Management-490

Business Strategy and Policy

Summer, 2007

Professor: Dr. Rajeev Sawhney

Office: 413 Stipes Hall

Telephone: 298-1625

Email: rsawhney@wiu.edu

Website: http://faculty.wiu.edu/R-Sawhney/

Office hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: 4 to 5 p.m. or by appointment

Course Overview:

The strategic management process is critical to organizational success. This course deals with the strategic management process with an emphasis on its use in a global competitive environment. The primary focus in this course is to integrate your business knowledge, acquired in various disciplines, into an applied organizational framework to make effective strategic decisions. The course will provide you with knowledge of a variety of analytical models and approaches to understanding and improving your strategic decision making abilities. Cases, videotapes, and speakers will be used to provide you an opportunity to connect the theoretical knowledge to real life.

Course objectives:

My objective in this course is to add value to you. This added value consists of the following capabilities that you would apply to improving your strategic decision making process:

• Increase your ability to think and operate strategically in uncertain situations
• Develop your skills in identifying, analyzing, and proposing workable solutions to problems
• Developing your skills in analyzing the important quantitative and qualitative factors in specific strategic situations and making appropriate trade-offs between them
• Develop your judgment to decision making by differentiating between: major and minor; short and long terms; the pros and cons of alternative solutions in practical situations
• Develop your ability to formulate management strategy consistent with the company’s overall mission, and with the internal and external constraints faced by the organization.

Course Materials:

• You are required to purchase a textbook: Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization by Hitt, Ireland and Hokisson, 6^th edition, Thomson-Southwestern Publishers, 2005 – You need both cases and concepts.
• From time to time, other material will be handed in class and placed on reserve in the library.

Grading:

Quizzes	100 points
2 Group Cases	100 points
2 Group cross-questioning and class discussion	30 points
Exam-1	125 points
Exam-2	125 points
Written assignment	20 points

Exams

The schedule contains two exams, each worth 125 points. The exams are not cumulative. Exams will include materials from the text, lectures, cases, class discussion, videos, handouts and projects used in the class. You are strongly discouraged from missing the exams. There will be no make-up for exams missed without prior permission.

Quizzes

There will be a total of 11 unscheduled quizzes during the semester. The points for the lowest one will not be included in your grade. The quizzes will be around 3-5 minutes long, typically having 5-10 multiple-choice and short questions. There will be no make-up for missed quizzes. You cannot leave the class after taking the quiz; otherwise the quiz will be automatically marked zero.

Group Case Assignments and presentations

Hand in-group assignments will be two cases that you will work in groups of three students. We will decide on cases and groups in the first class. Typically, each case will involve financial condition analysis, industry and competitor analysis, marketing analysis, production analysis, legal/ethical/environmental analysis, etc. Therefore, it will be beneficial to have members with different skills in your team.

You are required to hand in a typewritten case report before your case presentation. The report should be around 4-6 pages (one inch margin on all four sides, 12 point font, 1.5 line spacing). You may include exhibits to present supporting material like graphs, tables, charts, and any other pertinent information to your analysis; these exhibits do not count towards page limit. Each group will have 20 minutes to present their analysis of the case, followed with questions.

Group Cross questioning

For each case discussed in class, two groups will be assigned the task of preparing and cross-questioning the other group(s) that present the case. At least 7 questions need to be listed. A typewritten copy of these questions has to be submitted to me before the case analysis.

Written assignment

Identify an article in magazines, journals, newspapers etc. that illustrate any concept(s) from the course and write a brief, two page (1.5 space) paper that describes the concept you believe to be illustrated.  Your report should be submitted on or before July 19^th.

Course Grades

Grade A = total points 450 or higher

Grade B = total points between 400 to 449.9

Grade C = total points between 350 to 399.9

Grade D = total points between 300 to 349.9

Grade F = below 300

Case and Cross-questioning Schedule

Due Date	Case	Groups to present and submit written case analysis	Groups to cross-question and submit list of questions
July 9	Apple Computer, Inc.	1 and 8	6 and 3
July 10	AT&T: Twenty Years of Change	2 and 7	5 and 4
July 12	Diageo plc	3 and 6	8 and 2
July 16	MTV vs Channel V	4 and 5	7 and 1
July 17	American International Group	1 and 8	6 and 3
July 18	HP-Compaq Merger	2 and 7	5 and 4
July 19	Microsoft	3 and 6	8 and 2
July 23	The Parcel Service Industry, 2002 – UPS vs FedEx	4 and 5	7 and 1

Date (July)	Topics	Case (book)	Readings (book)
2	Introduction and course expectations How to do case analysis Financial analysis Overview		C i to xvi Ch-1
3	√ External Environment Analysis: Opportunities, Threats, Industry Competition, and Competitor Analysis √ Internal Environment: Resources, Capabilities, and Core Competencies		Ch-2 Ch-3
5	√ Business-level Strategy √ Competitive Rivalry and Competitive Dynamics		Ch-4 Ch-5
9	Corporate-level Strategy	Apple Computer, Inc.	Ch-6
10	Acquisition and Restructuring Strategies	AT&T: Twenty Years of Change	Ch-7
11	Exam-1
12	International Strategy	Diageo plc	Ch-8
16	Cooperative Strategies	MTV vs Channel V	Ch-9
17	Corporate Governance	American International Group	Ch-10
18	Organizational Structure and Controls	HP-Compaq Merger	Ch-11
19	Strategic Leadership	Microsoft	Ch-12
23	Strategic Entrepreneurship	The Parcel Service Industry, 2002 – UPS vs FedEx	Ch-13
24	Exam-2
25	Application of Concepts	Case - TBA
26	Application of  Concepts	Case -TBA