Administration (ADMN) 404

Overview

ADMN 404 is a three-credit required course in all business degree programs offered at Athabasca University. It is equivalent to a one-semester course at a conventional university. This capstone course in your management education is intended to build on everything else you have learned about management to date. That’s why you are encouraged to take this course as late as possible in your program.

What sets this course apart from all others is the fact that its focus is on organizations in their entirety and, more specifically, their success or failure. So whereas your marketing courses helped you to understand the marketing function and your accounting courses helped you to make sense of an organization’s accounts, this course is meant to draw upon your knowledge from all your other courses for the purposes of determining how and whether an organization can be successful.

In ADMN 404, you are asked to play the role of owner/CEO. If you someday become an owner/CEO, this course can help you in that role. But even if you never become an owner/CEO you can still benefit tremendously from this course. For example, it will benefit you as a manager/employee when you are inevitably asked to contribute to your organization’s strategic planning efforts. It can also benefit you as an investor as you try to pick which companies are most likely to succeed. Simply put, this course will help you to better understand what makes organizations successful.

Outline

Lesson 1: Strategic Leadership

Lesson 2: Governance

Lesson 3: External Analysis

Lesson 4: Internal Analysis

Lesson 5: Functional-level Strategies

Lesson 6: Business-level Strategies

Lesson 7: The Influence of Industry Characteristics

Lesson 8: Strategies in High-technology Instustries

Lesson 9: Global Strategies

Lesson 10: Integration  and Outsourcing

Lesson 11: Diversification Strategies

Lesson 12: Implementing Business-level Strategies

Lesson 13: Implementing Corporate-level Strategies

Evaluation

Your final grade in ADMN 404 is based on your marks on three assignments. Each of these assignments requires you to analyze an organization's situation. In your first assignment, you will analyze the organization’s situation and do nothing more. In your second assignment, you will go one step further and propose some strategies the organization might employ. These first two assignments are based on cases from the back of your textbook.

In your final assignment, you will analyze the organization’s situation, propose some strategies, and then recommend a strategy along with the most important actions the organization must undertake to implement the strategy you have recommended. Your last assignment will be based on an organization of your choosing. It can be a small, private organization; it can be a large, publicly traded company. It can be an organization with which you are involved; it can be an organization in which you are interested. The only organizations that are not acceptable are those that were analyzed by other ADMN 404 students during the last five years.

To receive credit for ADMN 404, you must achieve a grade of “D” (50 percent) or better on Assignment 3. As well, your combined grade for all evaluation activities must be a “D” (50 percent) or better.

To learn more about assignments and examinations, please refer to Athabasca University's online Calendar.