Strategic Management is a constant object of curiosity among psychologists and thinkers. On several occasions, senior managers are asked how they come up with strategic decisions. They have one pattern of making these crucial and company-light decisions. One would suppose these to be mathematical, based on rigid rules of logic or statistical treatments. But here’s the catch: The managers decisions were product of informal data gathering, intuition, innovation, and oral exchanges in 2-way communications. These managers have the feel of the whole situation besetting their companies and their impulse always has an accompanying relevance. Their minds transcend logical rules that are immutable and mechanical and perhaps by age and experience, they acquired an almost instantaneous and discrimination of what is effective and practical. They give a whole new meaning to the words feeling, judgment, common sense, proportion, balance, and appropriateness. They use these terms to effect viable actions that would Continue reading
Strategic Management Concepts
Complexity Theory for Organizational Change Management
Complexity theory is defined as a study of non-linear dynamic systems and a conceptual framework that resolves the unpredictable outcomes of industries and emerges some unique patterns. This system was first developed in the perspective of physical and biological science. However, the social, economic and ecological aspect of this theory was developed later and evolved dynamically overtime. A company utilizes this set of ideas from the study of different natural resources such as weather conditions, animal behavior and then defines the behavior of the organization through several mathematical expressions. There are three key theories related to complexity theory for organizational change management. These are: Chaos theory Dissipative structures Complex adaptive systems Due to the complexity involved in the organization, there are several moments when a random chaos can be created within that organization. The random situation can be created of normal equations which can be further explained with the help of Continue reading
Strategies for Stability
Stability strategy is a strategy in which the organization retains its present strategy at the corporate level and continues focusing on its present products and markets. The firm stays with its current business and product markets; maintains the existing level of effort; and is satisfied with incremental growth. It does not seek to invest in new factories and capital assets, gain market share, or invade new geographical territories. Organizations choose this strategy when the industry in which it operates or the state of the economy is in turmoil or when the industry faces slow or no growth prospects. They also choose this strategy when they go through a period of rapid expansion and need to consolidate their operations before going for another bout of expansion. Read More: Stability Strategy It’s not easy to identify organizations that are pursuing a stability strategy, if for no other reason than that few top Continue reading
Resource-Based View (RBV) Strategy Formulation
The resource-based view (RBV) is a tool to determine strategic resources and how it affects the performance of the firm based solely on reviewing its internal environment while the external environment remains fixed. Firms using RBV competes in terms of their resources and capabilities. The aim of this article is to study the factors that influence a firm’s performance. The RBV emphasizes the firm’s resources as the essential elements of competitive advantage and performance. It assumes two assumptions in examining sources of a competitive advantage which are that the firms are heterogeneous in terms of the resources they control and that resource heterogeneity can continue over a period as the resources used to implement their strategies are not easily portable across firms. The RBV method of analyzing a firm’s performance is focused that other vital factors that tend to be disregarded. Resources are not valuable of themselves; instead, they are Continue reading
McKinsey’s Strategic Control Map
Strategic Control Map shows the relationship between size (measured by book value) and performance for shareholders (measured by market-to-book ratio). It was developed by McKinsey consultants D’Silva, Fallon and Mehta in 1996, and it is used to help companies get visibility into their own and competitors performance trajectories and better understand the threats and opportunities for a company’s strategy execution. Strategic Control Map is helpful in analyzing an industry landscape, looking at various companies or firms in this industry, by breaking down overall performance into two key drivers or indicators, helps companies identify their biggest opportunities and threats and boost their odds of hunting for acquisition targets rather than being hunted themselves. Strategic Control Map tracks the relationship between the two dimensions of market capitalization by plotting a company’s size against its performance for shareholders. The principle behind Strategic Control Map is that, market capitalization = book value of assets Continue reading
External Prospects of Business Growth
The analysis of the internal perspective of the growth of the business reflects on the operations that the organization must undertake to stimulate productivity and the quality of employees. In addition to the internal factors that influence the organization, external factors affect the performance of the business. The external factors include political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, legal, and environmental issues. The political environment involves the political stability of the country in which the business is operating. In this case, the additional factors that the political factors would influence include the regulation policies formulated by the government. If the government formulates stern policies based on its doctoral nature, the business operations will suffer leading to poor performance and reduction in quality provision. On the other hand, if the government adopts democratic leadership, business issues will be considered during policy development leading to business growth in the whole industry. Economic factors are crucial Continue reading