corporation360

This blog emanates from a course taught by Prof. Sarah Kaplan at the Rotman School, University of Toronto. “Corporation 360” is a chance to analyze one firm from many perspectives (360 degrees). In business school, we tend to look at corporations in one facet or another by studying strategy, operations, marketing, organizational behavior, or finance. What new insights emerge when we examine one company from multiple perspectives? What can we learn through the intersections of the insights that come from each business discipline? And, further, what insights develop when we compare the corporation as an engine for creating and capturing private value (and thus providing returns to the shareholder) to that of the corporation as embedded in society and therefore affecting value creation (or destruction) at the public level. This intensive course takes one company and studies its many facets with the goal of developing an integrated understanding of both private and public value creation.

This course will examine the case of one corporation (in the 2014-2015 school year, it will be Walmart) from multiple perspectives. We will review many of the subjects covered in core MBA coursework, showing how we can mobilize the concepts and tools learned during the MBA to evaluate how a company creates and captures value for its shareholders. We will discuss the tensions that arise for the manager when attempting to manage across these different functional requirements. In doing so, we will always consider the corporation in society, studying the impact of its choices about labor management, globalization, location, sourcing and other issues on social welfare. At the end of the course, we will take the perspective of the leaders of the corporation and seek to understand how they can make important strategic choices for their company in the face of the many challenges and obligations we uncover in the course.

Blog posts here will reflect perspectives and issues as they are developed by students during the course.