Strategic Market Entry Project

• Author: William L. Ferguson,Tamela D. Ferguson
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6296.2010.01191.x
• Published date: 01 March 2011
• Date: 01 March 2011

C

Risk Management and Insurance Review, 2011, Vol.14, No. 1, 145-155

DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6296.2010.01191.x

STRATEGIC MARKET ENTRY PROJECT

William L. Ferguson

Tamela D. Ferguson

ABSTRACT

Successful risk management is critical to top level decision makers in any orga-

nization, involving fundamental strategic policy and planning to identify and

allocate scarce resources to projects or activities that generate sustainable com-

petitive advantage and maximize available long-term growth opportunities, or

even survival. This article describes a flexible group project wherein students

of risk management and insurance (RMI) may gain additional exposure and

experience with applications of fundamental strategic management theory in

the context of their particular RMI major coursework. The Project may be a

useful tool in helping RMI students further develop their research and presen-

tation skills, as well as enhance critical strategic decision making; exposure to

cultural, regional or globalization issues; application of fundamental strategic

management concepts; and knowledge of current events. While this Project was

developed primarily for RMI students, students across business disciplines also

may benefit from participation.

INTRODUCTION

The Strategic Market Entry Project applies fundamental business policy, strategic man-

agement (BPS), and globalization concepts to risk management and insurance (RMI)

markets. This can help students majoring in RMI develop or reinforce key theoretical

and pedagogical concepts with potentially greater and more practical expositional value

to those students by inherently allowing them to focus effort on their implicit primary

academic area of interest (i.e., seeing how strategic management concepts are applied

within the framework of their own major coursework as opposed to just in a traditional

business strategy/policy or international type of course that tends to offer few, if any,

RMI applications). RMI students have opportunities to learn to make better business

decisions by factoring in real world examples, issues, and current events in risk man-

agement, insurance, and reinsurance (as such factors are easily incorporated into the

Project), thereby helping to make the learning experience of individual students more

William L. Ferguson is the G. Frank Purvis, Jr. Chair of Insurance and Risk Management, De-

partment of Economics and Finance, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; phone: (337) 482-6664;

fax: (337) 482-6675; e-mail: ferguson@louisiana.edu. TamelaD. Ferguson is in the Department of

Management, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This article was subject to double-blind peer

review.

145