Business Policy and Strategy 8

Business Policy and Strategy 8

Part 1:

After reading the case study and other available information carefully, prepare a case discussion that describes your understanding of how business policy and strategy choices should be made. Provide examples to illustrate and support your position.

Please write an essay of complete and well composed paragraphs (250 word minimum) Be sure to use in text citation and provide references for your sources. Wikipedia is not a source.

Part 2:

Please compose a well-written essay (a minimum of 600-words) about how what we have learned in this class has impacted your understanding of Business Policy and Business Strategy. Highlight anything that you learned that was new to you or things that changed understandings you already had coming into the course.

Cite references to material that you use in preparing the essay. Wikipedia is not a source.

Syllabus

Course Description: This course addresses the formulation, implementation, monitoring and control of business strategies and supporting organizational policies. Students learn to evaluate the comprehensive business enterprise through an integrated view of the various functional disciplines. This course attempts to develop the conceptual and abstract skills required by leaders of businesses in a competitive environment in order to understand business issues and challenges from the perspective of all functional managers. This course is intended as the “Capstone” course for the students’ curriculum where much of what was learned during the students’ program is integrated into an applied context.

The course is divided into two parts. Part One deals with the foundational concepts of leading a business and setting business policy strategically. Part One will cover: (1) the concepts of establishing a business vision from which business plans will align, (2) building a business team to execute business goals, and (3) techniques to monitor business progress in implementing the goals.

Part Two takes the foundational concepts learned in Part One and applies them to case studies of real business situations. There is an important structure to the business applications presented in Part Two. The structure is called frame of reference analysis. The basis of this analysis is that most situations, whether oriented to business or not, consist of multiple disciplines or frames of reference. This analysis calls for studying subjects and situations through the lens or ‘frames’ of certain disciplines. In the course, the frames of references used to view strategic choices are: (1) the structural frame of reference, (2) the economic/business frame, (3) the political/cultural frame, and (4) the human resources frame. Each week, during Part Two, case studies are presented that examine a real business situation through the frame of reference of one of the above viewpoints. The final week of the course will be an integration exercise where the role of leadership is be examined.

Week 1: Unit 1 – Formulating Policy and Strategy

Week 2: Unit 2 – Implementing Strategy
Week 3: Unit 3 – Monitoring and Control of Policy or Strategy Execution
Week 4: Unit 4 – Structural Frame of Reference
Week 5: Unit 5 – Economic/Business Frame of Reference
Week 6: Unit 6 –Political/Cultural Frame of Reference
Week 7: Unit 7 –Human Resources Frame of Reference
Week 8: Unit 8 –Policy and Strategy Integration: The Role of Leadership