A55705 Strategic management

At the end of the course the student will be able:

1. to identify a firm’s current strategy;
2. to evaluate the effectiveness of a firm’s current strategy;
3. to analyze the external and internal strategic environment;
4. to formulate prospect strategies to increase a firm’s performance.  

Poor performance is mostly caused by ineffective strategic management processes. The capability to analyze current strategies and formulate prospect ones is therefore relevant for a firm’s survival and prosper. To this end, the course will provide appropriate coverage of the following topics:  

1. the concept and levels of strategy;
2. the strategic management process; 
3. the identification of current strategy;
4. the evaluation of company results;
5. the analysis of the external strategic environment;
6. the analysis of the internal strategic environment;  
7. the formulation of a prospect strategy.    

The course is aimed to provide the knowledge needed to deal with each of these issues at the business strategy level.

The course will be divided in two sections. The first section is run under a traditional format (lectures and case discussions). Lectures are based on 5 chapters of the textbook. In the second section, under the supervision of the instructor, students are asked to prepare a strategic analysis of a business. Students are responsible to self-organize in groups, choose a business, look for relevant information, analyze the case study and present it to the rest of the class. The knowledge generated in the second section of the course will be shared at the end of the course and will be part of the collective learning process. Students non attending classes, instead of running such a group work, are called to study 4 additional chapters extracted from the textbook.

Students are responsible for consulting on a regular basis the website of the course on “my.liuc.it” where updates, additional material and slides about the course are posted. No excuse accepted for any failure during the course you may incur into due to a delayed consultation of the website.