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| GEST1059-2 | Basics of Strategy
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| Duration : | 24h Th |
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| Credits/ECTS : |
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| Holder(s) : | Michael Ghilissen |
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| Language : | Langue anglaise |
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| Course contents : | Course Overview
The objective of this course is to help students develop the skills for formulating strategy. It provides an understanding of:
- A firm's operative environment and how to sustain competitive advantage.
- How to generate superior value for customers by designing the optimum configuration of the product mix and functional activities.
- How to balance the opportunities and risks associated with dynamic and uncertain changes in industry attractiveness and competitive position.
Students learn to:
- Develop a mastery of a body of analytical tools and the ability to take an integrative point of view.
- Analyze relationships between trends in environmental conditions and organizational processes that together affect performance in an industry.
- Develop and compare strategies for creating and delivering value to stakeholders by achieving sustainable competitive advantage over competitors for a specific firm in the industry.
- Use these tools to perform analysis of industries and competitors, predict competitive behavior, and analyze how firms develop and sustain competitive advantage over time.
- Design a plan to facilitate the implementation of recommended strategy.
- Characterize and quantify economic value created.
- Persuasively communicate management's strategic vision and its strategies to internal and external stakeholders.
Particular attention is paid to competitive positioning; understanding comparative costs; and addressing issues such as cannibalization, network externalities, and globalization. |
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| Course objective : | Strategy will become increasingly important to firms as they navigate a challenging and unpredictable business environment and, second, as a determined focus on the fundamentals of value creation will be critical to firm survival and prosperity. Despite the reaction against shareholder value maximization for its inducement to 'short-termism' and crass materialism, strategy analysis must focus on the pursuit of long-run profitability. This requires a penetrating understanding of customer needs, competitive forces and the firm's strengths and weaknesses.
Achieving profitability in the face of intense competition means that competitive advantage must be the central focus of strategy.
This course places a strong emphasis on the primary sources of competitive advantage: the resources and capabilities of the enterprise. It also places a great emphasis on strategy implementation. |
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| Prerequisites : | // |
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| Organization : | This course is taught in English and it is organized during the Spring semester.
The greatest value from graduate education is seldom realized immediately upon graduation. Such value is realized over a lifetime, and comes not from having a "bag of tricks" but rather from developing analytical, and problem-solving, skills. One of the most valuable abilities that students can develop and sharpen in graduate school is the ability to think critically and strategically, and to speak and write in a logical and compelling manner.
Students are responsible for a large portion of their own development. They are required not only to attend classes, but also to carefully prepare for each class and contribute actively to class discussion. The compressed nature of the course makes it crucial that they prepare the assigned material for every class. |
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| Written notes : | Reference:
Robert Grant, "Contemporary Strategy Analysis", 7th edition, John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 2010.
A LOLA website will be available for this course.
Students should check it on a regular basis. The course syllabus, group membership information, lecture notes, class discussion questions, assignment information, and general course announcements will all be posted on the site.
http://lola.hec.ulg.ac.be/claroline/course/index.php?cid=GEST1059_2
(http://lola.hec.ulg.ac.be/claroline/course/index.php?cid=GEST1059_2) |
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| Assessment : | Course Grading
Grading will be based on the following:
- Participation (and in-class activities) 25%
- Group Case Analysis 35%
- Group Final Exam 40%
Participation. I will use a number of in-class activities to explore concepts and tools used in the course. Students' effort and contribution on these activities will determine their participation grade. I will cold-call students frequently, and at random.
Group Assignments. Students will work in groups of 3-4 to submit one homework and one final exam. Both sets of deliverables will utilize the tools and concepts of the class. Both will require case analyses; however, the final will be a more in-depth version of the homework. A good case analysis should include (but is not limited to) the following components:
1. Brief Introduction & Key Issues
- Identify the key issues involved
2. External Analysis
- Macro-environment analysis
- Analysis of environmental trends
- Porter's 5 Forces
- Competitor analysis
3. Internal Analysis
- Assessment of firm's strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis competitors
- Sources of competitive advantage/core competences
- Sustainability of advantages
- Financial statement analysis - i.e., what financial statements say about firm health
4. Analysis of the corporate-level strategy of the firm
- Identify the businesses the company is in or is considering entering
- Analyze the methods of entry the firm has used, or should use, to enter those businesses
- Describe whether, and how, these businesses create value in their combination
5. Recommendations
- Make specific and actionable recommendations
- Justify the recommendation
- Analyze how this recommendation helps the firm achieve its corporate-level strategy
- Consider implications for the firm's financial standing
The case analysis should be typed single-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman Font, with 2.5 cm margins all around. The analysis should be no more than 3 pages for the homework and 5 pages for the final - excluding title page, references, and exhibits. Exhibits should be on their own pages, following the references. All exhibits should be referred to in the text of the analysis. Students do not need to repeat information from the case in their analysis - they should write their analysis assuming its reader has read the case.
The group homework assignment must be handed in to the instructor in hard copy at the beginning of class on the date it is due. I will not accept electronic copies of the homework assignment. An electronic copy of the final assignment must be submitted via e-mail within one week of the last day of class. Note: I will not accept late assignments. Further, I reserve the right to submit the case analysis to plagiarism-detection programs. |
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| Contacts : | For information, please email Michael Ghilissen at michael.ghilissen@ulg.ac.be
Office hours: by appointment only. |
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