Postgraduate Course: Strategic Management as Practice (CMSE11591)
Course Outline
School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
Summary | Strategic management deals with how leadership and management may contribute to the competitive advantage of firms or other organizations. This course introduces strategic management with a focus on firms' contemporary challenges and opportunities emerging from large-scale changes such as digital transformation and climate change. For this purpose, we apply a sophisticated perspective that is informed by practice-theoretical research. |
Course description |
The course discusses strategic management and develops your understanding and practical skills of collectively developing and implementing strategies, putting two points into the centre: First, strategies are the result of social practices (e.g., new and established procedures of developing a strategy involving people with different interests, standardised implementation processes, and practices of deviating from a strategy). Second, strategic management deals with societal change and emerging practices across organisational boundaries (e.g., new consumer behaviour facilitated through new technologies, or in response to global warming). Research suggests that one key challenge strategists face in today's society is the management of competing demands, such as performing in the present and learning for the future or profit orientation, social purpose, and contributions to environmental issues.
The course consists of four sections:
- Strategic management as social practice
- Strategic management of competing demands
- Strategic management and digital transformation
- Strategic management and sustainability
The course applies a flipped learning approach in an in-person workshop format. You will work in teams both to be prepared for class and in class. The course introduces concepts and tools of strategic management in an interactive fashion by providing you with information, defining tasks of collectively applying and reflecting on these tools and concepts, and giving you the chance to ask questions. You will also work on sophisticated case studies. Based on the case studies and acquired knowledge, your team will help you to prepare you for your individual assessment, an academic paper. Writing an academic paper, you work out an unanswered question on the topic of the course, develop a systematic answer, discuss new insights, and conclude with practical implications. In your team, you will help each other to engage with relevant literature, develop unanswered questions, and an approach to address these questions for each of you. You will present the results in class. Additionally, you will receive individual feedback from the course organiser on the first draft of the introduction of the academic term paper in a coaching session.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2022/23, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 50 |
Course Start |
Block 3 (Sem 2) |
Timetable |
Timetable |
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 4,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 6,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
88 )
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Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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Additional Information (Assessment) |
100% coursework (individual) - assesses all course Learning Outcomes |
Feedback |
Formative: Students will receive individual feedback from the course organiser on the first draft of the introduction of the academic term paper in a coaching session. They will also selectively receive feedback on their prepared work in class.
Summative: Feedback on the academic term paper. |
No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Understand, critically discuss, and apply the tools and concepts of strategic management.
- Manage work within teams, and apply theoretical insights to the analysis of strategic challenges.
- Specify a theoretical problem as a research question, systematically answer that question, and discuss insights and practical implications of that answer.
- Demonstrate the ability to deal with complexity and ambiguity by specifying problems and the systematic development of approaches to these problems in a reflexive fashion showing both awareness of competing arguments for different approaches and skills of convincing others that the developed approach is the right one.
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Learning Resources
Whittington, R., Angwin, D., Regner, P., Johnson, G., Scholes, K., & Koleva, P. (2019). Exploring strategy: text and cases. Pearson Education. |
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Communication, ICT, and Numeracy Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Convey meaning and message through a wide range of communication tools, including digital technology and social media; to understand how to use these tools to communicate in ways that sustain positive and responsible relationships.
Critically evaluate and present digital and other sources, research methods, data and information; discern their limitations, accuracy, validity, reliability and suitability; and apply responsibly in a wide variety of organisational contexts.
Cognitive Skills
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Be self-motivated; curious; show initiative; set, achieve and surpass goals; as well as demonstrating adaptability, capable of handling complexity and ambiguity, with a willingness to learn; as well as being able to demonstrate the use digital and other tools to carry out tasks effectively, productively, and with attention to quality.
Knowledge and Understanding
After completing this course, students should be able to:
Demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of contemporary organisational disciplines; comprehend the role of business within the contemporary world; and critically evaluate and synthesise primary and secondary research and sources of evidence in order to make, and present, well informed and transparent organisation-related decisions, which have a positive global impact.
Identify, define and analyse theoretical and applied business and management problems, and develop approaches, informed by an understanding of appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques, to explore and solve them responsibly.
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Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Marc Krautzberger
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Mrs Fionna Grant
Tel: (0131 6)51 3028
Email: |
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