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In what way does litigation influence organizational initiatives?

Organizational initiatives, such as those produced in the strategies for attending to issues part of the strategic planning process, can be dramatically influenced by laws, litigation, and the legal process. This can be especially important to note during the clarification of organizational mandates and environmental scanning subprocesses of the strategic planning process.

For instance, if when doing the clarification of organizational mandates, a discovery of the laws and cases that may have an effect of business is done, the planning committee may find that they must alter processes, policies and procedures in order to avoid conflicts with the law, new or otherwise.

For instance, working in a university, any strategic planning process might focus on ways with which to deal with issues that have plagued other universities in the courtroom. Two strategic issues regarding litigation and academia immediately come to mind.

Alcohol consumption and policies (Devercelly vs. Rider University).

Universities who watched Rider University during their defense in the death of Gary Devercelly by alcohol consumption learned that it is not enough to simply have policies on alcohol consumption on campus, but that it is essential that the culture support a student and staff body that actively watches out for each other in every situation, that leaders reinforce policy with action and demonstration of principles, and that organizations on campus realize that when dangerous and reckless activities are promotedor allowed that disastrous outcomes can result. Litigation in this case caused Rider University to alter their policies on the ownership of alcohol in dorms, prohibit consumption during campus events outside of designated areas, and alter the very ways in which alcohol is permitted to be advertised on campus.

Plagiarism and copyright (TEACH Act)

The TEACH act came into special importance with the ease of transcoding of feature length DVDs and other copyrighted media for use in classes both offline and online. In particular teachers who want to show movies in the classroom are allowed and protected under copyright law, but once those movies are moved to an online location where they might be copied and redistributed outside of the context of the classroom, issues of litigation become a concern. Universities who are concerned about coming under scrutiny as hosts for pirated media need to address the need for ways for faculty to distribute copyrighted materials as learning materials without allowing those movies to fall into the hands of people not in classes, or to be used outside of the class context.