Strategy and Organisation

Course goals

At the end of the course the student should be able to:

1. Put labels on current theories of strategy, organisation and governance, indicating their a priori assumptions, benefits and dangers;
2. Understand the basics of the behaviour of firms, particularly large, quoted firms;
3. Develop ideas concerning the ways in which business performance could be enhanced through application of these theories studied in practice.

Content

This course is a general introduction to theories, issues and special topics from the areas of corporate strategy, organisational economics and corporate governance. The focus is on business firms rather than other organisations, although most materials can be generalised. As such it is meant to provide participants with a managerial view on decision making in the boardrooms of large firms (and occasionally small and medium sized enterprises).

Since such decision-making cannot be completely isolated from aspects of financial management, the course will integrate some financial issues as well. Thus, the course will focus on boundary issues (e.g., issues relating to diversification and integration as well as off-balance structures), industry analysis, competitive positioning, stakeholder value theory, organisational culture, and organisational structures. The course is full of real-world examples and cases, covered in the course’s main textbook and sometimes introduced during lectures.

The course is structured into two large blocks. In the first block we will focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the different strategies firms employ; why they choose certain strategies, and which analyses underlying these decisions. In the second block we will focus on organisational behaviours at large; diving deeper into the way firms structure themselves and why they behave the way they do.
 
Academic skills
This course focuses on the following academic skills:

• ​Social responsibility (main academic skill within the course)
• Being able to perform in a team for a well-designed task or project.
• Academic reasoning
• ​Thinking conceptually, thinking in terms of theory.
• Asking critical questions, having a curiosity-driven and critical attitude.
• Analysing questions from different perspectives.
• Identifying links between problems.
• Presenting
• Academic research
• ​Being able to draw clear and correct conclusions.

Format
The format consists of one regular lecture per week that follow the textbook content, and between one and two tutorial class per week in which case materials and questions concerning textbook are discussed. Active tutorial participation and contribution to class discussions are critical for learning in this course. Before the exam, a question and answer session will be organised to help preparation.

Assessment method
Student performance will be tested by a team assignment (counting for 40% of the final grade) and an individual final exam (counting for 60% of the final grade) consisting of a mix of open-ended and multiple choice questions. The exam content is based on the textbook chapters covered during the regular lectures, but also on additional content presented during lectures and tutorials.

Effort requirements
Students need to hand in and successfully complete a set number of weekly assignments in order to fulfil the effort requirement. This number will be specified in the course manual. Should the student not meet the effort requirement they will not be allowed to participate in the retake.

Course repeaters
Students who signed up for the course in previous years and failed the course (and did not sign off in time), will participate in the course repeaters program.

With respect to the teaching format, this implies that course repeaters:

• Cannot follow the regular tutorials;
• Will have the possibility to follow a Q&A session;
• Do not have effort requirements;
• With respect to the assessment method, this implies that course repeaters:
  • Have an endterm of 100%;
  • Have a possibility for a supplementary or replacement exam when the unrounded final grade is at least equal to 4.

IMPORANT INFORMATION Please order the book before the start of the course and check website of ECU’92 (www.ecu92.nl) for the specific book sale deadlines. Because custom books are printed on demand, it is not possible to order them a couple of weeks in advance or via other bookstores. You can buy second hand copies of the book. However, there might be a limited number of them available. Second hand copies no longer include access to the online learning materials. Access to these materials is not needed to complete the course. First editions of the book cannot be used. 


In case online access is required for this course and you are not in the position to buy the access code, you are advised to contact the course coordinator for an alternative solution. Please note that access codes are not reusable meaning that codes from second hand books do not work, as well as access codes from books with a different ISBN. Separate or spare codes are usually not available.