To provide students with a significant understanding of the role and importance of strategic management in contemporary organisations. To enable students to integrate functional specialisms into an appreciation and application of strategy processes in both the private and public sector.

Multi-perspective nature of strategy, strategic dimensions, strategy processes, theories of business level competitive advantage - market positioning, resource-based and the dynamic capabilities approach. Strategic options and decision making, implementation issues: resource allocation, stakeholder management, strategic control, and change management. Strategic cultures and paradigms, the role of the strategist. Corporate-level strategy, multi-business structures and coherence, Organisational and Environmental Turbulence, Scenario Planning and future thinking.

On completion of this module student will be able to: Identify the dimensions of corporate strategy - process, content and context. Recognise the theories and application in practice of competitive advantage. Operationalise major concepts and techniques of contemporary strategic analysis, option evaluation and choice to both private and public sector scenarios.

Synthesise theories of organizations as both rational profit/welfare maximizing entities and socially constructed experiences. Relating ideas to reach an awareness of the ambiguity and paradox inherent in managing strategically. Embrace the duality of organizations as being both formal and informal contexts for strategic management. Engage with the managerial necessity for and considerations in stakeholder management, in particular international and ethical consequences.

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The module is delivered by a mixture of methods: 1) Formal Lectures 2) Tutorials/Workshops 3) Course Projects The students proactive and responsible learning experience moves through dependant/directed learning based on lectures, tutorials, texts/papers audio visual material; through to independent learning sourced from application of material to real strategic issue that practically illustrate the real-life strategic issues and their ethical consequences.