Strategic Management

Course Description

Strategy as a field of study deals with the factors that determine the success or failure of organizations as a whole. As such, this course examines the concept of strategy, organizational performance and evaluation, general environment and industry analysis, competitive advantages, strategic decision-making and actions, ethics in strategy, and the role played by the executives. Specifically, it presents Strategic Management as a relevant process for any type of organization, which seeks to identify and choose a superior competitive position, to analyse a strategic situation, and finally how to create the organisational context to make the chosen strategy work. The course takes a general management perspective, views the company as a whole, and examines the contribution of each functional area for the overall competitive strategy.

Justification 

According to Cynthia Montgomery, professor at Harvard Business School, strategy is the reason why companies exist. The strategy defines what the company’s identity will be, why it will matter and to whom. Strategy is about doing the right thing. Strategy therefore is the process, which helps a manager, define what brings its company to the world, why they do what they do in today’s world. Essentially, the question of WHY is the fundamental purpose of the company.

Additionally, strategic management not only is a relatively new topic in the business world, but more importantly it integrates traditional subjects; it is a capstone course designed to integrate a student’s prior learning into one subject which is suited for the application in the modern business environment.

General Objective

The goal of this course is to teach students to apply analytical models and decision tools in order to propose solutions to strategic problems linked to the organizations and the environment in which they participate. In order to do so, the course offer participants a broad vision of the development of strategic management that allows them to identify the different theoretical perspectives, analyzing their origin, foundations, main authors and schools of strategic thinking with the functioning of organizations.

Assessment