Strategic Management I & II

This course introduces the key concepts, tools, and principles of strategy formulation and competitive analysis. It is concerned with managerial decisions and actions that affect the performance and survival of business enterprises. The course is focused on the information, analyses, organizational processes, and skills and business judgement managers must use to devise strategies, position their businesses, define firm boundaries and maximize long-term profits in the face of uncertainty and competition. Strategic Management I and II is an integrative and interdisciplinary course. It assumes a broad view of the environment that includes buyers, suppliers, competitors, technology, the economy, capital markets, government, and global forces and views the external environment as dynamic and characterized by uncertainty.

In studying strategy, the course draws together and builds on all the ideas, concepts, and theories from your functional courses such as Accounting, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Organizational Behavior, and Statistics. The course takes a general management perspective, viewing the firm as a whole, and examining how policies in each functional area are integrated into an overall competitive strategy. The key strategic business decisions of concern in this course involve selecting competitive strategies, creating and defending competitive advantages, defining firm boundaries and allocating critical resources over long periods. Decisions such as these can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically, and over the long term