BUSINESS & CORPORATE STRATEGY


Dr. SK Prusty

Prof. Santosh Kumar Prusty, PhD from IIT Kharagpur in the area of System Dynamics and Strategy, has more than eleven years of academic and administrative experience from IIM Shillong before joining Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar (XIMB) in 2019. He is currently working as Associate Professor in the Strategic Management group at Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. He is an expert in system thinking and meta-level modeling of complex business phenomena and strategy. His research interest includes design and fabrication of organizations and strategy in fitting with dynamic contextualities of macro-level social, natural, and economic environment and (re)inventing sustainable business models. He has multiple publications in reputed categories of international journals, in case-clearing house, and in proceedings of international conferences. He has been a guest researcher for fifteen days to Cologne University, Germany under DAAD sponsorship Programme to work on vocational skill and community structure in India. His teaching interest is related to courses on Strategic Management, Business Models, and System Dynamics. He is passionate on writing, teaching, and researching on case studies.

For further details, pls. click on <http://linkedin.com/in/santosh-prusty-49784618>

  1. Course Description

“Business and Corporate Strategy” course is designed to equip managers with the concepts, frameworks, and techniques towards making better strategic decisions. The participants through the completion of the course are expected to learn why and how some organizations exist and outperform the others in a specific business landscape and continue to derive competitive advantage? The participants of the course are expected to take leadership charge of the organization and to take responsibility of the performance of organization. We have restricted the primary objective of the organization is to be profitability throughout the course though organizations with other than profit-objectives are out of the scope of the course. As the tile of the course mentions, the course is divided into two broad modules, i.e., Business Strategy: dealing with how do organizations derive competitive advantage and Corporate Strategy: dealing with what business(s) the organization should be in. The question of “how” and “what” of the business is not independent rather circular in nature. The course, nevertheless, follows a sequential approach for delivering Business Strategy (how) followed by Corporate Strategy (what). The course focuses on diagnosing problem(s) of an organization in a complex management situation and the searching and acting towards a solution. The course will demand drawing upon various functional theories and integrating towards a “holistic” management perspective towards problems and solutions.

2. Student Learning Outcomes

  1. To understand, analyse, and evaluate organization strategy in making operational decisions.

  2. To understand and sense-make organization strategy from operational activities.

  3. To learn how to formulate strategy within the dynamic and etymological contexts of operational, organizational, and external environments.

  4. To know few basic frameworks and the analytical process of their applications in formulating strategy and in their operationalization.

3. Pedagogy

The pedagogy will include both offline and online activity. The online pedagogical activities will include lecture, class discussions, break-out room discussions (group discussions), in-class video-watch, and case discussions. The offline pedagogical activities include reading assignments, writing assignments (answer to problems, report writing, memo-writing), video-watch, case writing (text, pictorial, and/or video), ethnography.

Participants’ previous experiences in different industries will bring in field realities to the class-room. Hence, participants are expected to reflect their prior understanding and belief during the course. Active participation by the participants is highly demanded by the course. Pre-class preparation on the indicated reading(s) is PRE-REQUISITE for the participants.

4. Course Resources

Text Book

  • Robert M Grant (2015). Contemporary Strategy Analysis: Text and Cases, Edition, 9th Edition.

Additional References

  • Porter, M. E. (1980). Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors. New York: Free Press, 1980.

  • Rumelt, R. P. (2011). Good strategy, bad strategy: The difference and why it matters. New York: Crown Business.

5. Evaluation