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Academic Department

Strategy
Course Name: Leadership in Sustainabiity and Communication
Instructor: Kim Sheehan

This class is the second part of a two-part class begun this year at the SOJC. The two classes are designed to increase students' knowledge and understanding of issues and theories in green communication. In the first class, you were exposed to a range of thinking from many different disciplines about sustainability. In this class, you will focus on a specific communication problem and develop a leadership position in the conversation in that area. The goals of this class are:
- to understand the intersection between consumer values, brand values, and sustainability
- to be able to communicate complex information to a broad audienceto understand how to assess consumer undestanding and reactions to green messages
- to learn the unique aspects of developing a truly sustainable brand

Course Name: Strategic Management
Instructor: Beth Hjelm

Strategy is concerned with answering two core questions: "What businesses should we participate in?" and "How should we compete?" The core MBA Strategic Management class is designed to give you a set of tools that you can use to determine how a business positions can create value for its owners and stakeholders, set up achievable objectives, and guide a successful strategy implementation. Since much of success is based on the implementation of strategy rather than on the strategy itself, this course will be successful if you begin to understand that strategists must also consider their role as integrators.

Learning in this class is based on lectures, case analyses and a group project. The cases require students to actively consider what “success”, “competitive advantage and “creating value” means in today’s business environment. Certainly successful businesses are determined by the nature of the industry in which the business competes, its position within the industry, its interactions with rivals, and the way it is organized and managed. However, you will also come to understand the organization as a whole and its interactions with the often conflicting demands of environmental, product, financial and social stewardship. Amongst these challenges, managers must recognize and debate the critical contingency issues the organization faces, and determine how to be more effective and efficient not only in today’s world but in tomorrow’s as well. Throughout this course you will build an overall strategic analysis of each of these questions and formulate a set of recommendations for a company.

Course Name: Strategic Planning Projects
Instructor: Thomas Osdoba, Dr. Mike Pangburn, Dr. Anne Parmigiani, Dr. Jennifer Howard-Grenville

The Strategic Planning Project (SPP) gives MBA students an opportunity to help an existing business decide whether and how to pursue an emerging business opportunity. This process assumes that the company has already determined its overall strategic direction, but wants to understand how one or more new strategic initiatives it wishes to pursue fits within this overall strategy. Student teams will work together to assess the company and business environment, draw conclusions as to the viability of the emerging business opportunity, and develop a comprehensive and effective implementation plan for pursuing that opportunity. Throughout the projects student teams participate in dedicated sessions on leadership, team and group dynamics in a cross-cultural context, and the ethics of consulting. Each year a number of these projects are conducted on projects related to sustainability or who are operating in the “green sector”.

Course Name: Sustainable Business Development
Instructor: Dr. Michael Russo, Dr. Jennifer Howard-Grenville

The purpose of this course is to bring together students from varied backgrounds to appreciate how economic activity impacts the natural environment, to understand the evolution and role of institutions that influence corporate environmental behavior and to learn how a firm can manage its way to better environmental performance. By the conclusion of the course, students will have gained an understanding of how they can assist any organization that they join in responding proactively to the environmental imperatives that it faces. In many cases, this response will lead to a “win-win” outcome, wherein companies can win in the marketplace and promote environmental quality. This class is core for the concentration in Sustainable Business Practices, but is an elective for all other MBA students.