325-480 Advanced Strategic Management

Entry into the honours program or a combined honours program including management, a postgraduate diploma or a masters program in the Faculty.

Strategy is a central topic in contemporary business education but the various perspectives or schools of thought within the strategy literature are very different. This subject will examine some of these different perspectives, eg. rational-analytic approaches, strategy as configuration, the strategy-making process, political strategy making, strategic leadership, determinism and institutional perspectives. The subject will examine the strategy-making literature from an historical perspective to show when and how these different approaches arose and to compare the different assumptions and implications that arise from them. It will discuss some of the characteristics of what has been described as the new 'paradigm' in the strategy literature. Finally it will explore discursive approaches, which see strategy as an artificial, linguistic construct where meaning is imposed on actions and decisions to make sense of them by designating them as 'strategic'.

A 3-hour end-of-semester examination (60%) and written assignment(s) totalling not more than 3000 words (40%).