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Strategic Management
has come a long way from its
origins as “business policy” in the 1950s. During its first 40
years, strategy was largely a “Harvard affair”. While the Harvard
Business School must be credited as the intellectual pioneer in this
field, subsequent development was severely hampered by limited
external input. As a result, academic debate and management
practices stagnated. The watershed came in 1990, when Gary Hamel and
C. K. Prahalad published their ideas on Core Competences. Strategic
Management has never been the same since then.
The Harvard model focused for fifty years almost exclusively on such
well known tools as the SWOT model, (which later evolved into the
Five Forces model, the value chain and generic strategies). Modern
and emerging approaches to strategic issues, however, tend to
emphasise philosophies more than tools. Our students, the creators
and managers of the future, must fully comprehend what they are
doing and why they are doing it because the strategy of an
organisation is of paramount importance. The goal of the Department
of Strategic Management here at the GUC is to equip our students
with the knowledge, skills and inquisitiveness they will need to
effectively engage in the lifelong learning process of Strategic
Management.
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