Faculty
Jørgen Prip

Course Coordinator
Nicolai Juul Foss

The students must document a level in English equal to TOEFL 575 and a level in mathematics equal to Danish level B. The students are assumed to possess basic knowledge in the areas of marketing, accounting, finance, managerial economics, macroeconomics, and organizational theory at least on an introduction level.

The course provides an advanced examination of strategic management, competitive advantage, and sustainable performance. Students analyze organizations from a cross-functional perspective, using many of the core business functions covered in the previous courses.

The purpose of this strategic management course is to provide the students with a general understanding of the issues, considerations, analyses, and decision-making situations that confront general managers. Managerial decision-making is concerned with the long-term performance of the firm, the size and scope of its business activities, the market position of the firm, the resources needed to perform diverse corporate functions, etc. All the while, management must consider how to coordinate and utilize the specialized departmental functions that are scattered throughout the organization to achieve superior performance on a consistent basis.

To achieve these aims, the course introduces both classical and new models within the area of Strategic Management that can be used by the students to address some of the fundamental strategic issues confronting the company like: Who are we as a firm, why do we exist, what are our aims, where do we come from, where are we going, what should our future position be within the industry, what resources and competencies are we going exploit to compete, how do we create lasting competitive position to secure growth and prosperity, and how do we make the necessary changes within the organisations to achieve it, etc., etc.? It is the ambition during the course to integrate some of the specialized skills and insights acquired by the students in other areas like marketing, economics, accounting, finance, organizational theory, etc.

The course structure: The course is built around a standard textbook (see curriculum below). The course starts by introducing some basic terms like a mission, vision, goals and strategy and look at different ways in which strategies are developed in theory and in practice. Next follows an introduction of how we can analyze the environment of the company, the internal resources, capabilities, and processes of the company. On the basis of these analytical models for strategy development we assess the role of corporate headquarters, alternative ways of competing, and innovative methods of strategic renewal and growth. This is followed by a discussion of how the different types of strategies can be synthesized, and how we can evaluate and chose among them. In the final part of the course we look at how the organization and its managerial processes can be designed to facilitate the implementation of a specified strategy.

The course is based on active learning, i.e., a combination of dialogue lectures, discussion and application. Active learning is an effective approach that is particularly applicable to strategic management issues, but success requires a major investment both from students and faculty. Hence, the students are expected to study the assigned readings before each class session, do a fair amount of advance thinking, and be prepared to contribute to class discussions. The students should become partners in the learning process, which means asking questions, sharing reactions, giving feedback, and staying on top of the workload.

The course is built on class dialogue where models are presented and applied on specific cases designed to illustrate the strategic topic of the session. It is expected that the students take part in the presentation of strategic models as well as the case analyses. The students are expected to compare and contrast models and case solutions with previous course contents, work experiences, and ideas developed in other classes.

More specifically, in the end of this course, the students should be able to:

Exam form: The final exam is a 72-hour group project. The project can be maximum 10 pages in length and the group size should be 2 - 3 students.

The project will be followed by an individual, 20 minutes oral exam, which takes its point of departure in the group project, but also natural relations to theory and models from syllabus.

The individual assessment is based on a combined evaluation of the written group project and the individual oral exam. The evaluation is done with a second external examiner.

Exam aids: No aids permitted at the oral exam.