“Integrated Management System”
MG-621
Program
Semester
Credit Hours
Resource Person
Contact Information
Integrated Management System
Fall 2011
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Dr.Sarwar (Marketing), Dr.Tahsfeen (Operations), Dr.Sarwar
(Finance)
Sarwar.azhar@umt.edu.pk
, Tashfeen@umt.edu.pk
Management practices derive from an integration of various disciplines within field of management Sciences. A good Manager Practitioner and academic understand the importance or such integration in decision making. This course which is he prerequisite to the Strategic
Management course at the MS/MPhil level aims to provide the student with the broad conceptual and working knowledge in three areas of management. These are marketing, finance and operations management where each component focuses on the major areas that are necessary to arrive at strategic decisions.
The course for some students will act as areas that they covered in their masters’ level business program where as for others it will provide an adequate platform from where to proceed to the course on strategic management. It should be understood from the outset that the core course on
Strategic Management is case based study and requires a good working knowledge of certain areas of decision making that will be inherent in the applicative framework when dong case analysis.
The three components of the study in this course are stand alone modules and each will tend to focus on specific areas which will be helpful in undertaking strategic analysis of firms and businesses. Generally the teaching method will involve both lectures as well as case work. The
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lectures will aim to develop a working conceptual knowledge of each area using contemporary articles around themes that are germane to core areas in decision making. The most significant aspect of this course delivery is that module will be taught by an expert in the field.
Marketing
1.
Customer value and its implication in business strategy.
2.
Concepts of competitive advantage and sources including Recourse Based view.
3.
Analyzing industry and the firm competitive strengths.
4.
The positioning concept along with the allied framework for strategy development.
Operation
1.
Operation strategy in a global environment
2.
Forecasting
3.
Inventory management
4.
Aggregate planning
Finance
1.
Understand the bases of evaluating firms’ financial performance with special focus on
DuPont ratio.
2.
Understand the bases of capital budgeting using cash flows and cost of capital estimates.
Required and recommend reading for this covers a broad range of reading material which will be assigned by each module recourse person. The purpose of this to provide an opportunity to assimilate central concepts and approaches to each area from varying and sometimes contradictory sources.
The material will be provided at the beginning of each module by the Resource person.
Since the course will include some case studies a general note on how to undertake case studies is provided below:
Some Notes on the Use of Case Studies
A case study describes a situation facing a particular organization and will include a variety of facts and figures, some relevant, some not. Equally some pieces of information which you consider to be relevant may be missing; in some situations you may be able to collect the missing
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data for yourself, in others you may be forced to simply extrapolate or make assumptions based on what you already know. The aim of using case studies is to give you the opportunity to apply your knowledge and understanding of marketing to deal with particular “real world” problems.
These are by no means definitive guideline, but may help you when you approach particular case studies.
1.
Read the case thoroughly and familiarize yourself with the basic information it contains.
Consider the possibility of organizing the information according to some appropriate criteria- or example you might like to organize their information according to its degree of precision, according to whether it is fact or opinion, according to the various activities of the firm (information relating to production, to personnel, to marketing, to sales etc) or in chronological order.
2.
Once you have familiarized yourself with the basic information contained in the case, the next stage is to attempt to identify any key decisions which have to be taken, current problems or difficulties facing the organization and any that may occur in the future.
Problems concern any gap which exists between desired and actual states; a problem may exist to relation to the firms past performance (our sales have declined), factors in the environment (our product is less popular than our competitors product) or in relation to internal objectives (sales this year are below target levels). Remember that problems may not be obvious and they may be numerous. If so, you should look, priorities and in particular consider any links which may exist between them. Remember that what may appear to be a simple problem on the surface may be symptomatic of a series of other problems. For example you may identify falling sales as a problem; this may be symptomatic of a series of marketing problems such as poor customer relations, inappropriate pricing, inadequate promotion etc, so always look for underlying causes.
3.
Having indentified the problems etc, you need to consider possible solutions – i.e. what decisions could the firm take, how should they respond in their particular situation. In this instance, try to make us e of some of the conceptual/textbook material that you are familiar with, but equally be prepared to generate your own ideas. Usually, you will find that there are number of possible solutions to a particular problem. Try to organize these according to similarities and common features.
4.
Now the difficult bit- you need to choose between these solutions and recommend some course of action. To do this you should consider the implications of the solutions you have generated; how likely these solutions to achieve the desired outcomes are, are they consistent with attitude and objectives of the organization concerned. One approach to this might be as follows. If you have managed to organize your solutions into broad categories, consider the firm’s point of view. You should then be able to narrow down your solutions to enable you to make a recommendation. You recommend that there are several possible solutions. You do not have to come up with a definitive answer, nor is there a ‘right’ answer. It is more important to be able to present a well reasoned and logical argument for a particular recommendation.
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