ADVANCED FIRM STRATEGIES

The aim of the course is to provide the student with a toolkit to understand and analyze strategic issues and to fully appreciate the complexities related to strategic management both in terms of strategy formulation and of its organizational implications.
Through the course students will learn how to rigorously analyze a firm's competitive environment, its internal resources and its business-level as well as corporate-level strategies. The conceptual foundations and toolkits gained during the course will be used to interactively analyze case studies.

A bachelor-level course in strategy - or an equivalent knowledge of main strategy topics

Structure of the course:
1. What is strategy? Fragmentation and heterogeneity in theoretical approaches
2. The strategy process: thinking, formation and change.
3. Business and Corporate level strategy
4. Strategies and contexts.
5. Alliances and networks

De Wit, Meyer (2010), Strategy: process, content, context: An international perspective, Cengage Learning, 4th edition [chapters 1 (pp. 3-18; 26-31), 3 (pp. 105-123), 4 (pp. 163-180), 5 (pp. 231-254), 6 (pp. 297-315), 7 (pp. 359-379), 8 (pp. 421-437)]

Mintzberg H., Ahlstrand B., Lampel J. (1998) "Strategy Safari", Financial Times, Prentice Hall [Chapter 1, pp.1-21]

Inkpen A., Choudhury, N., The Seeking of Strategy Where it is Not: Towards a Theory of Strategy Absence, in Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 16, No. 4 (May 1995), pp. 313-323.

Håkansson H., Johanson J., A Model of Industrial Networks, in D. Ford (a cura di) Understanding business markets : interaction, relationships and networks. The industrial marketing and purchasing group, 2 edizione, The Dryden Press, London, 1997. [pp. 129-135].

Håkansson H., Snehota I., No Business in an Island: The Network Concept of Business Strategy, in D. Ford (a cura di) Understanding business markets : interaction, relationships and networks. The industrial marketing and purchasing group, 2 edizione, The Dryden Press, London, 1997. [pp. 136-150]


Other informations and additional readings will be made available during lessons. See the course page in the website: --> materiali I.S.A: --> Materiali per Lezioni -->"Strategie d'Impresa Avanzato 2017-18).


Suggested readings

Elfring, T., Volberda, H.W., Schools of Thought in Strategic Management: Fragmentation, Integration or Synthesis, in H.W. Volberda and T. Elfring (eds.) Rethinking Strategy, Sage Publications, 2001. [pp. 1-25]

Ghemawat P., (2009), Strategy and the business landscape, Pearson Education.

The exam is written, an additional oral examination may occur depending on the grade of the written exam.
Written exam will be organized in open questions

Lecture

Italian

written and oral