Kodak

McCombs School of Business Professor Rindova

University of Texas at Austin Spring 2009

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

TEMBA B_A_388T

LOCATION: GSB 3.104

COURSE OVERVIEW

Professor Violina Rindova

CBA 4.228

Telephone 471-7975

E-mail: violina.rindova@mccombs.utexas.edu

Office Hours: Wednesday, 1:30-3 and by appointment

Course Description

Perspective and Themes

This course is about the creation and maintenance of a long-term vision for the organization. This means that it is concerned with both the determination of strategic direction and the management of the strategic process. As such, it deals with the analytical, behavioral, and creative aspects of business simultaneously.

The course is organized around three themes in strategic management: business strategy, corporate strategy, and strategic renewal.

Our perspective in this course is that of the general manager whose responsibility is the long-term health of the entire firm or a major division. The key tasks involved in general management include the detection of and adaptation to environmental change; the procurement and allocation of resources; the integration of activities across subparts of the organizations; and, at the most senior levels, the determination of purpose and the setting of corporate direction.

General managers, from our perspective, are those who are in the position to make strategic decisions for the firm. Note that such managers are not “generalists” in the sense that they need to know a little bit of everything, but not very much of anything. To be effective, general managers need to have in-depth understanding of the generic problems in all the relevant functional areas. Furthermore, they must be able to deal with problems and issues at the level of the total enterprise and its relationships with relevant external environments.

Functional specialists can benefit from the general management perspective even though they may not be general managers....