class 3. June 19
QUIZ # 1 – material through June 14
Chapter 4. Internal Scanning
Chapter 5. Strategy Formulation: Situation Analysis and Choice of Strategy
Teams meet
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Class 4. June 21
QUIZ # 2 – material through June 19
Chapter 6. Corporate Strategy – Portfolio Analysis
Chapter 7. Functional Strategy – Selection of Best Strategy
Teams meet
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Class 5. June 26
QUIZ # 3 – material through June 21
Textbook Cases 3, 4, and 5. Be prepared to discuss the facts of each case. Each team will be called on to critique the textbook’s strategic audit of Maytag, including in-depth follow up from web sources on more recent developments.
Teams meet
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Class 6. June 28
Chapter 8. Strategy Implementation
Chapter 9. Staffing and Leading
Teams meet
QUIZ # 4 – material through June 28
TEAM STRATEGIC AUDITS DUE TO INSTRUCTOR BY E-MAIL NOON THURSDAY, JUNE 29 – posted on the website by Thursday evening.
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Class 7. July 3
Chapter 10. Evaluation and Control
Chapter 11 including Appendix
NOTE – this material from the textbook is important for your strategic audit but priority during this class session will be given to teams’ final preparation of their oral presentations and critiques.
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Class 8. July 5
Team 1 presents
Team 2 critiques
Instructor’s overall critique
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Class 9. July 10
Team 2 presents
Team 3 critiques
Instructor’s overall critique
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Class 10. July 13
Team 3 presents
Team 1 critiques
Instructor’s overall critique
Student evaluation of instruction
Students prepare to graduate, earn lots of money and give portions of same to KSU
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