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Strategy in an Uncontrollable World

Code: ULMS569

Credits: 20

Semester: Semester 2

Strategy education typically teaches students how to use analytical frameworks designed to make commercial organisations succeed in international markets by competing with rivals, extracting new resources, or profitably restructuring its operations. This module considers the limits of strategic analysis when the combined effects of ‘grand challenges’, including climate change and digitalisation, have made the world unpredictable and uncontrollable. The aim of the module is to work with students to think through what it means for an organisation to think and act in a complex and changing world. Students are encouraged to consider the relationship between strategy and capitalism and their impact on nature and society, and they will consider the possibilities and limits of human (strategic) oversight and control. The module takes a ‘global’ and interdisciplinary approach to sources and influences. Engaging with architecture, law and politics, it considers the logic and limits of planning and bureaucracy. From ecological theories in biology, anthropology and sociology, it takes concepts of complex systems and feedback loops. Philosophy informs discussions on what it means to live ‘well’, individually and socially, and what ethical considerations arise for strategy. Drawing on media theory and post-humanism, it develops concern for interrelations of human and non-human life and for the increasing role played by artificially intelligent and/or robotic participants in organisational processes. From the arts, it takes insights on how visions of the future can be scripted, drawing on fiction, the fine arts, and film, including non-Western and indigenous influences.