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2015/2016  KAN-CSOLO1002U  Business Strategy

English Title
Business Strategy

Course information

Language English
Course ECTS 7.5 ECTS
Type Mandatory
Level Full Degree Master
Duration One Quarter
Start time of the course Autumn, First Quarter
Timetable Course schedule will be posted at calendar.cbs.dk
Study board
Study Board for MSc in Economics and Business Administration
Course coordinator
  • Martin Kornberger - Department of Organization (IOA)
Contact information: https:/​/​e-campus.dk/​studium/​kontakt
Main academic disciplines
  • Organization
Last updated on 07-07-2015
Learning objectives
To achieve the grade 12, students should meet the following learning objectives with no or only minor mistakes or errors: Learning objectives for the joint exam in Business Strategy and Organizational Identity.
At the exam the student should be able to:
  • Relate various theories related to business strategy to each other, and apply them in order to analyze issues of business strategy
  • Discuss, using theories relevant to business strategy, how and why business strategy facilitate assimilation and differentiation among internal and external stakeholders
  • Relate various theories related to organizational identity to each other, and apply them in order to analyze issues of identity and corporate branding
  • Discuss, using theories relevant to organizational identity, how and why organizational identity changes and involves internal and external stakeholders
  • Discuss how identity provides a foundation for strategy and how it offers the opportunity for organizations to achieve competitive advantage
Course prerequisites
Business Strategy can only be taken together with the course Organizational Identity as the two courses have a common exam.
Examination
Business Strategy in conjunction with Organizational Identity:
Exam ECTS 15
Examination form Oral exam based on written product

In order to participate in the oral exam, the written product must be handed in before the oral exam; by the set deadline. The grade is based on an overall assessment of the written product and the individual oral performance.
Individual or group exam Group exam, max. 5 students in the group
The oral exam will is individual and based on a group project .
Ordinary exam takes place in October/November.
Size of written product Max. 15 pages
For a single student max. 10 pages
Assignment type Project
Duration
Written product to be submitted on specified date and time.
20 min. per student, including examiners' discussion of grade, and informing plus explaining the grade
Preparation time No preparation
Grading scale 7-step scale
Examiner(s) Internal examiner and external examiner
Exam period Autumn
Make-up exam/re-exam
Same examination form as the ordinary exam
If a student is ill during the oral exam, he/she will be able to re-use the project at the make-up exam. If the student was ill during the writing of the project and did not contribute to the project, the make-up/re-exam project can be written individually or in groups (provided the other students are taking the make-up/re-exam). If the student did not pass the regular exam, the examiner decides whether a new or revised project, must be handed in to a new deadline specified by the line secretariat. Reexam takes place in Jan/Feb.
Course content and structure

Aim of the course
The aim of this course is to introduce the student to a set of innovative management practices for business development and strategic management. The course provides students with an overview of different perspectives in the field of strategy but makes a distinct move from the traditional linear causality models of strategic management to more complex models that focus on strategy as a process, facilitating analysis of ‘how’ organizational strategies emerge. The notion of emergence emphasizes the processes whereby issues and activities become strategic and how strategic decisions shape actions in the organization in relation to perceived environmental changes.

The overall ambition of this course is to stimulate students to learn about and make use of innovative management practices for business development and strategic management. This is crucial for the ability to understand and practice strategic management and business development.

In conjunction with the course Organizational Identity (OI), the strategy course will engage in practical case work through analysis as well as creative strategy making. The latter will be facilitated by learning techniques from art and design studios.

Contents
Specifically, the course presents three schools of strategic management and business development and discusses their underlying assumptions about which actions, methods and tools provide the ‘best practice’ for business.
Each theory is viewed as a ‘tool’ which students can use to study strategic management in practice as well as to practice management.

The course moves away from taking strategies and intentions as given and view them as emerging in the context of people trying to organize things. Therefore, we will look at how each of these three theoretical schools view such things as intentions, control, profits and budgets, mission-vision-strategy, set direction and creativity that are supposed to guide the practice of managerial action. Particularly, the course will address this in a context of a managerial attention to the balance between exploitation and exploration of resources, competences, mental models and meaning/identity that shape business development.

Finally, the course focuses on the role of tools and models in analysis and how numbers are used in decision making. Tools and models have a different status in the three schools. From the rational perspective, where tools are seen as neutral descriptors and objective decision points, we move towards to a constructivist position where they are seen as performing realities – fabricating ‘facts’- that serve as input for managerial discussion and sense-making.

The overall ambition of this course is to stimulate students to learn about and make use of innovative management practices for business development and strategic management. This is crucial for the ability to understand and practice strategic management and business development.

 

Overlap with the course Organizational Identity (OI)
This course of Business Strategy overlaps naturally with OI in three ways:
In aiming to understand how organizational identity is explicated and used as an internal resource for management to develop certain policies and organizational architectures that stimulate local action.
In viewing identity as a strategyc asset .
 

In that several theoretical frameworks (e.g. co-creation) are used in both courses.

Teaching methods
Lectures presenting and analyzing different forms of reports from classical analysis to other ways of inquiring about ‘what is going on’ and what can be done about it from different perspectives
Students will engage in explicit reflection and use of models and theoretical perspectives.
Case based learning
Expected literature

The total reading is about 800 pages.
In terms of level of difficulty about 400 pages are considered relatively easy reading, whereas 400 pages are on a higher and more difficult level.

Clegg, S., Carter C., Kornberger, M., and Schweitzer J. (2011), Strategy, Theory & Practice, Sage, London, 488 p.

Last updated on 07-07-2015