There will be lectures and seminars each week. The lecture will elaborate on the content with short examples or with one baseline case study. The seminar will be an opportunity to discuss case narratives in line with the outlined content sub-areas.
You will be expected to do the readings for each session and read and prepare materials designated for the seminar

Support will be provided to you by a member of academic staff leading the module and providing the lecture input. You will also gain from interaction with a number of other academic staff who will cover different lectures and seminars.

Your module is supported by an e-learning portal, which houses lecture and seminar materials, alongside assessment details and various support facilities such as recordings of certain lectures.

You will be provided with a wide-ranging electronic reading list that comprises of various academic reports, conference papers and journal articles that showcase the application of various quantitative techniques presented in the module.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:
• Critically evaluate the scope and the perspectives that comprise business strategy and the idea of sustainable strategy. (MLO1)

• Appreciate and critically assess the sustainability premise to business strategy from the vantage point of a diverse range of stakeholders and from a sustainability perspective.(MLO2)

Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:

• Ability to critically analyse business strategies and their sufficiency from a sustainability perspective offering justifiable and challenging solutions.(MLO3)

• Critically evaluate the link between intent, strategy and outcomes for a range of business case studies. (MLO4)

1. Individual assessment (100%): 3 hour examination (potentially case based comprising a choice); (Addresses MLO1, MLO2, MLO3, MLO4 in the scope of questions that will be set)

Level 4 SM9411 - Global Business Environment (or equivalent)

NONE

In the first instance the idea of sustainable strategies can be seen to be about a continuous and stable alignment between, intent, formulation, implementation and outcome realisation for an organisation. However, from a more comprehensive perspective it is about engaging a wide range of stakeholder domains, including the players along the value chain, society, and the environment. This module will provide you with a perspective on core strategy from the vantage of an organisation and the ability to analyse, formulate and critique business strategies. You will be able to understand and reflect on the scope and limitations of tools and techniques deployed to inform business strategies and their sustainability premises. It will, as a bolt on, impart an emphasis for stepping back and looking at strategies from a macro level sustainability perspective as is very topical and at the forefront of policy and business concerns.

1. Understanding strategy as a concept and developing a broad perspective on different schools that comprise it.
2. Deliberate perspective: Examining the premises and application of design, planning and positioning. Examining the limitations and moorings and critiquing analytical frameworks, some of which have been delivered in level 4 and level 5. E.g. SWOT and SSWOT (sustainability SWOT), five forces, value chain, value activities (including a focus on social and environmental value) and generic strategies will be looked at in conjunction to build on prior discrete knowledge students will have of these concepts.
3. Emergent perspective: The premises of strategic learning, strategic leadership (including power), culture as some of the emergent perspectives.
4. Innovation, value creation and value appropriation from an ethics and broadly scoped sustainability perspective.
5. Understanding how delivering innovation has become the holy grail of firm pursuits, and how it relates with different stakeholders. This will include a perspective on the digital internet enabled environment to examine path breaking innovation at a macro level in interface with firm capabilities to survive, adapt and sustain growth.
6. A stakeholder view on sustainability: Understanding the wider set of stakeholders that business organisations need to keep in perspective & how it affects long run sustainability.