Applied Corporate

Strategy
Week 1: Introduction
 Learning Outcomes

• Introduction to the module:

Learning Teaching & Feedback Plan.

• Assessment & Reading:

Strategic Report & reading resources.

• Introducing Strategy:
Definition, roots, levels, issues & decisions.

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 What will the module do for you?
• Help you understand strategy-making and analyse strategic issues in
organisations.

• Supply you with a “toolkit” to make strategic decisions about them.

• Help you recognise and assess strategy when you see it, and be able
to suggest effective improvements.

This will help in your

career!
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 The Teaching Programme
• Details in the LTFP on Moodle:

Part 1: Introduction to Strategy.

Part 2: Analysing Strategic Position.

Part 3: Strategic Choices.

Part 4: Aspects of Implementation.

Topics & cases are used in seminars.

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 Core text
• Latest edition: • Previous edition:
Johnson, Scholes, Whittington, Johnson, Scholes, Whittington,
Angwin and Regner, Exploring Angwin and Regner, Exploring
Strategy (Text and Cases), Strategy (Text and Cases),
(2017) 11th Edition, Pearson (2014) 10th Edition, Pearson

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 The Module: Support Reading
Module documentation (LTAF and assignment brief) on Moodle.
Please check the Moodle site regularly!

In addition Weekly Moodle resources:

• Lecture Slides
• Seminar slides
• Notes
• Articles
• Other media
- You can read the Financial Times, Bloomberg etc.

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 The Module Assessment
• Individual Strategic Report - 100%.
• Brief will be given in Week 2 Lecture.
• Details on Moodle.

• Summary:
- Due: TBA.
- Choice from several cases.
- 3,000 words, three questions.
- Strategic analysis of a real business.
- Online submission/marking.
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 The Module Cases include
• Roehampton University • IKEA
• Global Advertising Industry • Virgin Group
• Ryanair • Gazprom
• Dyson • Barclays Bank

These are analysed in seminars

& will help your assessment!

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 Working through the Module
Our Job: to help get you through the
module successfully.
Your job: to engage with the module,
add depth and pass the assessment!
That means:
• Attending lectures and participating in
seminars is vital to your success.
• Using the learning resources provided.

• Keeping up to date with the subject.

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 Working with lectures & seminars
• LECTURE (1hr): Moodle resources posted. Read them & review the
topic chapter.
• Lectures review content & key ideas – you are expected to add depth!

• SEMINAR (2hrs): attendance compulsory & monitored, assessment

link, student-led/case-based.
• Seminars begin with current business issues. Your contributions
expected - then casework based questions. Varied format.

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 Pause for questions
• Anything you didn’t understand
• Anything you want further
clarification on
• Anything you have to add
• Anything you didn’t agree with

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 Definitions of strategy

Sources: A.D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of American Enterprise, MIT Press, 1963, p. 13; M.E. Porter, ‘What is strategy?’,
Harvard Business Review, November–December 1996, p. 60; P.F. Drucker, ‘The theory of business’, Harvard Business Review, September–October
1994, pp. 95–106; H. Mintzberg, Tracking Strategies: Towards a General Theory, Oxford University Press, 2007, p. 3.

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 Strategic decisions

Source: From G. Johnson, K. Scholes and R. Whittington. Exploring Corporate Strategy, 8th edn, Pearson Education 2008.

Johnson, Whittington and Scholes, Exploring Strategy, 9th Edition, © Pearson Education Limited 2011
Levels of strategy (1 of 2)
Diversifying from the organisation’s
strategy original activities into other
level activities (e.g. Tesla selling
batteries for home use.)
Corporate-

strategy Marketing and product

Business-level improvement strategies (e.g.
Developing a lower cost, volume
car for Tesla.)

Functional strategies Tesla’s functional strategies

are geared to meeting its
investment needs and
raising finance.

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 Levels of strategy (2 of 2)
• Corporate-level strategy is concerned with the overall scope of an
organisation and how value is added to the constituent business
units.
• Business-level strategy is concerned with the way a business seeks
to compete successfully in its particular market.
• Functional strategy is concerned with how different parts of the
organisation deliver the strategy effectively in terms of managing
resources, processes and people.

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 Strategic management

Strategic management is “the process of

strategic decision-making that sets the
long-term direction for the organisation”
(Frynas and Mellahi, 2014)

• The central thrust of strategic management

is for a company to achieve a sustainable
competitive advantage.
• Strategy-making process involves “key
decisions made for and on behalf of the
entire organization”.
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Strategic management steps

Strategic Strategy Strategy

analysis development implementation

What is our What are our How do we act in

position? choices? practice?

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The exploring strategy framework
The Exploring Strategy
Framework includes
understanding the strategic
position of an organisation;
assessing strategic choices for
the future; and managing
strategy in action.

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Strategic position (1 of 2)

The strategic position is concerned

with the impact on strategy of the
macro-environment, the industry
environment, the organisation’s
strategic capability (resources and
competences), the organisation’s
stakeholders and the organisation’s
culture.

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 Strategic position (2 of 2)
Fundamental questions for Strategic position:

• What are the macro-environmental opportunities and threats?

• Is industry attractive (are industry forces high moderate or low)?
• What resources and capabilities support the strategy?
• How does culture fit the strategy?

Can be sumarised in a form of a SWOT matrix

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 Strategic issues
• Strategic Issues are unresolved internal
or external situations likely to have a key
impact on an organisation’s ability to
meet its purposes and objectives.
They tend to:
• Affect the long term success and goals
of the organisation.
• Impact the organisation’s basic
relevance or competitive advantage.

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Strategic choices (1 of 2)

Strategic choices involve the

options for strategy in terms of
both the directions in which
strategy might move and the
methods by which strategy might
be pursued.

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 Strategic choices (2 of 2)
Fundamental questions for Strategic choice:
• Business level strategy
• How should individual business units compete?

• Corporate level strategy

• Which businesses to include in the portfolio?
• Where should the organisation compete internationally?
• Should the organisation buy other companies, form alliances or go it alone?

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Strategy in action (1 of 2)
Strategy in action is about how
strategies are formed and how
they are implemented.

The emphasis is on the

practicalities of managing.

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 Strategy in action (2 of 2)
Fundamental questions for Strategy in action:
• Which strategies are suitable, acceptable and feasible?
• What kind of strategy-making process is needed?
• What are the required organisation structures and systems?
• How should the organisation manage necessary changes?
• Who should do what in the strategy process? Which people and what
activities?

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The strategy checklist

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 Working with strategy (1 of 2)
All managers are concerned with strategy:
• Top managers frequently formulate and control strategy but may
also involve others in the process.
• Middle and lower level managers have to meet strategic
objectives and deal with constraints.
• All managers have to communicate strategy to their teams and
can contribute to the formation of strategy through ideas and
feedback.

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 Working with strategy (2 of 2)
Organisations may also use strategy specialists:
• Many large organisations have in-house strategic planning or
analyst roles.
• Strategy consultants can be engaged from management consulting
firms (e.g. Accenture, IBM Consulting, PwC).
• There are a growing number of specialist strategy consulting firms
(e.g. McKinsey & Co., The Boston Consulting Group).

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 Exploring strategy in different contexts

The Exploring Strategy Framework can be applied in many contexts.

In each context the balance of strategic issues differs:

• Small businesses (e.g. strategic purpose, growth issues and retaining
independence).
• Multinational corporations (e.g. geographical scope; cultural issues and
structure/control issues).
• Public sector organisations (e.g. service/quality and managing change issues).
• Not-for-profit organisations (e.g. purpose and funding issues).

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 Summary
• We introduced the module LTAF, texts,
assessment etc.
• We explained how the module will work plus
the available Moodle resources.
• We introduced Strategy as long-term
direction, its levels, choices/decisions & issues.

Wk1 seminar groups will

use lecture ideas to
consider Issues &
Strategy at the University
of Roehampton 30
Reading (please refer to the reading
list)
• Essential: Johnson et. al, Chapter 1 (both Ed. 11 and Ed. 10)

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 Pause for questions
• Anything you didn’t understand
• Anything you want further
clarification on
• Anything you have to add
• Anything you didn’t agree with

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 Week 1 Seminar: Session Brief
• Form groups (4-6) to answer the brief. You have 40 minutes to
produce materials to share with the class.

The Brief:
1. Who “makes” strategy at Roehampton?
2. Identify a number of Roehampton’s key strategic issues. Why are
they “Strategic”?
3. What is Roehampton’s most important strategic decision taken in
the last 2 years? Has it worked?

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