General provisions

The course is offered within the Bachelor's Programme in Business and for Exchange students.

Entry requirements

30 credits from basic courses (A level) in business studies

Learning outcomes

The goal of this course is to develop a good understanding of the link between theory and practice with a particular focus on strategic management. This concerns issues such as the development, management, and deployment of the firm's resource- and capability-base across different businesses and environments.

After completing this course, the student will:

• have knowledge of and understanding of different strategic management topics, specifically related to business and corporate strategy,
• understand the challenges and opportunities of multinational enterprises in relation to strategic management,
• understand and be able to apply different analytical techniques in a global context vis-à-vis strategic decision-making,
• be able to independently analyse different industry settings and relate this to corporate-level strategic decision-making,
• have the ability to independently and in collaboration with others develop models for strategic management and evaluate the consequences of these models.

Content

The "Global Strategic Management" course deals with the management of different businesses and market activities often encompassed within multinational enterprises. The course focuses on understanding how to manage business units operating across different markets and thus builds on the strategic perspectives concerned with firm positioning in industry-specific product markets. During the course, corporate strategy is related to headquarters strategy making, business portfolio management, and strategic change management, amongst other things. Furthermore, the expansion of firms' business activities is covered. In doing so, the global scope of corporate strategy is highlighted. Ultimately, one of the fundamental challenges to corporate strategy is covered during the course, namely managing multinational enterprises, so its different parts genuinely contribute to global corporate performance.

Upon completing this course, the student should be able to address key corporate and strategy issues and analyze complex multinational enterprise structures.

Instruction

The course will use a mix of theory and cases to explore themes related to strategic management. It will emphasise a dialogue-based teaching approach encompassing open discussions. Teachings will be delivered via lectures, seminars and group work assignments. The course is taught in English.

Assessment

The examination consists of four modules:

1. Individual compulsory active attendance, 1 credit (U, G)
2. Individual written examinations, 3 credits (U, G)
3. Team project work, 3 credits (U, G)
4. Individual written exam, 8 credits (U, G, VG)

and a summary grade is given for the entire course, 15 credits.

The grading scale used in Modules 1-3 is a pass (G) or fail (U). The grading scale used in Module 4 is pass with distinction (VG), pass (G) or fail (U). The final grade for the entire course is given with the grade pass with distinction (VG), pass (G), or fail (U). For the final grade of G on the entire course, it is required that at least the grade G has been obtained in all modules of the course. For the final grade VG on the entire course, it is also required that the grade VG was obtained in module 4.

For a student who has not attained a passing grade on Module 1, there is the opportunity to be examined via re-registration at a future course section. For a student who has not attained a passing grade on one or several of Modules 2, 3 and 4, there is the opportunity to be examined without re-registration at  future course sections.

If there are special reasons for doing so, an examiner may make an exception from the method of assessment indicated and allow a student to be assessed by another method. An example of special reasons might be a certificate regarding special pedagogical support from the University's disability coordinator.

Uppsala University does not accept cheating or plagiarism. Suspected incidents of cheating or plagiarism are reported to the Vice-Chancellor, which may issue a formal warning to the student or suspend the student from studies for a certain period.

NOTE: Only completed courses can count toward a degree.