It is vital that a marketing plan has a mission statement that states the purpose of the marketing plan, and explaining why a person is in a business. Both personal and business goals should be included in the mission statement. Although the mission statement is usually a short paragraph, of one to three sentences long, but it is important because it focuses a company’s attention on the company’s most important goal. The mission statement will review company’s business goals and objectives and identify marketing strategies that will achieve them. The managers and employees who do not understand their organizations goals and objectives will face a significant challenge and have a higher likelihood will not achieve it. Without a clear understanding, managers and employees might be making a decisions without the benefit of the guidance that provided by the organizations goals and objectives. Many of them will get lost along the Continue reading
Strategic Management Concepts
Effects of Innovative Culture on Organizations
Growth creates a need for structure and discipline, organisation changes which can strain the culture of creativity that is so vital to future success. To sustain competitive advantage, companies need to institutionalize the innovation process; they need to create an internal environment where creative thinking is central to their values, assumptions and actions. Management changes and management generally is about implementation. When the managers of an enterprise feel pressured, the fear-driven response is generally to implement better and which generally results doing more of the same only quicker or cheaper. While this is great for doing more of the same, it is still the same and meanwhile everything else is changing — customer’s needs, technology, society, macroeconomics and geopolitics are all changing. Innovation is the engine of growth. It is also a mindset — meaning it is influenced by beliefs, values, and behavior. Company culture therefore has a huge influence Continue reading
Choosing Business Strategies and Tactics
There are a few steps that have to be taken to ensure that the choice of Business Strategy made by an organization is sound. Firstly there should be the realization that resources and capabilities have to searched for and located and the search has to be systematically made over each of the functional areas including Marketing, Production, Sales and Finance. After this is done, the feasibility of using these resources individually or collectively has to be determined. This is a serious exercise and should involve senior and top management. A firm may have manufacturing skills in plenty, but if the challenge facing the company is to increase market penetration, priority will have to be given to strengthening the marketing and sales functions and provide them with the lions share of the operating budget to achieve the company’s aims. Another requirement to kept in mind, is that skills and capabilities identified Continue reading
The Relevance of Stakeholder Management in International Business Context
Stakeholders can be defined as an internal and external party to the organization which is having interest in the operations of the organization. Stakeholders can create an impact on the actions, objectives, and policies of the organization. Stakeholders may get affected by the objectives, policies, and actions of the business. Stakeholders may have a direct or indirect interest in the operations of the organization. Stakeholders of an organization can be of different types. These different types of stakeholders include management and employees, customers, investors and suppliers, banks and other financial organizations, government, trade unions and pressure groups. The term stakeholder management can be defined as the process of engaging and enrolling the stakeholders in the operations of the business so as to make them accountable, responsible, consulted and informed. Stakeholder management is concerned regarding the fit between the values or the organization and expectations of the stakeholders for determining the Continue reading
Market-Based and Resource-Based Theories of Competitive Advantage
The competitive advantage, a concept introduced by Michael Porter in 1985 has become one of the key concepts in management science today. A firm is said to have a competitive advantage when it is implementing a value creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors. Over the past 25 years, a large body of literature engaged in analyzing how organisations can achieve and, more importantly, sustain a competitive advantage. During this process, two different perspectives or ‘schools of thought’ emerged. The first school of thought is that an organization’s competitive ability depends more on the external environment and industry attractiveness. This perspective is referred to as the market based view and was largely triggered by Porter. The second school of thought is based on the internal environment i.e. the fundamental attributes of an organisation, in terms of strengths and weaknesses determine a firm’s ability to compete. Continue reading
Five Reasons Why Organizations Change Constantly
As an organization becomes larger the need for strategy and structure change becomes apparent. Strategic change involves altering employees’ construction of meanings by using a discourse that sets a new direction for a firm. All organizations need to make changes in their strategies, structures, management processes and administrative procedures. Many organizations go about this change using a dual core approach, which is a balance between the technical side and the management side of an organization. The technical side refers to the employees who actually produce the product or service that the company offers while the management side ensures that the day to day operations of the company are being fulfilled and the performance objectives are being met. While the two sides may have very different ideas of what changes need to take place, it is imperative that both sides be on the same page and working toward the same goal. Continue reading