Covid-19 has shown that businesses need to develop strategies in contexts that are often changing rapidly and highly uncertain. Their success or failure is closely connected to their ability to do so.
The Business Performance and Strategy unit on the MSc Management degree course will introduce you to the major approaches to business strategy and how they can be used to enhance a company’s performance. You will learn to recognize the sources of distinctive competitive advantage that are internal or external to an organisation. You will gain experience of different industry contexts, reflecting market opportunities, technology change and regulatory environments.
Sustained financial performance is important for a company’s stability and growth. You will build the confidence to evaluate how internal and external factors help shape the financial performance of organisations. You will also learn about attempts by some companies and organisations to redefine performance measures to take a wider range of factors – including environmental and social performance – into account. Many different stakeholders are interested in a company’s performance and managing these expectations is an increasingly important aspect of management.
Professor of Financial Innovation, Julie Froud, is the unit leader and an expert in the relations between corporate business models and financial actors, regulation and public policy. She says that ”this is an exciting time to be studying strategy and performance. Covid-19 is speeding up some changes we have already been seeing in the economy, but it also adds a massive degree of disruption and uncertain in some industries. At the same time, there are new challenges around what it means to be responsible and how we should assess the performance of business organisations beyond narrow financial metrics.”
