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Strategy, Environment, and Organizations (SEO)
After graduation, most business students—undergraduates and MBAs alike—join or progress further in medium-to-large corporations or other complex organizations that operate in globally competitive industries. When you navigate the job search process, you will notice that recruiters are increasingly looking for candidates who can demonstrate superior problem-solving skills and innovative thinking.
Faced with intense global competition, corporations in all industries are constantly searching for ways to become more competitive. For most corporations, part of the solution has been to develop cross-functional teams that transcend specific business functions, such as accounting or marketing, in order to build broad strategic competencies. This explains their emphasis on hiring team members who, while experts in their own fields, are cross-functional in their thinking and are good at strategic problem solving. Such valued professionals and managers possess T-shaped skills, in that they have both a deep knowledge in their own function—the stem of the T—and a thorough appreciation of how their function interacts with other functions to shape the long-term success of their corporation—the crossbar of the T.
By providing an integrated view of multiple functional perspectives as well as specific analytical tools for strategic problem solving, courses in strategic management help you develop these valuable skills.
All Katz and CBA students will come across strategy in the required course Strategic Management. Focusing on competitive advantage in global environments, this course addresses three sets of needs: the need to understand the bases of competitive advantage in global industries, the need to use specific analytical tools to conduct industry and firm analyses, and the need to develop an early intellectual framework for contributing to strategic conversations and decisions in your organization.
MBA Students
MBA Students with a specific interest in strategy will find a broad array of elective courses that drill down into specific aspects of strategy, such as Management of Strategic Alliances; Competitive Intelligence; Technical Strategy and Intelligence; Acquisitions and Divestment; and Entrepreneurship and New Venture Initiation. Through Consulting Field Projects, they can also work with local and multinational companies to address key strategic initiatives.
A primary concentration in strategy is most helpful if you are interested in any of the following: (1) a general management career—typically those with significant prior work experience who expect to go into mid- or senior-level positions following graduation, (2) management consulting, (3) a business analyst career in consulting or within a large corporation, or (4) an entrepreneurial career. For most other students with an interest in strategy, either a secondary concentration (to complement a primary concentration in finance, information systems, marketing, etc.) or simply taking strategy elective courses may be the best option.
MBA Strategy Curricular Tracks
Our curricular tracks focus you early in your MBA career and help you identify the competencies sought by industry leaders and human resources professionals.
