Learning approach that incorporates online and in-class sessions.
Published in Chapter:
A Capstone Course Linking Business Knowledge and Strategic Initiative
George P. Sillup (Saint Joseph's University, USA) and Stephen J. Porth (Saint Joseph's University, USA)
Copyright: © 2019
|Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-7576-4.ch007
Abstract
This chapter describes the capstone course in which students act as internal consultants and apply the knowledge they acquired from previous courses in the MBA curriculum (e.g., strategic thinking, competitive analysis, statistics, forecasting, financial analysis). Students form teams of complementary backgrounds and expertise (e.g., president physician services, director of nursing, community medicine physician, rheumatologist) to develop and write a strategic plan, demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of business knowledge and the competitive environment. Uniquely, in this capstone, the instructors collaborated with top management of Lancaster General Health (LG Health) to identify a set of strategic priorities focused on five issues: standardization, innovation, competition, growth/scale, and interaction with the University of Pennsylvania. Each of these became a project assigned to a team of students who concluded the course and the MBA program with a presentation of their strategic recommendations to top management of LG Health.