General provisions

Bachelor Degree 180 credits. The course is only available to students within Contract Education Programmes on Master level.

Entry requirements

Bachelor's degree 180 credits. The course is only available to students within contract education programmes on Master level.

Learning outcomes

The broad goal of Business Strategy is to cut across the whole spectrum of business and management. The purpose of the course is to help support the creation of a holistic understanding of the firm - about the industry and the competitive environment in which it operates. Furthermore, the purpose is also to enable an understanding of the long-term direction and strategy of a firm, its resources and competitive capabilities as well as its prospects for success. The learning objectives of the Business Strategy course are:

• To develop your capacity to think strategically about a firm as a whole; about its present business position, its long-term direction, its resources and competitive capabilities, the nature of its strategy and its opportunities for gaining sustainable competitive advantage.
• To develop your skills in conducting strategic analysis in a variety of industries and competitive situations and, especially, to provide you with a strong understanding of the competitive challenges of a global market.
• To give you hands-on experience in crafting business strategy, in reasoning about strategic options and using what-if scenarios to evaluate action alternatives and making sound strategic decisions.
• To get you acquainted with managerial tasks associated with implementing and executing firm strategies, to drill you in the range of actions managers can take to promote competent strategy execution such as for instance writing and presenting strategic plans as well as evaluating and developing the plans of others.
• To heighten your awareness of how and why ethical principles, core values and socially responsible management practices matter greatly in the conduct of business operations.
• To develop your reasoning in managerial judgments and help you learn how to assess business risks as well as to improve your ability to make sound business decisions and achieve effective outcomes.

Content

Unlike other business courses that concentrate more narrowly on a particular function of the business - e.g. accounting, finance, marketing, etc., strategic management is a big picture course. It cuts across the whole spectrum of business and management operations. The course covers the following topics:

1. The role and tasks of the strategy manager
2. What is strategy and what does it mean?
3. How to formulate and implement a strategic plan
4. How to use the tools and techniques of situation analysis
5. How to exercise good business judgment and make sound decisions.

Instruction

• Lectures by the instructor embedded in case seminars
• Guidance sessions: group and individual sessions with the instructor for self-assessment and guidance in enhancing your overall performance and knowledge-development process.
• Case seminars: practicing the task of managerial analysis and decision-making by the use of comparative case studies focused on particular strategy elements.
• Oral presentations: practicing the task of presenting and defending a strategy design and implementation proposal.

Assessment

Based on the learning objectives the performance is evaluated by:

• Written case assignments
• Active participation in class discussion during the various case seminars
• Performance in oral team presentation and defence
• Satisfactory completion of theory tests
• Individual and group reports

Grading criteria are presented in the course syllabus provided at the start of the course. The final grade of the course is determined after taking into consideration the different parts of the examination. Please note that the course consists of mandatory parts. Grades will be given in accordance with the Swedish grading system. The following grades will be used:

VG (pass with distinction)

G (pass)

U (fail)

Assignments, reports and tests handed in after their respective deadlines will not be graded except in special circumstances. In addition, any remaining assignments and supplemental work must be completed and handed in within two weeks after the end of the course; otherwise, the entire course (all assignments included) must be redone the next time the course is given, provided there is space in the course.

Uppsala University does not accept cheating and plagiarism. Suspected incidents of cheating or plagiarism are reported to the Disciplinary Committee of the University, which may issue a formal warning to the student or expel the student from the university for a limited period of time.

NOTE: Only completed courses can count toward a degree.