Strategic management according to Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson (2014) involves the process of formulation and implementation of a company is a major initiatives and goals by the top management on behalf of the company’s owners. This is done after considering the resources and assessing the external and internal environments where the company competes. Brown (2015) asserted that strategic management involves specifying the objectives of a company, developing plans and policies geared to achieving the objectives, allocate resources for implementing the plans and provides the direction for an organization.
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According to Barney & Hesterly (2015) activities of strategic management differ from one company to the other. However, when examining the strategic management operations, the basic components of a model of strategic management are very parallel. Some components of the model of strategic management include mission, internal analysis and external environment of a company.
The mission of an organization is the company’s unique purpose that sets it out compared to other organizations of its type and outlines its operations scope (Pearce & Robinson, 2011). The mission of a company outlines the company’s areas of technology, market and products of importance that shows the priorities and values of the company’s strategic decision makers. Pearce & Robinson (2011) indicated that social responsibility is also a vital area for consideration by an organization for the strategic decision makers in a company because the company’s mission statement must express how the organization intends on contributing to the societies that are sustaining it. Therefore, an organization should set their objectives for social responsibility.
The internal analysis of a company examines the weaknesses and strengths of a firm’s organizational structure and its management.
Several external factors influence a company’s actions and choice of direction, and ultimately the internal processes and the organization structure Hitt, Ireland & Hoskisson (2014). Brown (2015) stated that the three factors making up the external environment of an organization are the factors in the operating environment, industry environment and remote environment. The remote environment comprises of the ecological, technological, political, social and economic factors.
Pearce & Robinson (2013) in their prescribed book of “Strategic Management: Planning for domestic & global competition,” have carefully divided the topics into four parts to make the reader not just understand the concepts but also co-relate it with the real world scenarios.
In Part One, the authors explained the Strategic Management concepts, that is Dimensions, Formalities, Advantages and the involved Risks. They also explained the how a Strategic Management as a process helps to implement new ideas in a new market environment by the company and achieve success. It also explains why strategic management is the key to a successful business. In this chapter, the authors described distinctive characteristics of strategic decision making, and how every of the levels impacts the effect of activities at these levels on the processes of the company.
In Part Two, how a company mission establishes different multi-business strategies by internal analysis to achieve the long-term objective without affecting its social responsibility and ethics by taking into consideration of external and global environments. The approach of strategy formulation according to Pearce and Robinson (2013), is an improvement over that of traditional long-range planning, strategy formulation. It combines the viewpoints that are oriented to the future with the company’s external and internal environments concerns. Strategy formulation begins with a definition of the company’s mission; the business purpose is defined to mirror the values of a wide range the parties interested. Firm’s external environment that strategic managers must assess so they can anticipate and take advantage of future business conditions, also the author explained the key difference in strategic planning among domestic, multinational and global firms. An Internal Analysis is done to assess a company weakness and strengths to evaluate company abilities and assess its long term goal achieving capacities. Authors also explain comprehensive approaches to the evaluation of strategic opportunities that yield towards the final decision also explained how an organization can create a competitive advantage for each of its business.
In Part Three, the authors have elaborated carefully the implementation of the strategic management process, they refer this phase as action stagee. In this part, they cover the strategy formulation, analysis of alternative strategies and strategic choices that are present for a successful implementation. They also explained, that just these process will not completely ensure the success, the other factors that need to be considered for the success are the strategies which the organization set need to be transformed into guidelines as daily activities, strategy and the firm should become one that is strategy must reflect in the daily activities of the firm. The organization leaders must ensure the activities yield towards the goals of the organization. By ensuring control in managers to steer towards the company, goals is also necessary. Moreover, companies must put in place elaborate procedures that shows commitment to innovation in addition to making considerations of bringing the processes of entrepreneurship to the organization for growth, survival and prosperity in the more rapidly and vastly global business arena that is competitive. In the last chapter of this part, explains creating clear short-term objects and actions plans will collaborate for the success. Development of particular strategies to incorporate outsourcing, that is competitive, empowering the employees that operates in the company by enacting policies to offer guidance to their decisions, and finally rewarding the people who made it possible. Implementation stage of the process of strategic management is where action is taken. It is the stage where the organization stays closer to the consumers, get a competitive advantage in the market and realize excellence in their pursuit. These concepts will help a future leader to successful, implementation of innovative ideas in a business organization.
In Part four, the authors have given a glimpse in real world strategies their success and failure, how organizations develop new ideas and how the leaders of the firm make those as the goals and make sure that each and every part of the organization are motivated to work towards the success of the goal.
Being an engineering background and a semi management student who is at a learning phase, all the topics interest me, but in my opinion the most interesting topics are the real meaning of the concepts and the process how they can be implemented and to top it off, how these processes are get implemented in the real world, which process or innovations were successfully implemented to create a revolution in the market. This is the most interesting books I have ever read.
The least interesting things about this book were steps and multi-strategies and organizations structures or controls that pressurize an innovation or an idea. Overall, I feel all the topics are important for a learner to gain the experiences from pitfalls and success of the book to understand and implement a successful strategy to improve either an organization or one’s life.
I believe the Douglas County leaders have carefully understood the concepts of strategic management, which lead them to have transparency at all levels of the organization to achieve the organization’s goals set by the management. They have successfully implemented the nine step success methodology across the organization as the strategic framework to translate the high-level goals.
In conclusion, a strategy is very important to improve one’s life from better conditions to the best or to improve one’s company hold on the market but implementing new idea’s using strategic process. An effective strategic planning can show where a firm is driving to and the steps that are needed to make that possible, but also tell how it can be successful by doing so.
References
Barney, J. B., & Hesterly, W. S. (2015). Strategic management and competitive advantage: Concepts and cases.
Brown, W. A. (2015). Strategic management in nonprofit organizations.
Hitt, M. A., Ireland, R. D., & Hoskisson, R. E. (2014). Strategic management: Competitiveness & globalization.
Pearce, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2013). Strategic management: Planning for domestic & global competition. New York: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
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