Course Details

1. Understand the benefits of strategic management.
2. Use the strategic audit as a method of analysing corporate functions and activities.
3. Describe the role and responsibilities of the board of directors in corporate governance.
4. Understand how the composition of the board can affect its operation.
5. Conduct a stakeholder analysis.
6. Use tools for analysing a company environment (SWOT analysis).
7. Conduct an industry analysis to understand competitive forces that influence the intensity of rivalry within an industry.
8. Generate strategic options by using TOWS matrix.
9. Understand the competitive and collaborative strategies available to corporations.

Chapter One - Basic Concepts: Phases of strategic management. Benefits of strategic management. Globalization and environmental sustainability as challenges to strategic management. Theories of organizational adaptation. The learning organization. Basic model of strategic management. Triggering events initiating strategy. Mintzberg's modes of strategic decision making. Strategic decision making process. The strategic audit.

Chapter Two - Corporate Governance: Responsibilities of the board of directors and its role in strategic management. Composition of the board of directors. Agency theory versus stewardship theory. Codetermination and interlocking directorates. Executive leadership and the importance of strategic vision.

Chapter Three - Ethics and Social Responsibility: Positions for and against social responsibility. Importance of corporate stakeholders and stakeholder analysis

Chapter Four - Environmental Scanning and Industry Analysis:  Environmental scanning. Identifying external strategic factors.Industry analysis, including industry evolution, strategic groups, and hypercompetition. Forecasting techniques, including industry scenarios.

Chapter Five - Internal Scanning: Organizational Analysis: Core and distinctive competencies and VRIO framework. Business models. Industry and corporate value-chain analysis. Basic concepts in organizational structure and culture.

Chapter Six - Strategy Formulation: Situation Analysis and Business Strategy: Identifying a corporation's strategic factors using the SFAS Matrix.Using the TOWS Matrix to generate potential strategic alternatives. Using the competitive strategies of lower cost and differentiation. Competitive strategy, industry structure, and hypercompetition. The use of offensive and defensive competitive tactics. Using the cooperative strategies of collusion and strategic alliances.

• Thomas Wheelen and David Hunger (2009) Strategic Management and Business Policy 12th Edition, Pearson, Prentice Hall.

• Thompson and Strickland, Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases, the latest edition, McGraw Hill.
• Robert Grant, Contemporary Strategy Analysis. 6th Edition, Blackwell Publishing.

Analysis of case studies with lecturer as a moderator, discussions, movies, assignments.

Power point presentations used in class, lecture notes, some of the case studies are available to the students on the e-learning platform.