A year ago in summer term 2010 at George Washington University School of Business I took a class on Business and Public Policy. It was an interesting exercise and I learned a lot about the tensions between the public interests and private corporate agendas, lobbying, and public relations. I have published earlier two of the individual cases I prepared for that class in the Business School Cases section of the blog.
For the group project we had to select and present a specific case on the conflict of interests between the government and a corporation and give in-depth analysis of that situation. Out of four or five groups we had in that class all but ours chose to present their cases from the point of public interest. In our group we decided to take the position of defending the corporate interests. It seemed to be more suitable for MBA students in the MBA program, not Public Policy. As a matter of fact, one of the members of our group was in Public Policy program at Georgetown University and she took this summer class at GWU through the consortium. She was the one who felt more out of place than others in the group. But I believe it was ultimately quite helpful for her too to see the issues through the eyes of business for a change.
The issue we chose was to give recommendations to Coca Cola company on fighting the so-called “Soda Tax”. The issue was on the rise about a year ago when more states were debating levying this tax, more broadly known as ”Sugar Tax”. In our family we are not big consumers of soda, as we are quite concerned with all that extra sugar pumped into the beverages. Soda is semi-banned from our house, except for special occasions, and you will not find it casually in our fridge. That’s why, like the Public Policy visiting student from Georgetown University, I felt at times like playing “the devil’s advocate”. But again, it was a great exercise. As a matter of fact, after the final in-class presentation many people from other groups commended us for taking the corporate side, as it made it more appropriate and interesting for everyone. Specifically because it is quite a controversial issue, and many people privately would probably support the public interest in the case.
A great asset to our group was one guy who worked in public relations company about a decade ago, and they were involved in presenting tobacco companies against the multi-million litigation suites. He knew all the techniques actually used by the big corporations in protecting their interests through multiple channels, including public relations. I probably learned from him as much, if not more than from the rest of the class material.
In our approach we decided to play the role of the internal consulting group within Coca Cola and present our recommendations to the upper management. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to share those final recommendations as they were prepared mostly by another group member and then elaborated by the group. However, I posted my preliminary write up for the group paper on Summary of the Soda Tax Issue.
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. So I would stay with the older edition, unless the new one is required by professor in your class.
You can read more about 
by Carrie Shuhart and Chris Ryan. I am reading it right now and found a lot of helpful and insightful information. I skipped some sections that are not applicable to me, like finding an apartment and such. But otherwise I like it a lot. It also has a huge section on Grasping First-Year Academics to give you a head start on Marketing and Operations & Supply Chain in addition to the courses discussed in this post.
