Strategy, Leadership, and Corporate Social Responsibility

Week 6 of BUS 622 is titled “Strategy, Leadership, and Corporate Social Responsibility,” and it is the final week of the course. It draws the term’s threads together on two levels at once. At the level of content, it covers the last two chapters of Green and Keegan: Chapter 16 on the strategic elements of competitive advantage, and Chapter 17 on leadership, organizational structure, and corporate social responsibility. At the level of the course, it is the week the Global Marketing Plan Part 2 final paper is due — the summative assignment that assembles work produced for the same mentor company since Week 2 into a single 10–13 page marketing plan. The Canvas Overview frames the week directly: “you have completed the first five weeks and are very close to completing this global marketing course,” and you are “more than prepared” to complete the final paper.

The week carries three graded deliverables: two discussion forums whose initial posts are due on Day 3, and the final paper, due on Day 7. The table below is the map of the week; each row has a dedicated companion guide that takes the task apart in full.

Canvas lists three Weekly Learning Outcomes (WLOs) for Week 6. They are reproduced verbatim below, each followed by a note on what it actually asks you to be able to do. Every graded task is tagged to one or more of these outcomes, so the WLOs are the rubric behind the rubric.

WLO 1 — Analyze leadership and various structures for international organizations

A Chapter 17 outcome. “Analyze” asks for more than a list of structures: you must break each structure into its parts, weigh its advantages against its disadvantages, and explain the trade-off it makes. The Organizational Structure and Leadership discussion rests entirely here.

WLO 2 — Discuss ethics and corporate social responsibility in the globalization era

Also a Chapter 17 outcome. It moves from how a firm is organized to how it behaves: the ethical obligations a global company carries and the ways it answers them. The Corporate Social Responsibility discussion is tagged here.

WLO 3 — Formulate a company’s global marketing plan

The capstone outcome. “Formulate” is the highest-order verb in the set: you do not describe a plan, you build one. The Global Marketing Plan Part 2 final paper is the single deliverable tagged to this outcome, and the whole course has been scaffolded toward it.

The course text is Green, M. C., & Keegan, W. J. (2020). Global marketing (10th ed.). Pearson, available through the VitalSource platform. Week 6 assigns the final two chapters of the book.

Textbook Chapters

Article and Faculty Video

The Resources page also assigns one article and one faculty video. The article supports the Organizational Structure and Leadership discussion; the video supports the final paper.

Chapter 16 asks one organizing question: why do some firms in an industry consistently outperform others, and how is that advantage built and defended? Competitive advantage exists when a firm delivers superior value — either at a lower cost than rivals, or with a benefit that justifies a premium price. The chapter supplies the frameworks that diagnose where advantage comes from and how durable it is. The Canvas Overview singles out one of them, D’Aveni’s model in Table 16-2, for close reading.

Porter’s Five Forces — How Attractive Is the Industry?

Michael Porter’s five-forces framework explains why some industries are structurally more profitable than others. The five forces are the threat of new entrants, the threat of substitute products or services, the bargaining power of buyers, the bargaining power of suppliers, and the rivalry among existing competitors. The stronger these forces, the more they compete away industry profit; the weaker they are, the more room a firm has to earn a return. The final paper requires you to explain a competitive-advantage strategy “to compete against five industry forces” — so this framework is not background, it is a graded deliverable.

Generic Strategies and the Value Chain

Porter also names the broad routes to advantage — the generic strategies of cost leadership (being the lowest-cost producer), differentiation (offering something the market values enough to pay more for), and focus (serving a narrow segment better than broad-line rivals). The value chain is the diagnostic tool beneath them: it disaggregates the firm into the primary and support activities through which value is created, so a manager can locate exactly which activity is the source of a cost advantage or a differentiation advantage.

National Competitive Advantage and Hypercompetition

The chapter extends the question from the firm to the nation. Porter’s diamond of national competitive advantage explains why certain countries are home bases for world-leading industries, through four determinants — factor conditions, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, and firm strategy, structure, and rivalry. Finally, the chapter presents Richard D’Aveni’s concept of hypercompetition: in fast-moving industries, no advantage is permanent, and firms compete through a rapid series of strategic moves across distinct arenas. The Overview directs you to Table 16-2 specifically — D’Aveni’s model of dynamic strategic interactions in hypercompetitive industries — because it reframes competitive advantage as something a firm must continually rebuild rather than win once.

Chapter 17 turns from what strategy a firm pursues to how it is led and organized to execute that strategy. It is the chapter behind the Organizational Structure and Leadership discussion.

Leadership and Core Competence

Global marketing leadership begins with top-management vision — the ability to see where the firm should go and to commit the organization to getting there. The chapter ties leadership to core competence: the bundle of skills and knowledge, rather than a single product, that lets a firm deliver a distinctive benefit to customers. Leadership’s task is to identify the firm’s core competence and to organize so that it can be extended into new markets.

Organizing for Global Marketing

The chapter’s central problem — and the heart of the Week 6 Discussion 1 — is structure. As the discussion prompt states, “the goal in organizing for global marketing is to find a structure that enables the company to respond to significant differences in international market environments and to extend valuable corporate knowledge.” The chapter surveys the alternative structures a global firm can adopt: the international division structure, in which all international activity is grouped in one division; regional management centers; the geographic (area) structure, organized around world regions; the worldwide product division structure, organized around product lines; and the matrix organization, which overlays two dimensions at once. Each makes a different trade-off, and Discussion 1 asks you to weigh them.

Lean Production and the Autonomy–Integration Tension

Chapter 17 also discusses lean production — the organizational form, pioneered by Toyota, built on eliminating waste, continuous improvement, and tight supplier integration. Running through the entire chapter is one recurring tension: the balance between autonomy (giving local subsidiaries the freedom to respond to their market) and integration (coordinating worldwide so the firm acts as one). No structure escapes that trade-off; the discussion asks you to evaluate how each structure manages it.

The final section of Chapter 17 — and of the textbook — addresses how a global company answers to society. It is the chapter content behind the Week 6 Discussion 2.

CSR and the Stakeholder Concept

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is the obligation of a company to act in ways that serve both its own interests and the interests of society. It rests on the stakeholder concept: the recognition that a firm is accountable not only to shareholders but to every group affected by its actions — employees, customers, suppliers, communities, governments, and the natural environment. As the Discussion 2 prompt states, “consumers throughout the world expect that companies conduct business in an ethical and socially responsible way,” and socially conscious companies “include human rights, labor, and environmental issues in their agendas.”

Social Responsiveness

The chapter distinguishes responsibility from social responsiveness — the capacity of a firm to act on its social obligations: to anticipate issues, adapt its practices, and respond to changing societal expectations rather than merely react to crises. Where CSR names the obligation, social responsiveness names the behavior. The final paper asks for both: it requires you to discuss your mentor company’s “CSR and social responsiveness strategies, particularly in the selected region.”

Why CSR Is a Marketing Question

CSR is not a side topic appended to a marketing course. In the globalization era, a firm’s ethical conduct — how it treats labor, how it manages its environmental footprint, how it respects human rights across its supply chain — is itself a source of brand value and competitive advantage, and a source of reputational risk when it fails. That is why the course ends here: a global marketing plan that ignores CSR is incomplete.

Each deliverable below has a dedicated companion guide that restates the prompt as a checklist, decodes the rubric, and supplies a model or skeleton. This section is the overview; use it to plan the week, then work from the individual guides.

Discussion 1 — Organizational Structure and Leadership (3 points)

Tagged to WLO 1. A 250-word initial post with three directives: discuss at least three alternatives for global organization structure; for each, explain the structure and some of its advantages and disadvantages for global operations; and evaluate the importance of balancing autonomy and integration across those structures. Built on Chapters 16 and 17 and the Shafiee article. Two peer replies of 100+ words, each identifying additional advantages and disadvantages of global operations. See the Week 6 Discussion 1 Study Guide.

Discussion 2 — Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) (3 points)

Tagged to WLO 2. A 250-word initial post with two directives: identify at least three ways global companies can demonstrate their commitment to CSR; and provide an example of when a specific company — such as your mentor company — demonstrated that commitment. Built on Chapter 17. Two peer replies of 100+ words, each identifying one or two additional ways the peer’s chosen company demonstrated CSR. Critically, this post is also drafted as a section of the final paper. See the Week 6 Discussion 2 Study Guide.

Final Paper — Global Marketing Plan Part 2 (25 points)

Tagged to WLO 3. A 10–13 page APA paper that completes the global marketing plan begun in Week 2, for the same mentor company. It is built under four boldface headings — Executive Summary, Environmental Analysis, General Strategy, and Specific Plans and Strategies — and covers a seven-factor environmental analysis; segmentation, targeting, and positioning; market-entry strategy; competitive-advantage strategy against the five industry forces; the full 4Ps; a color SWOT grid; and CSR. It requires at least three scholarly sources beyond the textbook and is submitted through Waypoint. See the Week 6 Final Paper Guide — the most important guide in this set.

BUS 622 has built the global marketing mix one element at a time: market study and analysis, product and price, promotion, and now — in Week 6 — strategy, leadership, and social responsibility. Week 6 is not simply the last content week; it is the week the course delivers its summative product. As the Week 6 faculty video explains, the course has been deliberately “scaffolded” — designed so that each week’s assignment moves the student’s knowledge forward toward one end: the completion of a global marketing plan.

The Global Marketing Plan Part 2 is the convergence point. It is Part 2 of the plan begun in the Week 2 Global Marketing Plan Part 1, and it assembles components produced across the term for the same mentor company. The Week 2 environmental analysis becomes the paper’s situational foundation; the Week 4 Product Branding discussion feeds the “product and brands” element of the 4Ps; the Week 5 Integrated Marketing Communications assignment supplies the “promotion” element and the SWOT; and the Week 6 CSR discussion becomes the paper’s CSR section. Part 2 does not start from a blank page — it gathers, expands, and integrates work the course has had you produce all along.

One thread that began earlier in the course also reaches its conclusion here. The Personal Branding Activity, run as a two-part journal in Weeks 3 and 5, was completed before Week 6 began; with the Week 5 LinkedIn enhancement submitted, that project is closed. Week 6’s three deliverables therefore concentrate fully on the mentor-company plan — the course’s capstone — without a second project competing for attention.

The key Week 6 terms, defined for use. Carry the vocabulary into every deliverable — precise terms are what move a submission from description to analysis.