Strategic ManagementModule Details

Background and Rationale

This course introduces key concepts, tools, and principles of strategy and competitive analysis. It is concerned with managerial decisions and actions that affect the performance and survival of business enterprises through strategic thinking and practice. The course is focused on information and knowledge, and their role in strategy formulation, implementation, evaluation and control.
Strategic Management is an integrative and interdisciplinary course. It assumes a broad view of the environment that includes buyers, suppliers, competitors, technology, the economy, capital markets, government, and global forces. It views the external environment as dynamic, complex, uncertain and non-linear. In studying strategy, the course draws together and builds on all the ideas, concepts, and theories from the student’s functional courses such as Accounting, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour, and Statistics. The course takes a general management perspective, viewing the firm as a whole, and examining how policies in each functional area are integrated into an overall competitive strategy. The key strategic business decisions of concern in this course involve selecting competitive strategies, creating and defending competitive advantages, defining firm boundaries and allocating critical resources over long periods. Decisions such as these can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically, and over the long term.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students will be expected to:

1)    Analyse the main structural features of an industry.
2)    Develop strategies that position the firm most favourably in relation to competition.
3)    Influence the industry structure to enhance industry attractiveness.
4)    Appraise the resources and capabilities of the firm in terms of their ability to confer sustainable competitive advantage. 
5)    Formulate strategies that leverage a firm’s core competencies.
6)    Conduct Internal and External audits.
7)    Formulate long-term and generic strategies.
8)    Formulate short-term strategies.
9)    Formulate strategies for exploiting international business opportunities including foreign entry strategies and international location of production.
10)  Recommend well-planned horizontal changes in the boundary of the firm based on an understanding of the conditions under which diversification creates value.
11)  Critically discuss in relation to a particular problem, situation or strategic decision through real-world scenarios.
12)  Recognise strategic decisions that present ethical challenges in order to make appropriate recommendations for ethical decision-making.