Designing organizations is a complex exercise. Organization Design involves making choices about how to group individuals and structure their tasks. According to Harvard Business School professor Robert Simons, in his article “How Risky is your Company?”, organization design must take into account the company’s strategy, competitive environment, stage of the life-cycle and various other factors. In short, it is a fine balancing act. In the early days of an organization, organization design receives little attention. But over time, problems emerge as the charisma of the founders becomes insufficient to manage a larger enterprise. Systems and processes become important. This is when a functional structure is typically chosen. After some time, the functional structure becomes inadequate to respond to the needs of the market place because of centralized decision making. At that point, a divisional structure becomes necessary. But with time, a divisional structure leads to fiefdoms. Coordination becomes difficult, resources Continue reading
Strategic Management Concepts
Case Study of Apple Inc: An Apple for Your Enterprise
Apple Macs have made their way out of the art department and into the offices of accountants, salespeople, manufacturing planners and top executives. “We’re seeing more requests outside of creative services to switch to Macs from PCs,” notes David Plavin, operations manager for Mac systems engineering at the U.S. it division of Public Group SA, a global advertising conglomerate. For it managers across all industries – even those with a well established and stalwart Windows user base – the question is no longer whether you’ll need to design and support a Mac computing strategy. the only question is how quickly. You may already be a little late to the game. According to Forrester, business adoption of Macs tripled last year. What’s more, this will surely accelerate as companies hire more Gen Y workers. Coming through the door in those backpacks are a slew of consumer technologies and wireless personal productivity Continue reading
Relationship between Strategy Formulation and Strategic Planning
The word “strategy” or “strategic” is used in both terms, there is a possibility of confusion. The distinction is that strategy formulation is the process of deciding on new strategies, whereas strategic planning is the process of deciding how to implement the strategies. In the strategy formulation process, management arrives at the goals of the organization and creates the main strategies for achieving those goals. The strategic planning process then takes the goals and strategies as given and develops programs that will carry out the strategies and achieve the goals efficiently and effectively, The decision by an industrial goods manufacturer to diversify into consumer goods is a strategy formulation, a strategic decision, after which a number of implementation issues have to be resolved: whether to diversify through acquisition or through organic growth, what product lines to emphasize, whether to make or to buy, which marketing channels to use the document Continue reading
Process Reengineering – History, Definition and Process Steps
The driving force behind all the changes which are taking place in the all the firm of the world are two Cs: customers, competition. The demands of the customers are changing day by day and this change in demand of customers pose new sets of challenges to the firms every now and then and hence firms have to change or modify their offering to customers accordingly. Firms who are able to do it in less time and less cost turn out to be the industry leaders. Firms set their mission and vision statements on the basis of their short term and long term strategy and to attain those goals firms need to adjust themselves with the constantly changing environment. We have seen dominance of Japanese firms in automobile and electronic components, the reason for this dominance of Japanese firms over other firms round the world is their techniques. They change Continue reading
Resource Based View (RBV) and Sustainable Competitive Advantage
Resource based view (RBV) focuses on the internal factors that contribute to a firm’s growth and performance. It highlights the importance of firm’s resources and capabilities. Both of them will together form a competency that can create a competitive advantage. Resources can also be divided into tangible resources and intangible resources. Capabilities of the firm in utilizing the resources have a big impact on how a firm will be able to stand out among other competitors. Competitive advantage arises when a firm has a lower cost structure, products differentiation and niche markets. RBV also concerns in value creation in order to compete with others. On the other hand, in order to survive in this competitive world, a firm needs to fully prepare itself to achieve sustainable competitive advantage (SCA), which means having a superior performance in a longer term compared to other rivals. According to Jay Barney (1991), resources need Continue reading
Sources of Attaining Competitive Advantage by a Business Firm
When a firm sustains profits that exceed the average for its industry, the firm is said to possess a competitive advantage over its rivals. A competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices. Competitive advantages are capabilities that are difficult to replicate or imitate and are non-tradable. Pitts and Snow define a competitive advantage as “any feature of a business firm that enables it to earn a high return on investment despite counter pressure from competitors.” A competitive advantage exists when the firm is able to deliver the same benefits as the competitors are but at a lower cost (cost advantage), or deliver benefits that exceed those of competing products (differentiation advantage). Thus, a competitive advantage enables a firm to create superior value for its customers and superior Continue reading