Author Dr. Alma Gracic
Assistant Professor of Business
Patterson Scool of Business
The world of business is rapidly changing, and organizational leaders need to adapt swiftly and efficiently by embracing a digital transformation while staying true to its core mission and values. These changing managerial roles often require fresh perspectives. Here at Carolina University, we strive to develop new courses and improve on the existing ones that equip our students with practical knowledge and help them embrace data-driven 21st-century challenges.
Our interdisciplinary approach to teaching and learning brings together researchers and industry professionals from diverse fields including, but not limited to, business, economics, sociology, and data science. This interactive approach exposes students to work collaboratively to generate new insights and solutions to persisting problems. In that way, it helps them evolve from being an observer to being a leader of moral influence in cross-functional teams. One of such approaches is reflected in creating Influencers course, offered in Summer, which examines a modern phenomenon of influencers in various domains. In this course, particular attention is given to the understanding of influencers’ persuasive power across social media platforms, explained through a conceptual framework in the fields of social psychology, sociology, and marketing. Through case studies and projects, students learn the mechanism and value of influencers in the modern digital environment and apply the best practices for launching, managing, monitoring, and measuring the campaign’s effectiveness. Over the past decade, communication has changed drastically with the continually increasing use of social media. The rise of social media has impacted how consumers communicate with companies and influences their behaviors, perceptions, and purchasing decisions. Managers need to unlearn some of the traditional approaches to value creation and value capture and learn new methods to creating a sustainable competitive advantage by utilizing and embracing the power of data to build relationships with existing, new, and prospective customers. Nowadays, social media is actively and successfully used as a marketing tool to help achieve measurable business goals. In this and numerous other courses, we explore changes in a leader’s role and responsibilities caused by digital transformations and what strategies and tactics are needed to move the organizations forward.
If you are interested in learning more about our courses, innovative approaches, and faculty research agendas, please visit the department website, Patterson School of Business, or email business professor Dr. Alma Gracic gracica@carolinau.edu.
