MODULE DESCRIPTOR

MODULE TITLE

Strategic Management
Module Code

Level

6
Credit Points

20
Indicative Assessment Components &
Percentage Weightings
CWEX100
Pre-Requisite Modules
(if applicable)
General business education to level 5
Delivered according to Standard Academic Calendar
YES
Long:
2 semesters

YES
Short:
1 semester

YES
Other delivery pattern:
Please specify

1 MODULE AIMS

The module exists primarily to support students in making sense of the overall behaviour of the organisations in which they will work, integrating past and future studies and experience with each other. Specifically it aims to: help students understand the nature and significance of strategic management;

introduce them to theories, insights and methods which help a manager to think strategically; give them an opportunity to integrate previous learning into a strategic setting; and

provide students with the opportunity to reflect critically on their direct and indirect experience of the strategic behaviour of organisations.

2 MODULE LEARNING OUTCOMES
BY THE END OF THE MODULE STUDENTS WILL BE ABLE TO:

1. Articulate and assess conflicting theories, concepts and frameworks arising in the literature;

2. criticise, compare and evaluate relevant theories, concepts and frameworks;

3. use the theories, concepts and frameworks to analyse, criticise and evaluate practical management situations from case studies and reflectively from students' experience;

4. develop and display the ability to recognise what is important in the context of business scenarios and identify underlying issues in strategic management issues;

5. formulate strategic responses to managerial problems using the theories and concepts taught.

3 INDICATIVE LEARNING, TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES

Strategic Management is notoriously ambiguous as an academic study and as a practice in the real world.

Over time we have developed incrementally an approach which produces high performance from students. This consists in a structured sequence of traditional lectures designed to help students handle the ambiguity and which outline the basic theory; and a series of varied seminars which enable students to work on the other learning outcomes, to synthesise concrete experience and theory and to confront the ambiguity.

Seminar contents include video and written case studies, group presentations and problem-solving, and class discussion, sometimes polemical. These are all used to promote skills in application, synthesis, reflection and evaluation.

We plan to continue to develop this approach - in particular our student-led seminars (partly replacing lectures) and formative electronic self-assessment, which specifically reflect the autonomy and employability agendas.

Our summative assessment methods include coursework and examination. Coursework will include both group and individual aspects

4 INDICATIVE MODULE CONTENTS / TOPICS

What is strategy and does it matter? Strategic management looks at the process by which organisations can generate strategies and ensure they have a good strategy in place at the right time. In doing this we investigate the meaning of strategy. Using Mintzberg's configurations we tackle the difficult subject of the inter-relationship of important factors in an organisation's strategic management, such as power, the nature of its business, finance and the environment. This reflects and emphasises strategy as being primarily about the whole of an organisation and about synthesis (bringing together) rather than analysis (breaking situations down to study and understand them better).

Strategic Analysis. Analysis is nonetheless still needed in strategic management. It is concerned with understanding the