• Understand the importance of the fields of economics and organization studies underpinning theories of change, leadership, and strategy
• Critically relate theories of change, leadership, and strategy to each other
• Explain the role of narrative, sensemaking, commitment, culture, and identity to leading change and strategic leadership
• Relate theories of leading change and strategic leadership to business practice in the context of grand challenges faced by business organizations and humanity
• Discuss how leaders engage with the past and the future to enable collaboration, sustainable transformation, and long-term value creation
• Connect theories and methods for researching organizational change, strategy, and leadership in the context of a concrete business case study

This course introduces the students to strategic leadership and the role senior executives and top teams play in enabling sustainable futures for the businesses they lead, as well as for societies and humanity in the face of grand challenge (e.g., climate emergency, displacement), technological shifts (e.g., generative AI), and geopolitical risks. It engages students in developing understanding of how business leaders can combine marketcompetitiveness and performance with compassion for people and planet (N4), as well as address ethical dilemmas(N5) in highly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous business contexts.

The course equips students with knowledge of economic and organizational theoretical perspectives on strategic leadership (N1) as well as relates these to business practice. It builds on and extends the students’ prior knowledge of economic perspectives on strategy, while introducing a new – temporality perspective – on strategy in relation to leadership and change. A temporality perspective involves analyzing and discussing top management’s practices and processes for engaging their organizations with and framing the past and the future in ways that create value for different business stakeholders and prosperity across generations (N7).

The students will delve into a variety of examples, case studies, and hands-on workshops, as well as have discussions with guest speakers to learn about how business leaders shift or reconstruct their organizations’ past identities while developing strategic narratives for the future as well as how they craft and enact visions of sustainable futures in the present. Further, students will gain insights into the importance of collaborative strategic leadership for value creation through global connections and with local communities (N9).

In addition to enhancing students’ analytical skills, the course aims advancing their skills in foresight and framing, enabling them to articulate and critically reflect on sustainable futures in the context of ambiguity (N2) and develop imagination for action towards resolving grand challenges (N3).

Overlap with the course Leading Change

This course overlaps with Leading Change (LC) in several ways. Both courses focus on theories and conceptual frameworks that elaborate the processes underpinning strategic leadership and change, hereby stressing the active role of organizational actors. They explore concepts such as temporality, narrative, sensemaking/sensegiving, leadership, identity, culture, value, collaboration, and commitment which are particularly pertinent in situations of high ambiguity and volatility as they help framing these situations. The exam and feedback activities for both courses are structured in such a way that constructive collaboration becomes essential whilst constantly honing the students’ critical thinking (N6). Both courses will draw on abductive methods as the foundation for the joint shared student projects.

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