Strategic Management

Catalog description

This course emphasizes the need to look outward to the environment and inward to a firm’s resources and capabilities and operating policies. It describes a firm’s strategy as the formulation of “competitive strategy”, “corporate strategy,” and “organizational strategy.” Competitive strategy involves identifying structurally attractive industries and developing the most attractive position within that industry - where attractiveness is driven by absolute conditions combined with the resources and capabilities the firm brings to that position. Businesses create value by operating in positions within industries that, by virtue of the characteristics of industry, the position, and the firm, are defensible from the encroachment of competitors and deterioration of the environment as a whole. Corporate strategy focuses on the management and understanding of multi-product, multi-location, and multi-business firms. Organizational strategy involves developing policies within each functional area of the business unit that are integrative and consistent with the firm’s plan for creating value.