Organizations nowadays look towards strategic thinking as a substitute for traditional directions of strategic management which is focused on strategic planning. Strategic thinking has become an important key to success to every organization and became the major pathway that management must pass through, so as to face the challenges of modern day environment. Globalization had brought a lot of impacts on organizations. Those impacts made organizations particularly the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises SMEs to be aware of any changes that are happening everyday. The main reason for doing so, is to be able to compete with each other and in order to keep surviving in the business area. Organizations also need to adopt a good strategy to give satisfaction to its internal environment such as suppliers and employees of the organization, so organizations could never stand without having strategic thinking which helps to predict the present situation of the Continue reading
Strategic Management
Strategic management is the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its objectives. It involves the systematic identification of specifying the firm’s objectives, nurturing policies and strategies to achieve these objectives, and acquiring and making available these resources to implement the policies and strategies to achieve the firm’s objectives. Strategic management, therefore, integrates the activities of the various functional sectors of a business, such as marketing, sales, production etc. , to achieve organizational goals. It is generally the highest level of managerial activity, usually initiate by the board of directors and executed by the firm’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and executive team.
The Driving Forces in an Organization
Every organization has different structure. Those structures created as achieved organization goal. There are things, situations, events etc. that occur within an organization that affect the way an organization operates, either in positive way or negative way. These things, situations, events that affect the way an organization operates are called driving forces. There are two kinds of driving forces as follows: 1. Internal Driving Forces Internal driving forces are those kinds of things, situations, and events etc. that occur within an organization and basically under the organizations control. Once again these internal driving forces can affect the organization in either a positive or negative way. For example, decreased job satisfaction may lead to increased absenteeism, more voluntary resignations and even strikes. In turn, such events will often lead to changes in management policies and practices. There are many kind of internal force drives. Some are explained here; 1.1 Strategic Sometimes Continue reading
Market Activated Corporate Strategy (MACS) Framework
Market Activated Corporate Strategy (MACS) Framework was developed in the late 1980s. But it wasn’t developed at once. There were several predecessors to this framework. Once of the first can be the BCG Growth-Share Matrix. This matrix represents the market growth rate and the relative market share, and according to the level, the business units were divided into 4 categories. It was used very often before, but over the time more comprehensive tools were designed, to eliminate the weaknesses of BCG Matrix, like the fact that is takes into consideration only two factors, avoiding many many others that have a huge impact on profitability. BCG Matrix also assumes the independence of each business unit, therefore it leads to underestimation of the interconnection that often exists (as “Dogs”, for example, sometimes help in gaining competitive advantage) Another predecessor is the old nine-box matrix, developed by McKinsey. It covers industry attractiveness and Continue reading
Strategic Planning – Meaning, Process and Approaches
Strategic planning is the process of deciding on the goals of the organization, on changes in these goals, on the resources used to attain these seals, and on the policies that are to govern the acquisition, use and disposition of these resources. The word strategy is used here in its usual sense of deciding on how to combine and employ resources. Thus strategic planning is a process having to with the formulation of long-range, strategic, policy-type plans that change the character or direction of the organization. In an industrial company, this includes planning that affects the goals of the company, policies of all types (including policies as to management control and other processes); the acquisition and disposition of major facilities, divisions, or subsidiaries, the markets to be served and distribution channels for serving them; the organization-structure (as distinguished from individual personnel actions); research and development of new product lines (as Continue reading
The Effects of Organizational Culture on Strategic Management
Organizational culture is one of the important parts of the strategic thinking and it can impact on company’s employees, customers, suppliers and other different targets. The owner of the company can create their own strategy on the alignment of unique organizational culture with a competitive space. It also involves how organizational culture affects its strategic decision, options and actions. Culture of an organization refers to the unique configuration of norms, beliefs, ways of behaving and so on that characterize the manner in which groups and individuals combine to get things done. It also can define that the set of important assumptions that members of an organization share in common. There is other definition of the organizational culture involves assumptions, adaptations, perceptions and learning. Organizational culture have three layers. First layer includes artifacts and creations, such as annual report, a newsletter, wall dividers between workers and furnishings. Second layer includes values, Continue reading
Strategic Implications of Business Life Cycle Analysis
Life cycle analysis relies on the belief that there are predictable relationships among the stages of business unit life cycles on one hand, and certain elements of strategy on the other. The typical business life cycle curve is analogous to the life cycle of products. During pre-introduction and introduction, the firm is investing heavily to build sales growth through product awareness and refinement, with emphasis on the latter. Thus profit margin is negative until growth begins to occur. If sales growth proceeds at a high enough rate, then unit profit margin will swing positive during the growth phase. Typically the firm’s emphasis is shifted from product refinement to building market share, thus increasing the length and slope of the curve during this phase. As more and more competitors enter the market, however, share is whittled away. Consequently the product’s growth rate begins to level off and the product enters the Continue reading