Strategic Management and Organization Design are deeply intertwined disciplinary areas in management. In this course their perspectives are integrated in order to show how firms are able to create superior economic value through appropriate strategic decisions related to market positioning, investments in technology resources and organization design.
In so doing, the course aims at equipping students in management with the fundamentals of strategic thinking that is needed to firms to undertake appropriate competitive actions. The foundations of strategic thinking lie in an array of concepts, frameworks and techniques that is needed by managers and business analysts to conduct strategic analysis and to take appropriate decisions accordingly. As such, the course illustrates the fundamentals of strategic analyses, giving a high emphasis on the role that technological change have in shaping competitive dynamics and in offering new ways to develop valuable products for customers. In so doing, the course explores the interdependencies that strategic management has with the main issues that managers have to deal with when they design the firm’s organizational structure and business processes. In this regard, the course discusses the fit between the firm’s strategy, its organization structure and its competitive environment that is at the origin of a firm’s high competitiveness.
At the accomplishment of the course, students should be able to think according to a strategic perspective in dealing with the traditional tools of strategic analysis in order to assess how in a given industry firms should take decisions by considering the threats and opportunities related to global competition and demand, technological change, and other competitive forces existing in their relevant market.
In the curriculum of a student in Management and Engineering, Strategic management and Organization design have a central importance irrespective of the choices and the chances that students will have in the job market. For example, a graduate in Engineering and Management may work as a strategic analyst in the Strategic Planning department or a in a consulting company and can be thus involved in making analysis whose outcomes are inputs to the strategic actions/decisions made by the top management team. For graduates working in other functional departments (e.g. Manufacturing, Logistics , Sales, Management of Information Systems) studying Strategic management will be important to understand how the firm’s business strategy and the trends in its competitive environment (technology evolution, global competition and demand, etc.) influence strategy and operations within each function and require an alignment between the business strategy and functional strategies/operations. In all cases, progress in career always means being required more managerial skills and not only competencies that are specific of the task and the functional department (a «T-shaped» competence profile).

The course aims at equipping students with the concepts, frameworks and techniques needed by managers to conduct analysis and to take appropriate decisions accordingly. As such, the course illustrates the fundamentals of strategy and organization, putting emphasis on the role that technological change and innovation have in shaping competitive dynamics and in offering new ways to develop valuable products for customers.
At the accomplishment of the course, students should be able to apply the traditional tools of strategic, organizational and marketing analysis in order to assess how in a given industry firms should take strategic decisions taking into account the threats and opportunities related to global competition and demand, technological change, and other competitive forces existing in their relevant market.

To take part to the course students must have attended courses in the following disciplines: Financial and Managerial Accounting, Economics, Operations Management and Applied Statistics.

Part I – The tools of Strategy Analysis
• Strategy and the Strategic Management Process
• The external environment and Industry analysis: the fundamentals
• The Analysis of the Firm: Evaluating the Firm’s Resources and Capabilities

Part II. The organization of the firm
• The Vertical Integration of the Firm
• Fundamentals of Organization Design

Part III. The strategy in the firm’s context
• Business Strategies: Cost Leadership and Product Differentiation
• Strategies in technology-based industries and the management of innovation

The learning method will be based on combining two types of lectures centred on two different and complementary approaches. Traditional frontal lectures will illustrate relevant theories and concepts from prominent scholars in strategic management and their application in tools for strategic analysis.
Laboratories will be based on a collective case study discussion in which students will be required to apply the tools and the concepts learned during the lectures on theory. Case study discussion will require that students will read material that will be provided by the instructors in advance. Finally, the talks of some invited speakers from business community (e.g. managers with an international experience) will provide an important complement to frontal lectures and laboratories. These talks will take place outside the normal course schedule.
When students are presented with a case, they place themselves in the role of the decision maker: read through the situation and identify the problem they are faced with.
To get the most out of cases, students read and reflect on the case individually, and then meet in learning teams before class to "warm up" and discuss their findings with other classmates. In class—under the questioning and guidance of the professor—students probe underlying issues, compare different alternatives, and suggest courses of action in light of the organization's objectives.

A. Custom Book, that combines chapters from :
a. Grant, R. Contemporary Strategic analysis: Text and Cases, John Wiley, 8th edition (or the Text version without cases, but students are required to prepare some case studies from this book)
b. Besanko, Dranove, Economics of Strategy, John Wiley
The book is available on the campus’s CELID bookstore.

B. Excerpt of Organization Design (delivered by the instructors)

C. Collection of articles provided by the instructors and made available on the course’s web platform

D. Case study package, available on Harvard Business Publishing

E. Slides, made available on the course’s web platform

The final grade is the sum of three components.
a. A written Exam.
b. An Optional Oral Exam.
c. A mandatory team work regarding the strategic analysis of an industry and the definition of strategic recommendations for successfully competing within the industry

To pass the exam the total grade must be equal or higher than 18 on a 0-30 scale.