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Students Place in Top 100 in National Business Strategy Game

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Posted on Tuesday, May 5, 2015

“Divine Soles,” co-managed by three Westminster College students in the Strategic Management capstone course, placed 18 among 3,025 teams from 204 colleges and universities in a worldwide online business simulation.

In the Business Strategy Game (BSG), students operate an athletic footwear company and compete against other simulative footwear companies in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. Company co-managers are responsible for making decisions on production standards, plant capacity, pricing strategies, employee compensation and Six Sigma practices, marketing strategies, distribution and logistics decisions, and multiple other decision processes. Each week of class simulates a year in the life of the organization that student teams manage. In generating the global top 100 ranking, BSG measure teams on four performance variables: overall score, earnings per share, return on investment and stock price.

“Divine Soles,” co-managed by Robert Poling, Scott Raley, and Sylvester Enos, placed 18 in overall game-to-date score.  Brian Petrus, visiting lecturer of economics and business, is the class advisor.

Poling, a senior business administration major, is a son of Robert and Jayne Poling and a graduate of Upper Saint Clair High School. Raley, a senior business administration major, is a son of William and Gail Raley and a graduate of Butler Area High School. Sylvester Enos, a senior business administration major, is a son of Sylvester and Sarah Enos and a graduate of Sharpsville High School.

 “I am extremely proud of these students and their strategic decision-making capabilities,” said Petrus. “Students learned to fine tune their management decisions within their respective companies. These decisions mimic real-life practices and have provided students with a unique perspective with regard to what it takes to run a multimillion dollar company.”

“All aspects of BSG parallel the functioning of the real-world athletic footwear market, thus allowing you and your co-managers to think rationally and logically in deciding what to do and get valuable practice in making a variety of different business decisions under circumstances that mirror real-world competitive conditions,” according to the BSG website.

The Strategic Management capstone course specifically focuses on general management skills involved in choosing an organizational strategy, committing critical resources to implementation, and appropriately reevaluating that strategy as internal and external organizational environments change. The course integrates the major business functions using top management’s generalist views. The primary method of instruction is case analysis.

Contact Petrus at 724-946-7163 or email petrusba@westminster.edu for more information.