BUS608: Ethical and Strategic Management

Welcome to BUS608: Ethical and Strategic Management

Specific information about this course and its requirements can be found below. For more general information about taking Saylor Academy courses, including information about Community and Academic Codes of Conduct, please read the Student Handbook.

Course Description

Learn business strategy development and implementation while considering the ethics involved in making business strategy decisions.

Course Introduction

Business strategy is one of the most important factors in leading a successful business. If a business does not have a strategy, they lack a roadmap or blueprint to help them establish the company's direction. Without a map, it is impossible to know where the business is going. The business strategy allows companies to determine the direction, so all functional business areas can use the strategy as a guide for making decisions within their work units. One of the first steps to creating a strategy is determining internal and external constraints. By understanding these constraints and the market environment, the leader can ensure the strategy is the correct one and implement the strategy from an ethical perspective.

Establishing a strategy isn't easy because it encompasses and requires commitment from every functional area (such as marketing, human resource management, operations, finance, and accounting) of the business. It also requires businesses to determine their core capabilities and level of competitiveness and leverage these to become a winning team. This course will address the many tools available to help leaders determine strategy and ethical frameworks to ensure the company's strategy aligns with its ethics and sustainability goals.

The course will give you the tools to assess ethical models, make strategic decisions, and create a culture that will support those decisions.

This course includes the following units:

• Unit 1: Integrating Ethics into Business Strategy
• Unit 2: Management Strategies Analysis
• Unit 3: Managerial Strategy Formation
• Unit 4: Integrating Ethics into Business Implementation

Course Learning Outcomes

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• explain the key steps of business strategy formulation, such as identifying mission statements and goals;
• apply the principles of strategy implementation, such as resource planning and motivating people;
• explain the importance of ethics in business strategy development;
• apply ethical decision-making models, such as deontology, rights, and virtues, to business strategy;
• distinguish between different performance measures and performance referents techniques in business strategy and ethics; and
• identify the resources needed to implement a given business strategy.

Throughout this course, you will also see learning outcomes in each unit. You can use those learning outcomes to help organize your studies and gauge your progress.

Course Materials

The primary learning materials for this course are readings, lectures, and videos.

All course materials are free to access and can be found in each unit of the course. Pay close attention to the notes that accompany these course materials, as they will tell you what to focus on in each resource and will help you to understand how the learning materials fit into the course as a whole. You can also see a list of all the learning materials in this course by clicking on Resources in the navigation bar.

Evaluation and Minimum Passing Score

Only the final exam is considered when awarding you a grade for this course. To pass this course, you will need to earn a 70% or higher on the final exam. Your score on the exam will be calculated as soon as you complete it. If you do not pass the exam on your first try, you may take it again as many times as you want, with a 7-day waiting period between each attempt. Once you have successfully passed the final exam, you will be awarded a free Course Completion Certificate.

There are also end-of-unit assessments in this course. These are designed to help you study and do not factor into your final course grade. You can take these as many times as you want until you understand the concepts and material covered. You can see all of these assessments by clicking on Quizzes in the course's navigation bar.

Tips for Success

BUS608: Ethical and Strategic Management is a self-paced course, which means that you can decide when you will start and when you will complete the course. There is no instructor or set schedule to follow. We estimate that the "average" student will take 69 hours to complete this course. We recommend that you work through the course at a pace that is comfortable for you and allows you to make regular progress. It's a good idea to also schedule your study time in advance and try as best as you can to stick to that schedule.

Learning new material can be challenging, so we've compiled a few study strategies to help you succeed:

• Take notes on the various terms, practices, and theories that you come across. This can help you put each concept into context and will create a refresher that you can use as you study later on.
• As you work through the materials, take some time to test yourself on what you remember and how well you understand the concepts. Reflecting on what you've learned is important for your long-term memory and will make you more likely to retain information over time. 

Suggested Prerequisites

In order to take this course, you should have completed:

• BUS105: Managerial Accounting;
• BUS208: Principles of Management;
• BUS603: Managing People; and
• BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management.

Technical Requirements

This course is delivered entirely online. You will be required to have access to a computer or web-capable mobile device and have consistent access to the internet to either view or download the necessary course resources and to attempt any auto-graded course assessments and the final exam.

To access the full course, including assessments and the final exam, you will need to be logged into your Saylor Academy account and enrolled in the course. If you do not already have an account, you may create one for free here. Although you can access some of the course without logging in to your account, you should log in to maximize your course experience. For example, you cannot take assessments or track your progress unless you are logged in.

For additional guidance, check out Saylor Academy's FAQ.

Fees

This course is entirely free to enroll in and to access. Everything linked in the course, including textbooks, videos, webpages, and activities, are all available for no charge. This course also contains a free final exam and course completion certificate.