Setting Strategic Direction

Introduction to the module

Mastering Strategy: Art and Science

• What are strategic management and strategy?
• Defining Strategic Management and Strategy
• Intended, Emergent, and Realized Strategies
• The History of Strategic Management
• Understanding the Strategic Management Process

Leading Strategically

• Leading Strategically
• Vision, Mission, and Goals
• Assessing Organizational Performance
• The CEO as Celebrity
• Entrepreneurial Orientation

Evaluating the external environment

• Evaluating the External Environment
• The Relationship between an Organization and Its Environment
• Evaluating the General Environment
• Evaluating the Industry
• Mapping Strategic Groups

Managing Firms Resources

• What is resource-based theory, and why is it important to organizations?
• Resource-Based Theory
• Intellectual Property
• Value Chain
• Beyond Resource-Based Theory: Other Views on Firm Performance
• SWOT Analysis

Selecting Business-Level Strategies

• Selecting Business-Level Strategies
• Understanding Business-Level Strategy through “Generic Strategies”
• Cost Leadership
• Differentiation
• Focused Cost Leadership and Focused Differentiation
• Best-Cost Strategy
• Stuck in the Middle

Supporting the Business-Level Strategy: Competitive and Cooperative Moves

• Supporting the Business-Level Strategy: Competitive and Cooperative Moves
• Making Competitive Moves
• Responding to Competitors’ Moves
• Making Cooperative Moves

Competing in international markets

• Competing in International Markets
• Advantages and Disadvantages of Competing in International Markets
• Drivers of Success and Failure When Competing in International Markets
• Types of International Strategies
• Options for Competing in International Markets

Selecting Corporate-Level Strategies

• Selecting Corporate-Level Strategies
• Concentration Strategies
• Vertical Integration Strategies
• Diversification Strategies
• Strategies for Getting Smaller
• Portfolio Planning and Corporate-Level Strategy

Executing Strategy through Organizational Design

• Executing Strategy through Organizational Design
• The Basic Building Blocks of Organizational Structure
• Creating an Organizational Structure
• Creating Organizational Control Systems
• Legal Forms of Business

Leading an Ethical Organization: Coporate Governance, Coporate Ethics, and Social Responsibility

• What are the key elements of effective corporate governance?
• Boards of Directors
• Corporate Ethics and Social Responsibility
• Understanding Thought Patterns: A Key to Corporate Leadership?