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In this course you will learn how organizations create, capture, and maintain value, and how it is fundamental for sustainable competitive advantage. You will be able to better understand economic value creation and value appropriation, and learn the tools to analyze both competition and cooperation from a corporate level perspective, (e.g., through vertical integration, diversification, and geographic scope decisions).
You will:
• Understand how corporations create, capture, and sustain competitive advantage.
• Analyze business situations and create a coherent corporate strategy.
• Understand the fit between corporate strategy and organization structure to improve economic performance.
This course is part of the iMBA offered by the University of Illinois, a flexible, fully-accredited online MBA at an incredibly competitive price. For more information, please see the Resource page in this course and onlinemba.illinois.edu.
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Course Orientation
You will become familiar with the course, your classmates, and our learning environment. The orientation will also help you obtain the technical skills required for the course.
Module 1: Vertical Integration and Diversification
This module focuses on corporate strategy with particular emphasis on vertical integration and diversification. It seeks to explain when vertical integration and diversification can create a competitive advantage.
Module 2: Global Strategy
This module focuses on corporate strategy with particular emphasis on global strategy and competing around the world. It seeks to explain why multinational enterprises adopt different global strategies.
Module 3: Strategy and Structure
This module focuses on the fit between corporate strategy and organizational structure with particular emphasis on diversification strategy and multidivisional structure. It seeks to explain why we observe patterns in the matching of corporate-level strategy and organizational structure.
Module 4: Corporate Governance
This module focuses first on the characteristics of public firms. Second, it considers stakeholder impact analysis and corporate social responsibility. Third, it emphasizes corporate governance and the mitigation of agency problems.
