MARCH 2007

Professor Romain Wacziarg Littlefield 214 Tel: (650) 723 6069 wacziarg@gsb.stanford.edu http://www.stanford.edu/~wacziarg

Assistant: Chris Lion Littlefield 330 Tel: (650) 723 9040 lion_chris@gsb.stanford.edu

POLECON 230 - NONMARKET STRATEGY
This course addresses managerial issues in the social, political and legal environments of business. Cases and readings emphasize strategies to improve the performance of companies in light of their multiple constituencies, in both international and US environments. Topics include integrated strategy, activists and the media, legislation affecting business, lobbying, regulation and antitrust, intellectual property, international trade policy, and business ethics. Most core courses focus on firms’ interactions with customers, suppliers, and alliance partners in the form of mutually beneficial exchange transacted in markets. In contrast, this course considers the strategic interactions of firms with comparably important constituents, organizations, and institutions outside of markets. Issues considered include those involving activist and interest groups, the media, legislatures, regulatory and antitrust agencies, and international organizations such as the WTO. Markets and the business environment are increasingly interrelated: issues such as boycotts, legislation, regulation, judicial decisions, and trade policy directly affect firms’ market performance. Conversely, the profit-maximizing activities of firms often give rise to issues that involve governments and the public. For example, the market strategies of some ecommerce firms have sparked debates ranging from intellectual property protection to Internet privacy. Correspondingly, managerial decision-making almost always has ethical implications. More often than not, however, those ethical implications are viewed as implicit byproducts, rather than explicit