Strategic Management from a Practice Perspective: A Day in the Life of a CEO

URL study guide

https://studiegids.vu.nl/en/courses/2024-2025/E_IBK3_SMPP

Course Objective

At the end of the course, students should be able to:
• Bridging theory and practice: Be able to relate popular management frameworks to strategic challenges that company leaders experience;
• Broadening your horizon: Get insight into the tasks and challenges that CEOs of multinational firms are facing in their day-to-day work as a strategy maker;
• Social skills: Act as a ‘management team’ with fellow students, making a strategic plan for an existing organization;
• Self awareness: Be able to critically reflect on the decisions, actions and behavior of a CEO, put yourself in his/her shoes and define personal learning goals.

Course Content

The course aims to familiarize the student with the most important themes relevant for the strategic management of a firm. It aims to put students into the position of a CEO and expose them to those issues a CEO needs to deal with in a strategic manner. The lectures and tutorials will be focused on three strategic themes: 1) context analysis; 2) (competitive) strategy & business model; and 3) corporate strategy. Students will learn to take a birds-eye point of view and learn how these strategic themes are interrelated, both in theory and in practice. Students will work as an executive board on a strategic plan that deals with the context analysis and (competitive) strategy & business model in a coherent manner. Students will further be asked to use the insights from this course to critically examine the strategic decision making and behavior of a well-known CEO of their choice (such as Elon Musk, Mary Barra or Daniel Zhang) based on publicly available data such as speeches and videos.

Teaching Methods

Lectures Tutorials

Method of Assessment

Individual and team assessment

Literature

This course is article based.Readings will be announced in course manual.

Recommended background knowledge

BK: 1.1 Management & Organisatie; 2.1 Strategie; 2.5 Strategisch Ondernemerschap; 3.4 Foundations of Strategic Management IBA: 1.2 Organization Theory; 1.3 Academic Skills; 2.2 International Strategy; 3.4 Foundations of Strategic Management