Administrivia 🧐

Motivation

There is more vacuity about strategy than about any other topic in business today. John Kay, Financial Times in Mintzberg, Ahlstrand, and Lampel (2005)

General remarks

This course will be taught using traditional synchronous lectures.

The focus of the classes is to discuss—not introduce—major concepts, tools and methods of strategic management.

The classes will be characterized by group work, discussions and short presentations.

The greatest amount of work is in preparing for and following up lectures in order to become sufficiently familiar with and understand the content.

It is necessary to prepare for each session, usually by reading a paper, details (see Table 1).

Please prepare your schedule accordingly.

Effort

Figure 1: Effort distribution for average students

For this course you will receive 5 ECTS. This corresponds to approx. 150 hours of work required by an average student to pass the course.

• Classes (approx. 30 hours)
• Paper reading (approx. 25 hours; approx. 2.5 hours per paper)
• Follow-up and exam preparation (do the math yourself)

Contents

In this course, we will have a look at following topics

1. Understanding strategy
   — definition, formation, and competitive positioning (lectures 1-3)
2. Building strategic advantage
   — resources, capabilities, and organizational design (lectures 4-6)
3. Performance management and control
   — measuring and managing strategic performance (lectures 7-9)

Learning objectives

During this course, you should advance your skills in the following areas:

• Understanding of concepts and taxonomies of strategy
• Basic knowledge of underlying theories of strategic management and decision-making
• Understanding of tools and frameworks for the development, analysis and implementation of strategies
• Knowledge of key concepts and frameworks for decision making under uncertainty
• Understanding of the role of IT strategy and its relationship with business strategy
• Ability to work independently with literature to derive key-insights
• Application of concepts, tools, and framework in real-life cases

Exam

There will we a written exam at the end of the semester.

The exam will

• take place during the examination weeks,
• will last 90 minutes,
• cover all contents discussed in lecture,
• focus on the application of the knowledge gained in the course.

Schedule

Date	Topic	Preparation
09.10.25	Introduction	—
16.10.25	Strategy Definition and Schools	tbd
23.10.25	Competitive Analysis and Positioning	Read Hallegatte (2009)
30.10.25	Strategy Formation	tbd
06.11.25	Resource-based Advantages	tbd
13.11.25	Q&A Session (Zoom)	Your questions so far
20.11.25	Organizational Design	Listen to Decoder and read Lorenz and Buchwald (2023)
27.11.25	Ethics and Values	Read Barnett and Salomon (2012)
11.12.25	Management Control Systems	tbd
18.12.25	IT Strategy and Digital Performance	tbd
08.01.26	Strategy in Action	tbd
15.01.26	Case Study	tbd
22.01.26	Exam Preparation	Your questions

Table 1: Schedule winter term 2025 (may be subjected to changes)

Literature

Barnett, Michael L, and Robert M Salomon. 2012. “Does It Pay to Be Really Good? Addressing the Shape of the Relationship Between Social and Financial Performance.” Strategic Management Journal 33 (11): 1304–20.

Hallegatte, Stéphane. 2009. “Strategies to Adapt to an Uncertain Climate Change.” Global Environmental Change 19 (2): 240–47.

Lorenz, Felix, and Arne Buchwald. 2023. “A Perfect Match or an Arranged Marriage? How Chief Digital Officers and Chief Information Officers Perceive Their Relationship: A Dyadic Research Design.” European Journal of Information Systems 32 (3): 372–89.

Mintzberg, Henry, Bruce W Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel. 2005. Strategy Bites Back: It Is a Lot More, and Less, Than You Ever Imagined–. Pearson Education.