Business, Government and Public Policy

About this course

GPS 402: Business, Government and Public Policy How firms navigate regulation, shape policy outcomes, and create public value without losing commercial discipline. You will analyze institutions, stakeholder incentives, and political strategy through Solara Foods' packaging, nutrition, and trade exposure.

This is global business and policy for practitioners, not theory for its own sake. You will move from frameworks to evidence tables, stakeholder maps, and executive memos that survive finance, operations, and public affairs scrutiny.

Anchor company: Solara Foods, a multinational packaged foods company selling dairy alternatives, protein snacks, beverage concentrates, and cooking staples across retail, food service, and e-commerce. Revenue $3.1B, 42 markets, leadership including Amara Osei (Chief Sustainability Officer) and Omar Haddad (Global Policy VP).

Prerequisites: LAW 301: Business Law and Ethics. Length: 6 weeks. Assessment: 40% applied project, 35% knowledge checks, 25% reflections.

What you will be able to do

By the end of GPS 402, you should be able to:

• Map how institutions and regulation create constraints and opportunities for multinationals
• Analyze policy proposals using stakeholder incentives and welfare tradeoffs
• Design government relations and public affairs programs with ethical guardrails
• Evaluate competition, industrial, and technology policy impacts on strategy
• Structure public-private partnerships and collective action problems
• Build political strategies with accountability and transparency standards

How the course is organized

Six units, 24 lessons (four per unit). Work in order; each lesson includes Solara worked examples, practice problems with solutions, and managerial reads.

Unit	Topic	Lessons	You will
1	Institutions, Regulation, And How Public Value Intersects With Profit	4	Apply institutional theory to Solara decisions
2	Policy Analysis, Welfare Tradeoffs, And Stakeholder Incentives	4	Apply cost-benefit analysis to Solara decisions
3	Government Relations, Lobbying Ethics, And Public Affairs	4	Apply issue prioritization matrix to Solara decisions
4	Competition Policy, Industrial Strategy, And Technology Regulation	4	Apply market definition to Solara decisions
5	Public-private Partnerships And Collective Action	4	Apply PPP risk allocation to Solara decisions
6	Political Strategy, Ethics, And Accountability	4	Apply ethical advocacy checklist to Solara decisions

How to study

1. Read lessons sequentially. Early units supply vocabulary and frames; later units stress-test the same choices under uncertainty and scale.
2. Do practice problems without peeking. Policy and sustainability decisions need numeric reconciliation and explicit kill criteria.
3. Carry one decision through the course. Use Accelerate reformulation versus lobby for phased implementation as a thread for your applied project.
4. Complete unit assessments after all four lessons in that unit. Knowledge checks test application, not definition recall.

Applied work

Across GPS 402 you will build portfolio pieces that compound:

• Regulatory impact assessment for a Solara product reformulation
• Stakeholder incentive map for a packaging EPR proposal
• Government relations plan with issue prioritization matrix
• Ethics and accountability brief for a policy advocacy campaign

What comes next

LAW 301: Business Law and Ethics supplies strategic context; GPS 403: Geopolitics and International Risk continues the Global Business/Policy/Sustainability pathway. CAP 600: Program Capstone Studio integrates global policy evidence into your final recommendation.