Critical Issues in Business: Strategic Management

1 Course Unit

Together with government and the nonprofit sector, the business, corporate, or for-profit sector has a profound bearing on human well- being. For socially responsible business leaders, the challenge is to formulate successful organizational strategies that sustain and grow the organization’s profits and market shares, and satisfy its employees, shareholders, and customers, while also benefitting, or at least not adversely affecting, wider communities, whether local, regional, national, or transnational. Especially when facing less scrupulous business competitors, aggressive government regulators, or adversarial nonprofit advocates, civic-minded business leaders grapple with this challenge every day. How can such leaders nonetheless formulate strategies to gain and sustain a competitive advantage at home or abroad? In this course, we explore the complexity and ambiguity of strategic management by examining real-world cases in which firms either failed or succeeded. Specific topics to be covered include performance measures, industry analysis, resources and capability analysis, business-level strategy, corporate-level strategy, and strategies for expanding into foreign markets. *Students must take this course prior to GMPA 6070. 1 Course Unit