Strategy Process and Practice
Module leader: Professor Julia Balogun
Duration and timing: total of 24 hours, Summer Term
This module seeks to develop your critical awareness of the importance and impact of the individual and group processes, practices and competencies that are needed to develop strategy effectively and deal with strategic change. It builds on the core strategic management module that focuses primarily on the formulation of strategy. It focuses on enabling you to link strategic thinking and strategic acting so you become capable of both formulating and implementing strategy.
Managers with a strategic responsibility, or consultants advising on strategy, have two components to their role. One is externally focused and to do with devising strategies that meet the external challenges. This is an exercise primarily in strategic thinking. The other is internally focused and to do with aligning the organisation behind the intended strategy. This is about strategic acting. For intended strategies to be realised in organisations, senior managers need to have a capability in both components, although the emphasis is often on the former, with the assumption that the latter is the responsibility of others.
In this module, you will develop an acute awareness of how strategies develop in organisations and the centrality of the strategising process to strategic change. In this you will be building on the core Strategic Management course to reflect on the skills and competencies that are central to effective strategising, and be exposed to some key strategic practices, tools and frameworks that you are likely to need to employ. You will consider the challenges of managing strategic change in terms of what you do as a manager to influence the development of strategies for an organisation. In so doing, you should develop a critical awareness of your own personal strategic competencies and how they might be enhanced.
Assessment
A group presentation, a group-based case report (where possible on a live case study presented by a speaker), and an individual reflective essay on managing strategy in context
