In this activity, students build a water filter with activated carbon, cotton and other materials to remove chocolate powder from water.

12.103 explores the role of scientific knowledge, discovery, method, and argument in environmental policymaking from both idealistic and realistic perspectives. The course will use case studies of science-intensive environmental controversies to study how science was used and abused in the policymaking process. Case studies include: global warming, biodiversity loss, and nuclear waste disposal siting. Subject includes intensive practice in the writing and presentation of "position statements" on environmental science issues.

Design and execution of human resource management strategies. Two central themes: (1) How to think systematically and strategically about aspects of managing the organization's human assets, and (2) What really needs to be done to implement these policies and to achieve competitive advantage. Adopts the perspective of a general manager and addresses human resource topics (including reward systems, performance management, high-performance human resource systems, training and development, recruitment, retention, equal employment opportunity laws, work-force diversity, and union-management relationships) from a strategic perspective.

Strategic Management (2020) is a 343-page open educational resource designed as an introduction to the key topics and themes of strategic management. The open textbook is intended for a senior capstone course in an undergraduate business program and suitable for a wide range of undergraduate business students including those majoring in marketing, management, business administration, accounting, finance, real estate, business information technology, and hospitality and tourism. The text presents examples of familiar companies and personalities to illustrate the different strategies used by today’s firms and how they go about implementing those strategies. It includes case studies, end of section key takeaways, exercises, and links to external videos, and an end-of-book glossary. The text is ideal for courses which focus on how organizations operate at the strategic level to be successful. Students will learn how to conduct case analyses, measure organizational performance, and conduct external and internal analyses.

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How to Access this Book This text is available in multiple formats including PDF, a low-resolution PDF which is faster to download, Open Document Format (ODT), and ePub. It is also available online in Pressbooks at https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/strategicmanagement. Softcover print on demand options are available in color interior (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949373940) or black & white interior (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1949373894). The main landing page for this book is: https://doi.org/10.21061/strategicmanagement.

Attribution This textbook was adapted for use in Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business capstone course, MGT 4394 Strategic Management, and is shared under a Creative Commons Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 license. It is adapted without attribution to the original 2010 author or publisher at their request. It is adapted from Mastering Strategic Management which was published by the University of Minnesota Publishing in 2015 as an adaptation of the 2010 version. University of Minnesota Publishing reformatted the original text, and replaced some images and figures to make the resulting whole more shareable but did not otherwise significantly alter or update the original 2010 text.

Instructor Resource Portal in OER Commons
https://www.oercommons.org/groups/strategic-management-instructor-group/5209

Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Mastering Strategy: Art and Science
Chapter 2: Assessing Organizational Performance
Chapter 3: Evaluating the External Environment
Chapter 4: Evaluating the Internal Environment
Chapter 5: Synthesis of Strategic Issues and Analysis
Chapter 6: Selecting Business-Level Strategies
Chapter 7: Innovation Strategies
Chapter 8: Selecting Corporate-Level Strategies
Chapter 9: Competing in International Markets
Chapter 10: Executing Strategy through Organizational Design
Chapter 11: Leading an Ethical Organization: Corporate Governance, Corporate Ethics, and Social Responsibility
About the Author / Editorial and Production Teams
Version Notes
Glossary

This work is published by Virginia Tech’s Pamplin College of Business in association with Virginia Tech Publishing.

Suggested Citation Kennedy, Reed. (2020) Strategic Management. Blacksburg, VA: Virginia Tech Publishing. https://doi.org/10.21061/strategicmanagement CC BY NC-SA 3.0

Contributors
About the Previous Author
The publisher of the 2010 version of this book requested that they and the original author not receive attribution.

This Version
Primary Contributor: Reed B. Kennedy
Reviewer / Contributors: Eli Jamison, Joseph Simpson, Pankaj Kumar, Ayenda Kemp, Kiran Awate, and Kathleen Manning
Cover Design, Illustration, and Alternative Text; Student Reviewer: Kindred Grey
Research and Editorial Assistant; Student Reviewer: Kathleen Manning
Managing Editor: Anita Walz
Production Editor: Robert Browder
Copyeditors: Grace Baggett, Lauren Holt

ISBN 978-1-949373-94-3 (print-color)
ISBN 978-1-949373-89-9 (print-black & white)
ISBN 978-1-949373-96-7 (ebook-PDF)
ISBN 978-1-949373-95-0 (ebook-Pressbooks)
https://pressbooks.lib.vt.edu/strategicmanagement
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21061/strategicmanagement

Accessibility Virginia Tech Publishing is committed to making its publications accessible in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The HTML and screen reader–friendly PDF versions of this book utilize header structures and include alternative text which allow for machine-readability.

Subject focuses on some of the important current issues in strategic management. It concentrates on modern analytical approaches and on enduring successful strategic practices. It is consciously designed with a technological and global outlook since this orientation in many ways highlights the significant emerging trends in strategic management. Subject is intended to provide the students with a pragmatic approach that guides the formulation and implementation of corporate, business, and functional strategies. Restricted to Sloan Fellows.

This course is intended to be an extension of course 15.902, Strategic Management, with the purpose of allowing the students to experience an in-depth application of the concepts and frameworks of strategic management. Throughout the course, Professor Hax will discuss the appropriate methodologies, concepts, and tools pertinent to strategic analyses and will illustrate their use by discussing many applications in real-life settings, drawn from his own personal experiences.

Examines the fundamental concepts of strategic planning and management in the context of the real estate, design, and construction industry. Discusses the basic business relationships among firms in the design and construction value chain. Specific topics include: industry analysis; strategic planning models; information technology strategy; strategy in fragmented industries; negotiation; and macro trends shaping the industry as a whole. Case method of instruction is used, and supplemented by extensive readings. From the course home page: This course provides an overview of key concepts in strategic management in the construction, real estate, and architecture industries. Topics include supply chain analysis, market segmentation, vertical integration, competitive advantage, and industry transformation. This course is of interest to students seeking more understanding of the business dynamics of real estate and construction; seeking to provide value in firms which they may join; or seeking to build a foundation for their own entrepreneurial pursuits.

A project subject that teaches students how to create, carry out, interpret, and analyze a market research questionnaire. Emphasis on discovering market structure and segmentation, but students can pursue other project applications. Includes a user-oriented treatment of multivariate analysis (factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, conjoint and cluster analysis).

Strategic Organizational Design focuses on effective organizational design in both traditional and innovative organizations, with special emphasis on innovative organizational forms that can provide strategic advantage. Topics include when to use functional, divisional, or matrix organizations, how IT creates new organizational possibilities, and examples of innovative organizational possibilities, such as democratic decision-making, crowd-based organizations, internal resource markets, and other forms of collective intelligence. Team projects include inventing new possibilities for real organizations.

Strategies for Academic Success accompanies the online first-year University of Saskatchewan Arts and Science course by the same name. The textbook has a reader-friendly format arranged to help you develop the essential skills and provide the information you need to succeed in university.

Working as engineering teams, students design and create model beam bridges using plastic drinking straws and tape as their construction materials. Their goal is to build the strongest bridge with a truss pattern of their own design, while meeting the design criteria and constraints. They experiment with different geometric shapes and determine how shapes affect the strength of materials. Let the competition begin!

Students design, build and test truss bridges made of straws and tape to see how much weight they can support.

Students learn about civil engineers and work through each step of the engineering design process in two mini-activities that prepare them for a culminating challenge to design and build the tallest straw tower possible, given limited time and resources. First they examine the profiles of the tallest 20 towers in the world. Then in the first mini-activity (one-straw tall tower), student pairs each design a way to keep one straw upright with the least amount of tape and fewest additional straws. In the second mini-activity (no "fishing pole"), the pairs determine the most number of straws possible to construct a vertical straw tower before it bends at 45 degrees—resembling a fishing pole shape. Students learn that the taller a structure, the more tendency it has to topple over. In the culminating challenge (tallest straw tower), student pairs apply what they have learned and follow the steps of the engineering design process to create the tallest possible model tower within time, material and building constraints, mirroring the real-world engineering experience of designing solutions within constraints. Three worksheets are provided, for each of two levels, grades K-2 and grades 3-5. The activity scales up to school-wide, district or regional competition scale.

In this activity, students investigate the effect that fins have on rocket flight. Students construct two paper rockets that they can launch themselves by blowing through a straw. One "strawket" has wings and the other has fins. Students observe how these two control surfaces affect the flight of their strawkets. Students discover how difficult control of rocket flight is and what factors can affect it.

In this activity, students investigate the effect that thrust has on rocket flight. Students will make two paper rockets that they can launch themselves by blowing through a straw. These "strawkets" will differ in diameter, such that students will understand that a rocket with a smaller exit nozzle will provide a larger thrust. Students have the opportunity to compare the distances traveled by their two strawkets after predicting where they will land. Since each student will have a slightly different rocket and launching technique, they will observe which factors contribute to a strawket's thrust and performance.

In this activity, students investigate the effect that weight has on rocket flight. Students construct a variety of their own straw-launched rockets, or "strawkets," that have different weights. Specifically, they observe what happens when the weight of a strawket is altered by reducing its physical size and using different construction materials. Finally, the importance of weight distribution in a rocket is determined.

During this activity, students will learn how environmental engineers monitor water quality in resource use and design. They will employ environmental indicators to assess the water quality of a nearby stream. Students will make general observations of water quality as well as count the number of macroinvertabrates. They will then use the information they collected to create a scale to rate how good or bad the water quality of the stream. Finally, the class will compare their numbers and discuss and defend their results.

This course teaches the art of guessing results and solving problems without doing a proof or an exact calculation. Techniques include extreme-cases reasoning, dimensional analysis, successive approximation, discretization, generalization, and pictorial analysis. Applications include mental calculation, solid geometry, musical intervals, logarithms, integration, infinite series, solitaire, and differential equations. (No epsilons or deltas are harmed by taking this course.) This course is offered during the Independent Activities Period (IAP), which is a special 4-week term at MIT that runs from the first week of January until the end of the month.

Street lights of the same type will look brighter when they are close to you, and less bright when they are farther away. The same applies to astronomical objects: a given star will look brighter to a nearby observer than to an observer far away. In both cases, the difference in brightness can be used to deduce the relative distances of suitable objects. Standard candles, objects of constant intrinsic brightness or whose intrinsic brightness can be determined by careful measurements, are a key tool for astronomical distance determination. In this exploration, you will explore standard candles (and also effects that complicate distance measurements) in a simple everyday setting, namely that of street lights, using a digital camera and freely available software.

Students learn about the variety of materials used by engineers in the design and construction of modern bridges. They also find out about the material properties important to bridge construction and consider the advantages and disadvantages of steel and concrete as common bridge-building materials to handle compressive and tensile forces.