The Final Countdown: A Design for Helping Students Implement Business Strategies

Abstract

Capstone strategy courses are required in most business schools at undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of some of these capstone courses is to increase understanding of a general manager's view of the firm, often by using an integrated approach such as strategic decision-making framework and/or case analysis. In such courses, students may be asked to integrate different corporate, business-level, and functional strategies to analyze various business issues. Business students often struggle with this comprehensive integration because the students may have focused their studies on only one or two managerial areas, limiting their knowledge to their desired discipline and/or current line/department of work. The purpose of this exercise is to leverage students’ thinking skills—comprehension, synthesis, and evaluation— to improve students’ overall understanding of functional responsibilities and functional implications when a company pursues a new strategy. Most importantly, we intend to increase student material, student-student, student-teacher, and student-larger world around us interaction. The exercise is designed to be equally applicable to undergraduates, MBA students, and management trainees.