COURSE SYLLABUS BUSINESS 9200 (S1DA) BUSINESS POLICY City University of New York Baruch College Zicklin School

l of Business Department of Management Summer 2012 Professor Xiaoli Yin Office: Room 9-272 Office Hours: W 4:30 5:30 and by appt. Phone: 646-312-3679 Fax: 646-312-3621 Email: Xiaoli.Yin@baruch.cuny.edu**

** E-mail is the preferred means of communications for making appointments. Required Course Materials Cases and notes available for purchase from Harvard Business School Press:

http://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cb/access/13887289
All readings published by Harvard Business Review (HBR) are available on library database Business Source Complete (BSC). Please search and download these materials yourself through BSC. Other readings (except HBR articles) are on electronic reserve: http://ereserve.baruch.cuny.edu/eres/coursepage.aspx?cid=2987 Supplemental readings may be distributed by your professor throughout the semester. Course Description and Objectives Business Policy deals with the organization, management, and strategic positioning of the firm so as to gain long-term competitive advantage. In this course, you will develop your skills at: understanding how firms gain and sustain competitive advantage analyzing strategic business situations and formulating strategy implementing strategy and organizing the firm for strategic success. To accomplish these objectives, this course introduces and employs various analytical frameworks that help us to identify the sources of competitive advantage from both an industry and firm perspective. By focusing on what makes some competitive strategies strong and viable, while others remain weak and vulnerable, you shall develop the ability to consider the impact of change and other important environmental forces on the opportunities for establishing and sustaining competitive advantage. Up until this time, most of your business education has emphasized a specialized, functional perspective of business situations. In accounting, you have concentrated on how to identify and produce the information necessary to effectively manage and guide organizations. In finance, you have been concerned with understanding how capital markets work and, in turn, affect the financing of a companys on-going operations. In marketing, the focus has been on how to analyze, shape, and address the needs of consumers as well as how to manage a companys marketing efforts. In operations management, you have learned about how to organize the production activities of a firm so it is able to produce quality goods and services at an attractive price. Finally, courses on the management of human resources have been concerned with the effective development and management of a companys human assets. All of these functional disciplines play a critical role in the success of any company, but how do they fit together?

In this course, we integrate these perspectives together by taking a different perspective, that of the general manager. General managers are responsible for setting the goals, objectives, and strategies of the organizations they lead as well as the implementation and execution of such plans. To do this, the general manager must be capable of understanding and utilizing the knowledge from each of the organizations functional areas to develop a cohesive and effective competitive strategy. In addition, the general manager must be able to analyze competitive situations within industries in order to understand the sources of the firm's competitive advantage. In todays business environment, whether you are a new hire or the CEO of the company, you must be capable of thinking like a general manager. We shall tackle the complexity and ambiguity of strategic decision-making through discussions of case studies that provide rich descriptions of situations faced by real companies that either fail or succeed. To obtain the full benefit of the case approach, it is necessary that everyone come to class well prepared. This does not mean that you must have solved the case, or are expected to have all the answers to the case. Invariably, given the complexities of the real world, often no single best answer exists. However, it does mean that you should have thoroughly read the case and any other assigned materials and that you have intelligently thought about the issues raised by the case. In class, I will act as a moderator, questioner and lecturer to help you gain a better understanding of the strategic decision making process. By actively participating in class discussions, you will sharpen your own insights, and those of your classmates. Thus, you will not only become familiar with the content of the course, but perhaps more importantly, you also will learn to master the process of analysis that is a central aspect to effective strategic management of organizations. Evaluation Criteria The following components comprise the chief criteria for evaluation. Each component is discussed in detail below. A tentative schedule is also included outlining the readings and assignments due in each class. Class Contribution (Individual) Case Issue Statements (4) (Individual) Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation (Team) Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report (Team) Peer Evaluation 20% 30 30 20 0 100%

Grading The following scale will be used to assign course grades based upon the total number of points earned: Grade Percentage Grade Percentage Grade Percentage A 93-100% B 83-86.9% C 73-76.9% A90-92.9 B80-82.9 C70-72.9 B+ 87-89.9 C+ 77-79.9 F Below 70% Details of Course Requirements Individual Assignments Class Contribution Contribution accounts for 20% of the final grade. This course is based on interactive learning. Much of what you learn therefore depends upon the discussions we have in class, and the ideas and insights you

and your colleagues develop. In order to facilitate a constructive discussion, please prepare all the readings and cases assigned for a particular class. You should be prepared to be called upon in class. For cases, you should be able to identify the key issues confronting the company, the courses of action you would recommend, and the justification for your recommendations. Most cases do not have "right" answers. Consequently, being "right" or "wrong" should not be your concern when contributing to class discussion. Your point of view is important and if we reach later consensus that differs from your viewpoint that in no way diminishes the value of your earlier comments. You also should strive to be a critical listener to your fellow students comments. If you disagree with someones comments, speak up and explain how and why your viewpoint differs. Be sure to always support our opinion with facts an analysis, avoiding comments for which you cannot provide necessary support. Contribution is graded on quality, not just quantity. Speaking too much while not adding value will be as detrimental to your grade as not speaking at all. Because class attendance is such a critical part of the learning experience, much of the material we cover in class through lecture, class discussion, and exercises cannot be made up through reading materials and therefore, the material is essentially lost. Consequently, under normal circumstances, a maximum of one absences will be allowed, and there will be contribution grade penalties for each absence up to and beyond this level. To aid me in grading your class contribution, please try and sit in the same seat throughout the semester. Individual Case Issue Statements These reports account for 30% of your grade. Each student will submit four Case Issue Statements as indicated on the class schedule. In these Case Issue Statements, which should be no more than 1 page of text, students will identify the central (critical) strategic issue in the case, as well as explain why you think this is a central issue that requires some response. All papers should be thoroughly proofread; write a rough draft, and then edit and polish this draft. The papers must be typed (12 point font), double spaced, with one inch margins. Put your name, date, and case title in a single line at the top of the page. The Case Issue Statements are due at the start of class on the day that case is scheduled to be discussed. Late papers will not be accepted. The Case Issue Statements must be done entirely on your own. Any violation of this rule will be considered a serious breach of ethical behavior. Team Assignments Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report and Oral Presentation Each team will write a report (20%) and make an oral presentation (30%) to the class (these are described in detail below). In this project your task is to apply the concepts discussed throughout the semester to critically evaluate the contemporary strategy of a company, including, but not limited to, how it reflects the structure of the industry in which the company operates and strives to achieve competitive advantage. In choosing this company, remember that you need to be able to collect enough information about the company to do a meaningful analysis. Consider the largest or most innovative firm in an industry. But teams may not choose a company that we are covering in a case analysis. Be aware that you will have a greater choice if you make your selection early as no two teams will be allowed to work on the same company. Please let me know your choice of company before Monday, June 11. Your analysis should focus on the following tasks: Part I Industry Analysis: Start with an analysis of the competitive dynamics of the industry and show how these have contributed to the present industry structure. Your industry analysis must consider the effect of each of the five competitive forces. You can then use this analysis to explain the pattern of evolution of this industry structure. For example, is there a single firm that has clearly dominated the industry over the

last few years? Or are there a few firms that are locked into a struggle for industry leadership? What are the driving forces that determine success in this industry? Part II Firm Strategy: Next, you must analyze the strategy of a particular company in this industry. Examine the evolution of its strategy, the sources of its advantage, and the challenges it confronts. (1) Identify whether this company has a competitive advantage or disadvantage in its primary industry. For example, what are the key resources and capabilities of this company? What are the barriers to imitating the distinctive competencies of this company? Is there any evidence that this company finds it difficult to adapt to changing industry conditions? Why? (2) Describe and assess the functional-, business, and corporate-level strategies this company is pursuing. (3) Analyze any major recent strategic initiatives or events (at either the business or corporate level) related to this company and assess their potential impact on the companys performance. Part III Recommendations: Develop an appropriate strategy for how this company can maintain its dominant position in the industry and fend off the challenger, or if it is a challenger, for how it can effectively challenge the industry leader. Your strategy should be realistic; dont postulate unlimited supply of capital or astounding technological developments. A librarian from our Newman Library will visit class to discuss how to conduct research through library databases. You should search in various publications for articles and news items that touch directly or indirectly on company that you selected. You should attempt to locate articles that go back several years rather than focus exclusively on the most recent ones. Try to begin with magazine articles that may provide more general background information before you consult newspapers that deal with specific recent events. Business or trade publications should provide you with most of the information that you need. It also might be a good idea to contact the companies you are studying and ask them to provide you with some background information and/or visit their web sites, if they maintain them. Each team should select two or three key articles from its research to provide as background reading to the rest of the class, who will serve as the management teams receiving the advice from the presentation. You should email electronic copies of these articles (as PDF or Word documents) to me on or before Thursday, June 28 so that they may be posted to Blackboard to be available for all students to download and read. Students serving as the management teams (i.e., those not participating in a presentation on any given day) are responsible for reading the background material provided by the presenting teams and coming to class prepared to engage in dialog with the presenters and ask questions based on readings and the presentation. To encourage attendance and active participation by audience members, contribution will count double for these days on which Contemporary Strategy Presentations will occur. Written reports. Each team will address the strategic management issues described above in a written paper that must be no more than 10 pages of text, excluding the cover page and appendices. All papers should be thoroughly proofread; write a rough draft, and then edit and polish this draft. The papers must be typed (12-point font), double spaced, on one side of 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper, with one-inch margins on all sides. You must include a complete bibliography of the articles that you consulted and cite the articles throughout the body of the text. If you gather data from electronic sources, cite these appropriately as well. Put your names, date, and the name of the case that you are analyzing on a separate cover page. Do not put your names on the remaining pages. Please number the pages clearly on the bottom of the page and staple all pages together. DO NOT enclose the pages in a plastic cover or binder. Email submissions will not be accepted. Please

submit a hard copy of the Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Reports at the start of the session as indicated on the schedule below. Late papers will not be accepted.

Below are the grading criteria for group case write-ups: Clarity and logic of writing (30 points) Rigor of Analyses (40 points) Practicability of recommendation (30 points) Presentations. Each team will have about 20-25 minutes to present its analyses and recommendations followed by a 10-15 minutes question and answer session. All members of a team are required to participate in the Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation. You should prepare the presentation as if you were a consulting team presenting to the top management team of the company. Thus, you should be concerned about keeping their interest and communicating clearly and effectively. Your presentation should summarize the key points of your report. The presentation, like the report, should be prepared in a professional manner. Pay careful attention to the flow and clarity of the presentation. You should practice and time the presentation before you present to the class. Although it is perfectly appropriate to refer to prepared notes during your presentation, do not read your presentation directly from a prewritten script. At the start of class during which the Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation are scheduled, the team should submit to the instructor a copy of the visual aids to be used for the presentation. As with the report, please number the pages clearly on the bottom of the page and staple all pages together. DO NOT enclose the pages in a plastic cover or binder. Below are the grading criteria for Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentations: 1. Comprehensiveness of the presentation. (20 points) --Are all the issues well and adequately addressed? 2. Rigor of Analyses (30 points). --Please do not waste time restating the facts given in the case --Your arguments should be well established on evidences. i.e. provide data to support your arguments. --Are data sources quoted? 3. Practicability of recommendation (20 points) --Is your recommendation realistic? --How to implement your recommendation? 4. Quality of Q&A (10 points) --How your handle others questions? --Can you defend yourself? 5. Overall clarity of your presentation (10 points) -- Can you keep your logic consistent? -- Can you communicate your ideas and solutions in an effective way? 6. Creativity of your presentation (10 points) -- Innovative solution/recommendation -- Creative presentation style (using of figure, graphic, etc.) Peer Evaluation This comprises evaluations of the contribution of your team members to the team effort. In this course, group work constitutes a major portion of your grade. No team member has the right to hurt/reduce the performance of other teammates. It is expected that all team members contribute equally to team effort. While peer evaluation should encourage students to put in more work, it is ultimately your responsibility to motivate and to monitor team members to do their part. You need to learn to work in teams and

manage the team process. Thus, the responsibility for ensuring equal participation lies with team members. At the end of the semester, your team members will be asked for input on whether your contribution to team activities was satisfactory or unsatisfactory. This system is designed to identify any free riders in the team. If two or more team members rate your contribution as unsatisfactory, you will receive a substantially lower grade on all team work. It is therefore in your best interest to ensure that you do your fair share of teamwork. Please also make sure you understand your responsibilities as outlined in the syllabus, and the due dates for various assignments. I will not be reminding you of your deadlines, and it is your responsibility to ensure that you meet them. Expectations about Professional Behavior and Student Responsibilities Please abide by the following rules throughout this class:

Avoid arriving late and leaving early. No reading of newspapers or other non-class related materials during class. Turn off cell phones or other communication devices. Do not indulge in cross-conversations during class. Maintain a healthy attitude toward your colleagues. Respect others and let them voice their opinions. Avoid biased statements or related behaviors that are associated with race, gender, religion, national origin or sexual orientation Lets keep the classroom as clean as we found it. Since all possible rules of classroom etiquette cannot be stated or even anticipated, it is expected that students will conduct themselves appropriately while in class.

Academic Honesty I fully support Baruch College's policy on Academic Honesty, which states, in part: "Academic dishonesty is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. Cheating, forgery, plagiarism and collusion in dishonest acts undermine the college's educational mission and the students' personal and intellectual growth. Baruch students are expected to bear individual responsibility for their work, to learn the rules and definitions that underlie the practice of academic integrity, and to uphold its ideals. Ignorance of the rules is not an acceptable excuse for disobeying them. Any student who attempts to compromise or devalue the academic process will be sanctioned. " Additional information and definitions can be found at http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/academic/academic_honesty.html All submissions will be checked for plagiarism. In this course, team work constitutes a major portion of your grade. Should any portion of the team assignments be plagiarized or involve other forms of cheating, all members will be held responsible and culpable. A failing grade will be given to all team members in such a case. Please note that a report of suspected academic dishonesty will be sent to the Office of the Dean of Students.

Blackboard A copy of this syllabus, forms, assignments and other course information will be available on Blackboard. You are responsible for material sent to your Baruch email account and posted on the Blackboard site. Remember to frequently check them. Email Protocol So that I may better respond to your messages, please include your name and course section or course meeting time in all correspondence. When submitting assignments via email include your team number in the file name. Disability Please contact me early in the semester with regard to any disability. Documentation is necessary for every disability. For more information concerning services for students with disabilities, please contact Barbara Sirois, Director of the Office of Services for Students with Disabilities, VC 2-270, phone number 646-312-4590. I will coordinate with the Disabilities Office to ensure appropriate accommodation.

List of Readings (all articles should be searched and downloaded from Business Source Complete; other articles are on electronic reserve)

1. Porter, M.E. 1996. What is Strategy? HBR, November-December: 61-78. 2. Porter, M.E. 2008. The five competitive forces that shape strategy. HBR, January: 78-93. 3. Barney, J. 1991. Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage, Journal of
Management, 17(1): 99-120. 4. Collis, D. & Montgomery, C. 1995. Competing on Resources: Strategy in the 1990s, HBR, July-August: 118-128. 5. McMillan, I. & McGrath, R. 1997. Discovering New Points of Differentiation, HBR, July-August: 133-145. 6. Ghemawat, P. 1985. Building Strategy on the Experience Curve, HBR, March-April: 143149. 7. Kim, W.C. & Mauborgne, R. 2004. Blue Ocean Strategy. HBR, October: 76-84. 8. Stuckey, J. & White, D. 1993. When and when not to vertically integrate, The McKinsey Quarterly, 3: 3-27. 9. Collis, D.J. & Montgomery, C.A. 1998. Creating Corporate Advantage, HBR, May-June: 7183. List of Cases and HBS Notes available for purchase from Harvard Business School Press (notes are in italics) 1. 2. 3. 4. Walmart Stores in 2003 (HBS Case 9-704-430) Industry Transformation (Porter & Rivkin HBS Note 9-701-008) Cola Wars Continue: Coke and Pepsi in 2006 (HBS Case 9-706-447) Southwest Airlines 2002: An Industry Under Siege (HBS 9-803-133) 5. Note on Corporate Strategy (Piskorski HBS Note 9-705-449) 6. Newell Co.: Corporate Strategy (HBS Case 9-799-139)

Session Day/Date 1 Th, May 31

Topic Orientation and Course Preview The Concept of Strategy Case 1: Wal-Mart Stores in 2003 (HBS Case 9704-430) Industry Analysis: The Fundamentals Guest speaker: How to conduct library research Case 2: Cola Wars Continue: Coke and Pepsi in 2006 (HBS Case 9-706-447) Industry Analysis: Temporal Change Analyzing Resources and Capabilities

Readings/Assignments1 Read & review syllabus What is Strategy? (Porter) Submit Background Information Sheet with Photos Attached Form Teams for Contemporary Strategy Analysis The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy (Porter)

M, June 4

3 4 5

W, June 6 Th, June 7 M, June 11

Submit Case Issue Statements Submit Company Name for Contemporary Strategy Analysis Industry Transformation (Porter & Rivkin HBS 9-701-008) Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage (Barney) Competing on Resources: Strategy in the 1990s (Collis & Montgomery) Submit Case Issue Statements Submit Outline for Contemporary Strategy Analysis Discovering New Points of Differentiation (McMillan & McGrath) Building Strategy on the Experience Curve (Ghemawat) Blue Ocean Strategy (Kim & Mauborgne) Note on Corporate Strategy (Piskorski HBS 9-705-449) When and when not to vertically integrate (Stuckey & White) Creating Corporate Advantage (Collis, D.J. & Montgomery) Submit Case Issue Statements

6 7

W, June 13 Th, June 14

M, June 18

Case 3: Southwest Airlines 2002: An Industry Under Siege (HBS 9-803-133) Business Strategy

W, June 20

10 11

Th, June 21 M, June 25

Blue Ocean Strategy Corporate Strategy: Diversification & Vertical Integration

12

W, June 27

Case 4: Newell Co.: Corporate Strategy (HBS Case 9-799-139) Project Day Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentations

13 14

Th, June 28 M, July 2

Submit Background Readings for Contemporary Strategy Analysis Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation Team 1, 2, 3 Submit Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report Team 1, 2, 3

Additional assignment information will be announced in class and posted on Blackboard.

10

Session

Day/Date W, July 4 Th, July 5

Topic Independence Day observed Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentations

Readings/Assignments No classes scheduled Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation Team 4, 5, 6 Submit Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report Team 4, 5, 6 Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation Team 7, 8, 9 Submit Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report Team 7, 8, 9 Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentation Team 10, 11, 12 Submit Contemporary Strategy Analysis Written Report Team 10, 11, 12 Submit Peer Evaluation

15

16

M, July 9

Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentations

17

W, July 11

Contemporary Strategy Analysis Oral Presentations

18

Th, July 12

Final

11

BACKGROUND INFORMATION SHEET (Please Submit by Monday, June 4th) Name:

If your name is difficult to pronounce, please write it phonetically:

Nickname by Which You Wish to Be Called: (if different from above name)

Major(s):

Work experience:

Career objective(s):

Additional information that you wish to share:

Attach photo from CUNYCard!