General Business Environment

SYLLABUS MAN 6521
GENERAL BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT
3 CREDIT UNITS

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course is designed to discuss the description, analysis and synthesis of environmental factors that affect the performance of business organizations. These factors are presented in a strategic framework to facilitate responses to the complexity and dynamism in an organization’s environment.
The interrelationships among environmental factors, industry forces, and business are highlighted in an effort to provide students with broad perspective and sharp vision to the future. Students will be trained to identify and analyze key environmental factors, anticipate trends and directions of those factors, understand the complex and continuously changing interrelationships among them, and identify business opportunities and threats brought by the environmental change.
This course will explore the following environmental factors: economic, demography, social-cultural, political (domestic and international), technological (information/communication and processing), natural, and governmental. The legal and ethical factors are, of course, very important subsets of business environment, and are discussed in separate courses.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Upon successful completion of the course, the student should be able to:

Describe and explain the basic conceptual themes and ideas of the interaction of business and its environment.
Identify relevant and important environmental factors interacting with a business organization, analyze the patterns and trends of those factors and the interactions, and translate those patterns and trends in terms of opportunities and threats to the organization.
Analyze how the environmental factors affect business decisions, and understand some of the business implications of changes in the environment.
Develop and formulate better business strategy.

The course aims at preparing students to have broader perspective, to be more visionary and more environment conscious, and to have better managerial judgment and wisdom.

MAIN TEXTBOOK

Learning materials compiled in a document that consists of reading material and case studies for each topic. Students are strongly encouraged to explore literature as a support for each topic.

LEARNING METHOD

The learning method implemented by combining lectures, interactive discussions, case studies and assignments with current relevant issues to students. Each lecture session consisted of a discussion of learning materials and interactive discussion about the real situation of the business world, as well as discussion of relevant case studies. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of this course, the students and professors are expected to have a visionary orientation and broad-minded and open. Each topic is discussed in a visionary perspective of a CEO (Chief Executive Officer).

EVALUATION METHOD

Attendance and Participation. Students are expected to have 100% of attendance on a regular basis, faithfully complete all assignments and readings on the dates assigned, and actively participate in class activities and discussions. Active class participation is essential to do well in the class. Class participation grades will be determined on the basis of your contributions to class discussion (especially case discussion).
Research Paper. Each student will have to complete a written research report on the analysis of environmental factors affecting a business organization. You need to select a particular industry, and then focus your analyses on the impact of each environmental factors on the industry and the firm. The writing style should strictly follow standards set by the Gadjah Mada International Journal of Business. Students are seriously warned plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty, and therefore should pay serious attention to proper referencing. It is a good idea to have a one-page executive summary at the beginning of the paper. The basis for evaluating the written report will be quality of content (quality of research and analysis, meaningful content and timely information), clarity of expression (including well designed tables and charts) and organization (all parts of the paper should fit together). Thus, the paper should be equipped with one sheet of executive summary at the beginning. The draft paper presented in 11-14 sessions according to the setting by the Coordinator

Lecturer GBE. During the presentation, the draft paper obtained the advice and criticism from faculty and students for improvement. Final papers are collected according to the schedule set by the academic part.
Evaluation Components:

Participation for 9 topic @5% 45%
Final paper presentation 15%
Final paper 40%

COURSE SESSIONS

The course General Business Environments weighs 3 credit units which is held in 14 sessions of lectures for regular class and 12 sessions of lectures @180 minutes for the executive class.

Session	Topic	Reading Materials
1	Course overview
2	Economic Environment	Modul
3	Indonesian Business Law	Modul
4	International Business Law	Modul
5	Demographic Environment	Modul
6	Socio-Cultural Environment	Modul
7	Domestic and International Politics Environment	Modul
8	Technological Environment	Modul
9	Natural Environment	Modul
10	Government Environment	Modul
11	Final Paper presentation and discussion
12	Final Paper presentation and discussion
13	Final Paper presentation and discussion
14	Final Paper presentation and discussion

BUSINESS KEY ENVIRONMENTS IN INDONESIA

The requirement today is that managers throughout an organization be continuously committed to understanding and adapting to environmental developments that can affect strategies and operations.

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Picture 1. The Key Environment of Indonesian Business