BUSI 4913 N3

This course offers a selection of theoretical frameworks and online information sources useful for understanding some of the important concerns facing senior managers. Strategic Management is a discipline concerned with helping us to understand the decision making practices of senior managers of corporations as they strive to formulate and implement strategy. The knowledge base of this discipline is broad. Competitive intelligence is a practice concerned with using freely available and legal sources of information to help learn about the activities and organization of corporations and other entities. In this course we focus on using free, online information sources, and we will focus our attention on companies whose shares trade publicly on U.S. stock exchanges.

This course will help you improve your analytical skills by matching theoretical frameworks with specific online information sources that you can use to make sense of complex competitive environments.

Topics include:

• The field of business strategy, including issues and new ideas
• Identifying online information sources
• Conducting analysis of both the macro-environment and the performance of senior management

After completing the course, you'll have a better understanding how to find and employ useful business information online, and you'll be able to use this information to assess performance and possible outcomes.