• Mena Sebastien

Strategic management is concerned with the actions taken by general managers, using key resources to enhance the performance of organizations in the long run. The course will provide you with both conceptual and practical knowledge about these strategic processes, so you can better understand how general managers take decisions to improve the success of their organizations and how you will work as part of organizations to achieve these goals.
Strategic management is different from other courses that emphasize the development of functional expertise related to a specific aspect of the enterprise (e.g., finance, operations, marketing, accounting, etc.). Instead of focusing on a particular functional area, this course provides you with a view that encompasses the entire organization and requires you to integrate the knowledge gained from those disciplines in order to develop an overall strategic management perspective. Strategic issues are characterized by ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. Frameworks and tools – that we’ll examine in this course – allow us to deal with this reality but never eliminate it. The course is as much about asking the right questions as it is about having the “right” answers.

The primary objective of the course is to develop expertise in analyzing, formulating and implementing strategy. In addition, the course has the following objectives that you can expect to reach if you work thoughtfully through the material presented in the course, slides, textbook, assigned readings, and the class exercises and discussions:

• Appreciate the value of taking a strategic view of a firm in business decision-making.
• Demonstrate an understanding of and be able to apply key strategic concepts, frameworks and tools, to make analysis-based strategic recommendations.
• Develop the ability to analyze the external and internal business environment, identify opportunities and develop strategic plans.
• Critically evaluate strategies as well as different strategic perspectives/approaches.

The course will be based on lectures and in-class discussion of the topics at hand. Several exercises will be done in class to illustrate the theoretical points in the lectures, as well as prepare you for the exam. It is therefore important for you to attend.
The material (except textbook) will be available on Moodle. We will post an abridged version of the slides before each session and update with the complete version right after each.
For each session, there will be a set of core readings and a series of supplemental readings – optional readings that will help you understand the ideas from the session better. Since I will not repeat the essentials of the readings, but elaborate on them, reading the core readings before class is a must.
The course will use the following textbook:
• Grünig, R., Kühn, R., Morschett, D. (2022): The strategy planning process, 3rd ed, Haupt, Bern
Additional relevant textbooks include:
• David, F. R., David, F. R., & David, M. E. (2023). Strategic Management (18th ed.). Pearson Education.
• Freeman, R.E. 2010. Strategic management: A stakeholder approach. Cambridge University Press.
• Rotharmael, F. 2023. Strategic Management, 6e. McGraw Hill.

• Syllabus MAN08E Feb 12 2025

Writen exam : 90 minutes

Writen exam : 90 minutes