“Fundamentals of Strategic Management and Leadership” is a foundation course on strategy and the strategic management process with implications for leadership. The format combines lectures covering theoretical input and contemporary examples, interactive in-class exercises, group work and discussions and coaching sessions with the instructor. The course guides the students through two core parts: strategic analysis and strategy formulation. Students will learn about tools and concepts of external and internal strategic analysis and the underlying features of business and global strategies. Case examples, videos, interactive exercises, and the strategy term project complement the learning in this course.

·    Given that the Fundamentals of Strategic Management and Leadership course awards 6 ECTS credits, the total expected workload is approximately 150 hours. The course includes 18 contact hours across 9 online sessions, including the final exam. Given the reduced number of contact hours, a substantial portion of the workload is dedicated to self-study, including reading and writing assignments and group work. This ensures that students engage with the material outside of class and apply theoretical concepts in practice.  

Students who have passed this course successfully are able to:

• explain the role of strategy, strategic management and strategic leadership in an organization;
• conduct a thorough analysis of external and internal factors that affect firm performance;
• apply various tools to evaluate a firm’s competitive advantage;
• describe the two generic business strategies, understand their differences and their implications for strategic leaders;
• assess the drivers that shape global strategies and their implications for strategic leaders;
• understand how top executives can influence organizational processes and firm performance;

In addition, students practice collaboration and presentation skills through interactive group assignments. By the end of the course, students will be able to systematically apply concepts and theories of strategic management through in-depth analysis of case studies and relate them to leadership. By working hands-on on real case scenarios, students will be able to understand the application of theory to practice.

Attendance in all sessions is mandatory. This is because the course is offered in a format with less contact hours and more time for self-study (for preparation, group work and reading assignments). The online sessions are therefore reserved to critically discuss the reading material, organize group work and interactive activities to apply theoretical concepts to practical cases.

Students are expected to complete a pre-course assignment, which is communicated one week prior to the course start. Timely enrolment in the course and keeping an eye on emails and CANVAS is therefore expected.

The course involves a variety of teaching methods, including: 

Lectures

Key concepts are presented in class and discussed with students. All participants are expected to have read the relevant chapters beforehand in order to contribute to a meaningful discussion. The theoretical input will be complemented with interactive exercises to solidify the knowledge gained.

Case studies and exercises

Case studies are used to exemplify the key concepts. Students will complete these individually or in groups to discuss and prepare input. Interactive exercises include guided discussions, analyses of cases, and pitch presentations.

Strategy term project 

Students will have the opportunity to apply systematically the concepts learned to a practical case. As part of the strategy term project, students will work in groups on a given project, will prepare a progress presentation and a final recorded case presentation submitted on CANVAS. Feedback by the instructors will be provided throughout. 

Reflection

Students are expected to reflect on strategic management and leadership throughout the course. In addition to writing down key learnings, students are expected to reflect on the course format, assessment, the feedback provided, the performance of the group, and the individual contribution to the group project.

Coaching sessions

In preparation for the group progress presentations, student groups are required to attend a mandatory coaching session. More information on this will be communicated in the course. Failure to attend this session will result in a 5-point deduction from the progress presentation. In addition, instructors are available for individual meetings throughout the course upon request.

The course grade is based on the following assessment elements:

Individual assignments: 65 pts

•      In-class participation 7 pts
•      Written assignments 14 pts
•      Reflection paper: 5 pts
•      Peer grading: 5 pts
•      Final exam: 34 pts

Group assignments: 35 pts

•     Progress presentation + mandatory coaching sessions: 15 pts
•     Final case presentation (submitted as a recording): 20 pts

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.

Professor Barbara Sporn, Professor and Director, Institute for Higher Education Management,
barbara.sporn@wu.ac.at

Use of AI in assignments

All assignments submitted on CANVAS will be screened for plagiarism and AI using Turnitin.

Your assignments should be your original work and you should declare the use of AI. Misusing text generated by AI tools, such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, Bard, or others, is not considered original work. It is considered academic misconduct under our policy, leading to serious disciplinary actions.  The automated plagiarism check of your assignments will return a probability score for AI generated text.

While the core should be your own creation, you are allowed to use AI-based tools for grammar checks and writing revisions. However, you are not allowed to use AI-based software to generate new text for your assignments, for example, by using prompts like "write a paragraph about my topic" or "make this section longer." If you choose to use AI-based tools, please ensure that you provide a detailed overview in the appendix, including your prompts and the responses from the text generation software that you used to generate your paper. To assist you with this, we provided a reporting text template below.

Text Template for Reporting the Use of AI Tools:

Acknowledgment of Artificial Intelligence Tools Used:

For purposes of writing revision and grammar checks, I used the following tools:

Gramarly (https://www.grammarly.com)

Chat-GPT v.3.5 (https://chat.openai.com/)

Bing (https://www.bing.com)

I used the following prompts:

"Check for errors in my writing"

"Correct for grammar, spelling and comma mistakes."

I used the output to help revise my writing in the following segments of my thesis:

1.1. Introduction

2.3. Sampling

3.4.2. Results Study 1

4. Discussion