1. Understand the benefits of strategic management.
2. Describe the role and responsibilities of the board of directors in corporate governance, understand how the composition of the board can affect its operation.
3. Explain how executive leadership is an important part of strategic management.
4. Understand the relationship between sustainability and corporate performance.
5. Perform environmental scanning and industry analysis.
6. Identify the aspects of an organization’s environment that are most strategically important.
7. Conduct an industry analysis to understand the competitive forces that influence intensity of rivalry within an industry.
8. Be able to construct an EFAS table that summarizes external environmental factors.
9. Perform internal scanning and organizational analysis.
10. Apply the resource view of the firm to determine core and distinctive competences.
11. Understand a company’s business model and how it could be imitated.
12. Construct an IFAS table that summarizes internal factors.
13. Organize environmental and organizational information using SWOT analysis and a SFAS matrix.
14. Generate strategic options using the TOWS matrix.
15. Understand the competitive and cooperative strategies available to corporations.

The course is basedon analyses of cases of international companies (e.g. Starbucks, Byte Products,Apple, Google, Dell etc.) and covers the following theoretical topics:

BASIC CONCEPTS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT(CHAPTER 1)

•           Phasesof strategic management.

•           Benefitsof strategic management.

•           Globalizationand environmental sustainability as challenges to strategic management.

•           Theoriesof organizational adaptation

•           Thelearning organization.

•           Basicmodel of strategic management.

•           Triggeringevents initiating strategy.

•           Mintzberg'smodes of strategic decision making.

•           Strategicdecision making process.

§  The strategic audit.

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE (CHAPTER 2)

•           Responsibilitiesof the board of directors and its role in strategic management.

•           Boardof directors’ continuum

•           Compositionof the board of directors.

•           Agencytheory versus stewardship theory.

•           Codeterminationand interlocking directorates.

•           Trendsin corporate governance.

•           Responsibilitiesof top management in strategic management.

•           Executiveleadership and the importance of strategic vision.

ETHICS AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY IN STRATEGICMANAGEMENT (CHAPTER 3)

•           Positionsfor and against social responsibility.

•           Importanceof corporate stakeholders and stakeholder analysis.

•           Ethicaldecision making versus moral relativism.

•           Kohlberg’slevels of moral development

•           Codesof ethics and guidelines for ethical behaviour.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCANNING AND INDUSTRY ANALYSIS(CHAPTER 4)

•           Environmentalscanning.

•           Monitoringtrends in the natural and societal environments.

•           Identifyingexternal strategic factors.

•           Industryanalysis, including industry evolution, strategic groups, and hyper-competition.

•           Multi-domesticand global industries.

•           Usingkey success factors to create an industry matrix.

•           Competitiveintelligence.

•           Forecastingtechniques, including industry scenarios.

•           TheIFAS Table: a technique to summarize factors.

INTERNAL SCANNING: ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS(CHAPTER 5)

•           Theresource-based view of the firm.

•           Coreand distinctive competencies and VRIO framework.

•           Businessmodels.

•           Industryand corporate value-chain analysis.

•           Basicconcepts in organizational structure and culture.

•           Fundamentalconcepts from marketing, finance, R&D, operations, human resources, andinformation systems, such as product life cycle, technological discontinuity,experience curve, and autonomous work teams.

•           TheIFAS Table: a technique to summarize internal factors.

STRATEGY FORMULATION: SITUATION ANALYSIS ANDBUSINESS STRATEGY (CHAPTER 6)

•           Identifyinga corporation's strategic factors using the SFAS Matrix.

•           Findinga propitious niche.

•           Usingthe TOWS Matrix to generate potential strategic alternatives.

•           Usingthe competitive strategies of lower cost and differentiation.

•           Competitivestrategy, industry structure, and hypercompetition.

•           Theuse of offensive and defensive competitive tactics.

•           Usingthe cooperative strategies of collusion and strategic alliances.

• Thomas Wheelen and David Hunger (2011) Strategic Management and Business Policy 13th Edition, Pearson, Prentice Hall.

• Thompson and Strickland, Strategic Management: Concepts and Cases, 11th Edition. McGraw Hill.
• Robert Grant, Contemporary Strategy Analysis. 6th Edition, Blackwell Publishing