The strategic management course is the "big picture" course in the undergraduate program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The focus of this course is on the total performance of an entire business enterprise. In this sense, it is the only required course in the undergraduate curriculum that focuses on some fundamental business issues:

• What determines total corporate performance?
• Why do some companies succeed, while other companies fail?
• And what ­ if anything ­ can managers do about it? What can managers do to improve the performance of their companies?

• Front-line and middle-level managers (and, indeed, those beginning in the organization who want to advance in their managerial career) need to know how to answer these fundamental business issues in order to understand the company's overall strategy and to ensure that their decisions are consistent with corporate strategy and with the future challenges that the company will face. The better you understand the problems faced by your company's senior executives, the better prepared you will be to help them solve those problems, and the further you will advance in your career.
• Consultants need to know how to answer these questions in order to help their clients make better decisions.
• Investment analysts need to know how to answer these questions in order to make more informed decisions about where to invest by anticipating future performance.

• Developing strategic coherence maps for understanding a business unit's overall strategy
• Using industry analysis to evaluate current profitability and future profitability potential of an industry, market, or niche
• Understanding the typical issues for empirical testing of industry analysis predictions
• Using resource-based theory to understand how firms can create and sustain value
• Using value chain analysis and transaction costs economics to decide when a firm should keep the activity in-house rather than relying on the market (e.g., outsourcing)
• Understanding learning curves and their applications
• Developing pro forma cash flow analysis and integrating this tool with strategic analysis
• Using game theory to understand how firms use strategic commitment to influence both competitor response and cooperative response
• Using strategic (or real) options theory to inform investment decision-making under uncertainty
• Combining learning curves, pro forma cash flow analysis, game theory and strategic (real) options theory to inform strategic decisions
• Using corporate-level analysis to understand how firms create (or destroy) value by deciding which businesses to compete in, and how to integrate those businesses with each other.

Ben & Jerry's

Ben & Jerry's is dedicated to the creation and demonstration of a new corporate concept of linked prosperity. Our mission consists of three interrelated parts:

Product Mission: To make, distribute, and sell the finest quality, all-natural ice cream and related products in a wide variety of innovative flavors made from Vermont dairy products.

Social Mission: To operate the company in a way that actively recognizes the central role that business plays in the structure of society by initiating innovative ways to improve the quality of life of a broad community -- local, national and international.

Economic Mission: To operate the company on a sound financial basis of profitable growth, increasing value for our shareholders, and creating career opportunities and financial rewards for our employees.

Boeing

To be the number one aerospace company in the world and among the premier industrial concerns in terms of quality, profitability, and growth.

Intel

Do a great job for our customers, employees and stockholders by being the preeminent block supplier to the computing industry.

Leo Burnett

The mission of the Leo Burnett Company is to create superior advertising.

In Leo's words: "Our primary function in life is to produce the best advertising in the world, bar none. This is to be advertising so interrupting, so daring, so fresh, so engaging, so human, so believable, and so well-focused as to themes and ideas that, at one and the same time, it builds a quality reputation for the long haul as it produces sales for the immediate present."

Dayton Hudson

We are in business to please our customers ... to provide greater value than our competitors.

• By giving customers what they seek in terms of quality merchandise that is both fashion-right and competitively priced.
• By having the most wanted merchandise in stock and in depth in our stores.
• By giving customers a total shopping experience that meets or exceeds their expectation for service, convenience, environment, and ethical standards.

Everything we do -- throughout our organization -- should support and advance the accomplishment of the mission.

Gerber

The people and resources of the Gerber Products Company are dedicated to assuring that the company is the world leader in, and advocate for, infant nutrition, care, and development.

Johnson & Johnson

We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs, everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain reasonable prices. Customers' orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. Our suppliers and distributors must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees, the men and women who work with us throughout the world. Everyone must be considered as an individual. We must respect their dignity and recognize their merit. They must have a sense of security in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate, and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. We must be mindful of ways to help our employees fulfill their family responsibilities. Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. There must be equal opportunity for employment, development and advancement of those qualified. We must provide competent management, and their actions must be just and ethical.

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the work community as well. We must be good citizens -- support good works and charities and bear our fair share of taxes. We must encourage civic improvements and better health and education. We must remain in good order the property we are privliged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit. We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed and mistakes paid for. New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should receive a fair return.

Merck & Co., Inc.

The mission of Merck & Co., Inc. is to provide society with superior products and services -- innovations and solutions that satisfy customer needs and improve the quality of life -- to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities and investors with a superior rate of return.

Saturn

Market vehicles developed and manufactured in the United States that are world leaders in quality, cost and customer satisfaction through the interaction of people, technology and business systems and to transfer knowledge, technology and experience through General Motors.

Tom's of Maine

To serve our customers by providing safe, effective, innovative natural products of high quality.

To build a relationship with our customers that extends beyond product usage to include full and honest dialogue, responsiveness to feedback, and the exchange of information about products and services.

To respect, value, and serve not only our customers, but also our co-workers, owners, agents, suppliers, and our community; to be concerned about and contribute to their well-being, and to operate with integrity so as to be deserving of their trust.

To provide meaningful work, fair compensation, and a safe, healthy work environment that encourages openness, creativity, self-discipline, and growth.

To contribute to and affirm a high level of commitment, skill and effectiveness in the work community.

To recognize, encourage, and seek a diversity of gifts and perspectives in our worklife.

To acknowledge the value of each person's contribution to our goals, and to foster teamwork in our tasks.

To be distinctive in products and policies which honor and sustain our natural world.

To address community concerns, in Maine and around the globe, by devoting a portion of our time, talents, and resources to the environment, human needs, the arts and education.

To work together to contribute to the long-term value and sustainability of our company.

To be a profitable and successful company, while acting in a socially and environmentally responsible manner.

The following are a list of sources available on the commercial market.   Many of them are expensive (often charge by the hour and the cost of full-text of an article or a report) and are not easy to search because of the way the files are structured, thus it is recommended that an information professional search them for you for a fee. The fee may seem high at times, but a professional searcher will save you time and money in the long run. 
Many of these sources are ones that the University Library and the College of Business subscribe to and are free of charge as long as you are enrolled at the university.  They are not to be used for clients or work purposes. If you need assistance using the databases Illinois subscribes to, feel free to drop by the Business & Economics Library (BEL) at the Main Library, Room 101.  BEL’s hours are listed here.