AØKA08101U Strategic Management

THE IDEA OF THE COURSE

The aim of the course is to provide students with an analytical qualitative foundation for evaluating the income and risk potential of specific organizations and industries based on tools within the area of strategic management drawing on different theories of economic value creation. The course is based on the idea that organizations economic value creation is a function of how they position themselves in specific industries and of how they develop, manage and deploy there resources and competences. Further more organizations creation of value is assumed to be a consequence of the corporate-, the competitive and the growth strategies of these organisations as well as the organizations ability to execute these strategies.  

This course aims to provide the students with an understanding of some of the challenges facing top managers, when they plan the long-term direction of an organization and its economic value creation and its exposure to business risk. These considerations will very often also be of importance for people who work with organizational budgeting and resource allocation between subsidiary companies. Furthermore people working in the financial sector also have to make evaluation concerning income potential of companies and industries in connection to offering loans or advise on investment in stocks etc. 

CONTENT OF THE COURSE

The course start by explaining some central terms, concept, and definition in the area of strategy as for instance the mission, vision and strategy of an organisation, and we will look into some different ways in which a strategy can be developed. In connection to this we will discuss behaviouralisme and the idea of bounded rationality.   

Next we will focus on how we can map and analyse the environment of a company and on how Porters Five Forces framework build on the neoclassical theory and the structure of conduct performance paradigm. Further we well determine competitive advantages and how economic value is created through the internal resources, activities, and competencies of the firm. Here we draw on the resource based view and evolutionary economic theory. Further more tools for mapping and analysing the political and cultural context of the company will be presented and in connection to this we will focus on principal/agent theory and behavoralistic theory.  

After this we will discuss how corporate strategies, business/competitive strategies, international strategies, growth strategies and strategies on innovation can be developed. We will look into the different roles for the patterning company and the size of the corporation drawing on transaction cost theory. When looking at the competitive strategies of the company we will discuss the importance of long-term commitment, game theory, neo-institutional theory and constitutional theory. Furthermore we will be concerned with entrepreneurship and innovation and some of Schumpeters ideas of value creation. We will also explain what kind of route companies develop through over the long-term view and what kind of classical growth problems they are faces with during this development. Finally, in this section we will look at how we can evaluate different strategies concerning their suitability, acceptability, and feasibility.    

In the last section of the course we will exemplify how companies can implement their strategies through organising the company, develop its functional areas and by managing strategic change. Again we will return to the ideas of bounded rationality and the management of stakeholders introduced within behavioural theory.