Universidad Pública de Navarra - Nafarroako Univertsitate Publikoa

Module/Subject matter

The Economics of Strategic course consists of roughly eigth mandatory topics. We teach this course during a quarter, aims to integrate many of the different lessons learn in the different courses of finance, economics of organization, marketing, business administration and industrial economics that students have been taken during different years at the Facultad de Ciencias Economicas de la Universidad Pública de Navarra.

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Contents

1.- Introducing Strategy

• Introduction
• What is strategy?
• Levels of strategy
• Strategy as a subject of study

2.- The environment

• Introduction
• The macro-environment
• Industry and sectors
• Competitive forces
• Competitors and markets

3.- Strategic Capability

• Introduction
• Foundations of strategic capability
• Cost efficiency
• How to achieving and sustaining competitive advantage
• Organisational knowledge
• Diagnosing strategic capability

4.- Business Strategy

• Introduction
• Identifying business units
• Bases of competitive advantage
• Sustaining competitive advantage.
• Competitive strategy in hypercompetitive conditions

5.- Corporate level Strategy

• Introduction
• Strategic directions
• Reasons for diversification
• Value creation and the corporate parents
• Portfolio matrices

6.- International Strategy

• Introduction
• Internationalisations drivers
• International strategies
• Internationalisations and performance

7.- Innovation and Entreprenership

• Introduction
• Innovations dilemmas
• Innovation diffusion
• Innovators and followers 

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Descriptors

The principal ideas of this course are:

First, SM takes a holistic view within the firm.

It emphasizes the relationships among the functional disciplines (operations, marketing, finance..) covered in other courses. A successful firm, the course argues, is distinguished by the way it tailor its functional policies to each other and to its environment.

Second, SM focuses on the external environment in which companies compete.

While other courses focus on one or a few elements of the environment, eg customers and channels, financial markets. SM takes a broad and integrated view of the external environment. It defines rivalry widely to include not only direct competitors but substitute producers, potential new entrants, and even suppliers and customers. It examines not only players with whom a company competes, but also those with whom it cooperates.

Third, SM is distinguished by its focus on long term dynamics. The course is concerned with superior long run financial performance, not performance in any given quarter or year. The course places a major focus on the sustainability of competitive advantage and the threats to sustained advantage.

These three defining features correspond to three tests of a good strategy, which we identify to students as early in the course as possible.

.- External consistency: is the company strategy consistent with the demand of the external environment?

.- Internal consistency: Do the component of the strategy fit together to form a coherent whole greater than the sum of its parts?

.- Dynamic consistency: Does the strategy call on the firm to do today what is required to succeed tomorrow.

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General proficiencies

• Analysing capabilities.
• Good speaking and writings abilities.
• Good capability to look for information and data.
• Good capability to solve problems.
• Good capability to take decisions.
• Good capability to work on teams. 

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Specific proficiencies

• To consideren the cognitive, social and affective issues that underpin the design of strategy.
• To plan the construction, architecture, design of a colaborative proyect.
• About evaluation paradigms and techniques.
• To share, communicate and disseminate knowledge using team work. 

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Learning outcomes

SM places a premium on analytical rigor and quantitative reasoning. The course calls on students to use both quantitative and qualitative analytical techniques extensively and to integrate the quantitative and the qualitative. The course emphasizes that analysis is a complement to, surely not a substitute for managerial judgment and creativity.

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Methodology

Successful studying for the module requires the following

.- working through the exploring corporate strategy interactive study guide together with the text book

.- attending lectures having prepared for them

.- working with study group on analysing case studies

.- participating actively in class

The course is structured in sessions of two hours.

In the first half an hour we will discuss some mini cases, newspaper article, within the discussion the participation of students will be crucial.

In one hour of each class the professor will present each one of the topics of the program, the final time will be for some video, or audio presentation related with the topic under discussion.

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Evaluation

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Agenda

Economics of Strategy (3 créditos ECTS)

1. Introducing Strategy

2. The Environment

3. Business Strategy

4. Corporate Level Strategy

5. International Strategy

6. Strategy Purpose

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Bibliography

Access the bibliography that your professor has requested from the Library.

Texbook:

Johnson, G., K. Scholes and R. Whittington (2008) Exploring corporate strategy: text and cases", 8th edition Prentice Hall.

Ghemawat, P. (1999) Strategy and the Business Landscape, , Adison Wesley

Grant R.M. (2008) Contemporary Strategy Analysis,6th edition Blackwell Publishing.

Shane, S. (2003): A General Theory of Entrepreneurship. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar

Research Papers:

Allenby, Greg M. and Peter E. Rossi (1999), "Marketing Models of Consumer Heterogeneity," Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 89, Nos. 1-2.

Baumgartner, Hans and Rik Pieters (2003), "The Structural Influence of Marketing Journals: A Citation Analysis of the Discipline and Its Subareas over Time," Journal of Marketing, 67 (April), 123-39.

Bello, A and Cavero, S. (2008): "The Spanish Retail Gasoline Market. New

patterns of competition since the liberalization of the industry", Energy Policy, 36,612-626.

Bello, A and Huerta, E. (2007): "Regulation and Market Power in the Spanish Liquefied Petroleum Gas Industry: progress or failure?", Energy Policy, 35,3595-3605

Besanko,D. J-P Dubé, S. Gupta, "Own-Brand and Cross-Brand Retail Pass-Through" Marketing Science 24(1), pp. 123-137

Bonnano, G. and Vickers, J. (1988): "Vertical Separation", The Journal of Industrial Economics; 3, 257-265.

Burgess, S.G. y J.-B. Steenkamp (2006), "Marketing renaissance: How research in emerging markets advances marketing science and practice" Intern. J. of Research in Marketing 23 337-356

Busenitz, L.W. et al. (2003): "Entrepreneurship research in Emergence: Past trend and Future Directions." Journal of Management, 29(3), 285-308

Carlsson, B. (2006) "Internationalization of Innovation Systems: A survey of the literature", Research Policy, vol. 35, 56-67.

Chu, Junhong, Arce, Marta, Pradeep Chintagunta and Javier Cebollada (2009), Comparison of Household Shopping Behavior across Online and Offline Channels: Moderating Effects of Household and Product Characteristics, Working Paper National University of Singapore (*)

Hanssens, D. M. y P. Leeflang, and D. Wittink (2005)"Market response models and marketing practice" Applied Stochastic Models in Business and Industry; 21:423-434

Journal of Management (2003), vol 29 (3) Special issue on entrepreneurship

OECD (1997) National Innnovation Systems. OECD. Paris

OECD (2005): Oslo Manual.

Research Policy (2002), Vol 31. Special issue on Innovation Systems

Schmiedeberg, C. (2008) "Complementarities of innovation activities: An empirical analysis of the German manufacturing sector", Reseach Policy, 37, pp. 1492-1503

Shane, S. y Ventakaraman, S. (2000): "The promise of entrepreneurship as a field of research", Academy of management Review, 26 (1), 13-17.

Theoharakis, Vasilis and Andrew Hirst (2002), "Perceptual Differences of Marketing Journals: A Worldwide Perspective," Marketing Letters, 13 (4), 389-402.

Train, Kenneth, (2009) Discrete Choice Methods with Simulation, Cambridge University Press, 2nd Ed

Veugelers, R. and B. Cassiman (2006) "In search of complementary in innovation strategy: Internal R&D and external knowledge acquisition", Management Scienc, 52

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Languages

English.

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Location

Universidad Pública de Navarra.

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