Why do some organizations fail while others succeed?

This course will explore the underlying principles of strategy analysis and formulation, including the analysis of industries and competition and the appraisal of firms´ resources and capabilities, and will consider their application in different business contexts. It will equip you with key concepts and ready-to-use tools, which help you with analysis and strategy development.

One of the key concepts is the concept of competitive advantage. Competitive advantage emerges from either firm-internal sources of change such as innovations, or external sources of change such as changing customer demands, which some firms exploit quickly while other firms are able to avoid the impact. Furthermore, ideally, firms are able to sustain their competitive advantage, that is, to withstand the competitive pressures over time.  Thus, “change” and “evolution” are key to understanding strategy. We therefore do not only discuss firm resources and capabilities or the environmental context of firms from a static perspective, but we include dynamics such as industry evolutions and the timing of strategic moves.

In this course, you will be pushed to think strategically in different situations and for different kinds of strategic problems. The tools and frameworks introduced enable you to structure your thinking and your analysis, to uncover the logic of why some strategic moves generate high performance while others do not, and, ultimately, to derive important insights for formulating a successful strategy for your business. Thus, the overall objectives of the course are…

· … to acquire familiarity with the advanced concepts, frameworks, and techniques of strategic management

· … to gain expertise in applying these concepts, frameworks, and techniques in order to: understand the reasons for good or bad performance by an enterprise; generate strategy options for an enterprise; assess the most appropriate strategy,

·… to develop your capacity to analyze complex business problems with incomplete information.

Knowledge and Understanding: Students on completion of the course will possess:

· Knowledge and understanding of strategies, roles and responsibilities of different units within firms

· Knowledge of strategic planning techniques and tools for strategic analysis

· An understanding of the application of these techniques in various contexts.

· Familiarity with many examples of successful and less successful strategies.

· Extensive knowledge of industry cases and major types of strategic decisions.

Cognitive & Subject Specific Skills: Students on completion of the course will possess:

· The ability to conduct a comprehensive strategic analysis.

· The ability to take a holistic approach to the application of analytical templates and other techniques.

· The knowhow to obtain and analyze information which will aid strategic decision-making.

· Experience working in multi-cultural teams.

· The capability to think through cause-effect relationships and to assess critically common strategic management principles.

Key Skills: Students on completion of the course will possess:

· The ability to structure ideas and to communicate them

· The ability to research material related to companies and business context under pressure of tight deadlines.

· Organizational abilities in relation to teamwork including report writing skills.

80% of all sessions have to be attended for a positive grade.

The course is designed as an intensive case-method based course. It features several teaching cases to illustrate effective and ineffective managerial behaviour. In many workshops, students will be asked regularly to discuss their analyses and strategic recommendations for the cases.

The course is an advanced strategy course. It means that key concepts such as, for example, industry analysis will not be discussed at length upfront but assumed to be fully understood. If students feel that this is not the case, they are encouraged to engage in pre-readings. Classic strategic management textbooks are a good starting point.

The course is conceptualized as a complement to the CEMS core course on Global Strategic Management in the sense that it is a) more advanced and b) not focusing on the international dimension. The international dimension of strategy (global strategy) will still occur and be discussed relatively often but it is not the main lense through which competitive dynamics and strategic choices are discussed.

The course method blends lectures, discussions, exercises, and presentations. Substantial classroom discussion is encouraged and expected.

Grades will be assigned based on a 100 points scale

A. Prep documents for each case (Individual level), 10%

B. Class participation (Individual level), 20%

  C. Case analysis after the course (Groups), 60%

  D. Peer evaluation for case group (Individual), 10%

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via email pnell@wu.ac.at