Strategic Management Seminar

About the Textbook

Mastering Strategic Management

Description:   

Teaching strategic management classes can be a very difficult challenge for professors. In most business schools, strategic management is a “capstone” course that requires students to draw on insights from various functional courses they have completed (such as marketing, finance, and accounting) to understand how top executives make the strategic decisions that drive whether organizations succeed or fail. Many students have very little experience with major organizational choices. This undermines many students’ engagement in the course. 

Our book is designed to enhance student engagement. A good product in any industry matches what customers want and need, and the textbook industry is no exception. It is well documented that many of today’s students are visual learners. To meet students’ wants and needs (and thereby create a much better teaching experience for professors), our book offers the following: 

• Several graphic displays in each chapter that summarize key concepts in a visually appealing format.
• Rich, illustrative examples drawn from companies that are relevant to many students. 
• A “strategy at the movies” feature in each chapter that links course concepts with a popular motion picture.  

Authors:

• Dave Ketchen - Auburn University
• Jeremy Short - University of Oklahoma

Formats:  

The book can be accessed for free online, as a PDF, or as a Word document.

Cost savings:  

We used to use Crafting & Executing Strategy, by Thompson and Peteraf, which retails for $258 on Amazon. Since I teach about 125 students each year, total cost savings for students is about $32,250.

Accessibility and diversity statement:

The publishers have not provided any accessibility or diversity information.

License:

This text was adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License without attribution as requested by the work’s original creator or licensee. This means You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and remix, transform, and build upon the material. If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original. You may not use the material for commercial purposes. 

About the Course

MGT 490:   StrategicManagement Seminar

Description:  

An integrating capstone course dealing with problems of business management; uses actual business cases for analysis and decision-making.

Prerequisites: Completion of all business core courses; BUS 445 may be taken concurrently (priority will be given to graduating seniors).

GE credit: 3.0 units

Learning outcomes: 

• Describe the strategic role of managers at different levels in an organization;
• Differentiate between the principal kinds of generic business level company strategies; 
• Apply an external and internal analysis of a firm;
• Describe related and unrelated diversification and approaches to portfolio restructuring. 

Curricular changes:

There were no curricular changes because it is not permitted by the department.

Teaching and learning impacts:

Collaborate more with other faculty: No       
Use wider range of teaching materials: Yes
Student learning improved: Unsure
Student retention improved: Unsure
Any unexpected results: No

I can pick activities in the book when deemed necessary but I didn't this year as I was just trying to see if students like the reading part. 

Sample assignment and syllabus:

Assignment
This is a group assignment that I use for this class

Syllabus
This is the syllabus I used for Spring 2016

Textbook Adoption

OER Adoption Process

The main motivation for adopting the open textbook was saving students money. We also had to use the Business Strategy Game simulation as a requirement for all sections. I was curious about OER textbooks and was aware of a grant opportunity from my bookstore. I've never used the book and just wanted to test it as it was also a way to offer a free textbook to my students. 

Student access:  

Students can only access the book by a link or PDF shared in the course, so that is how most students used the textbook.

Student feedback or participation:

Students liked the book but couldn't compare it to the one used previously.  I must say in this capstone course the core aspect of the course was the Business Strategy Game simulation that students have to play. They run a real company during an 8 year period. The OER textbook was almost a supplement to that simulation.

Yann Abdourazakou, Ph.D

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Management and Marketing (College of Business Administration and Public Policy) since 2015. I teach the following courses: MGT 310 - Management Theory, MGT 490 - Strategic Management Seminar, MGT 530 - Negotiation and Persuasive Presentation, SEH 310 - Sports, Entertainment and Hospitality Management, and SEH 330 - Managing Sports Facilities.

Looking for social contacts, interacting, sharing has always been a pleasure to me from my early age, throughout childhood up to my present life and helped me a lot to perform efficiently in my chosen career. I believe the choice of a teaching path has provided me with a rare opportunity to contribute to the shaping of people’s ways of considering situations in our society. Teaching is much more than just delivering information in a suitable format to our students. In addition, one of my most vital roles is to help students learn how to learn, as well as how to efficiently solve problems, and how to evaluate the impact of their decisions on the society and the world that their actions will have.

I have high standards for my students and I am viewed as a demanding professor. In my sports management class, for example, I expect students to provide consultant-quality deliverables for their clients. This means that students must often refine deliverables more than once. I have also learned that by expecting more, I tend to get more from my students. Using these materials on campus and online, I make every effort to draw on real-world examples to demonstrate how the theory relates to a practical situation which my students have become familiar with through social media or TV.

As I expect my students are having a variety of levels of desire for learning I always make sure concepts, theories, goals in my lessons have a panel of ways to be integrated during the course experience. I will use both on campus (i.e. role plays, videos, discussion) and online tools (YouTube videos, discussion forum) to enhance their skills. My ultimate goal in teaching is to provide relevant knowledge in my field, encourage and develop critical thinking skills, and stimulate natural curiosity that will guide students in their efforts of pursuing success in their career and personal life. By accomplishing this, I will satisfy my need to make a difference in my students’ experience at California State University, Dominguez Hills.

My research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including management theory, strategic marketing, sports management and focus on national and global competition. I have a special interest in the sports business industry as it relates to different consumer behavior segments (fantasy sports, social media, stadiums attendance, TV viewership and advertising, online viewership, participation, logo apparel, mobile device usage, sponsorship, and sporting goods purchases). My goal is to generate findings and develop models that will contribute to successful decision making for managers.

I am a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Kinesiology and Sports Science (IJKSS), a peer-reviewed journal established in Australia.