This course is designed as a progression of the concepts and practices introduced in Level 4 ‘Introduction to Creative and Life Writing’ and Level 5 ‘Creative and Life Writing’.
Module
Strategic Management
Module information>
With businesses facing increasingly complicated and challenging environments, they need strategies to create competitive advantages to succeed and survive over the long term.
It is important for managers to know how organisations intend to engage with their environment and consequently develop capabilities and competencies to provide competitive advantages and fulfil their organisational objectives.
This module focuses on models conceived by observing businesses in developed countries and applies to all sizes of firm including corporations operating globally.
Topics covered
- Introduction
- Vision and Mission
- Internal Analysis
- External Analysis
- Creating Standard Business-Level Strategies
- Creating Business-level strategies for dynamic contexts
- Corporate strategy
- Network-level strategy – Mergers and Acquisitions
- Network-level strategy – Alliances
- Implementing Strategy: Organisational for success
Learning outcomes
If you complete the module successfully, you should be able to:
- Describe key concepts of strategic management
- Understand the external business environment and context in which organisation’s strategies are formed and implemented
- Identify the internal resources and capabilities that organisations rely on to develop competitive advantages in relation to the external business environment
- Evaluate an organisation’s strategy from different perspectives
- Formulate and implement organisational strategies taking into account the competitive and contextual environment.
- Select and use relevant strategic management literature and frameworks
- Critically analyse an organisation’s competitive internal and external environment and draw implications for strategy design and implementation
- Formulate business, corporate and network level strategic analysis and understand the tools and methods used
- Critical thinking and analytical skills to challenge ‘taken for granted’ assumptions about strategic management
- Analytical and writing skills in a time constrained setting
- Independent study skills
- Complex reasoning and problem solving skills (including the ability to apply reason and justification within discussion)
- Digital and information literacy skills
Assessment
This module is assessed by:
Coursework (50% weighting):
- There is one item of coursework for this module which contributes to the final assessment mark for this module:
- Coursework: a written essay of a maximum of 2,000 or 2,500 words (deadline – weeks 9-12) The coursework is designed to check student progress, extend and reinforce concepts covered and also test individual performance.
Examination (50% weighting):
- The final piece of assessment will be an unseen written examination of 2 hours’ duration.
Essential reading
The following is provided as part of the module materials after you register:
- Mason Carpenter, Gerry Sanders, Strategic Management: Pearson New International Edition: Concepts and Cases, Pearson, 2014
- Johnson, Gerry, Whittington, Richard, Scholes, Kevan, Angwin, Duncan and Regner, Patrick, Exploring Strategy Text & Cases, Pearson, 2014/2015 (latest)