Introduction
Strategic management implies the skills and science of formulation, implementation, and evaluation of cross-functional decisions that enable an organization or a firm to achieve its goals and objectives. It entails the processes of specifying the objectives of the organization, developing plans and policies to achieve these goals, and resource allocation to implement the plans and policies so as to achieve the firms of the organization’s objectives.
Therefore, strategic management combines the behavior of various practical areas of the business to achieve organizational objectives. This makes the highest level of managerial activity which is usually formulated by the board of directors and executed by the organization’s executive chief officer and the entire executive team (Stone 2004, pg 34). Strategic management gives general direction to the project and it has a close relation with the field of organization studies.
Strategic management is an ongoing procedure that reviews the industries and the businesses in which the company is involved, reviews its competitors and sets objectives and strategies in meeting all existing and potential competitors; and then re-examines each strategy quarterly or annually in the determination of how it has been implemented and know whether it has achieved success or requires replacement by a new approach to attain changed circumstances new competitors, new technology, a new economic environment, or a new financial, social or political environment.
Strategic management combines three main processes which are as follows: strategies formulation. It entails performing a situation analysis, competitor analysis, and self-evaluation: both external and internal; both macro-environmental and micro-environmental. Objectives are set concurrent with this assessment. This involves expertise vision statements, overall corporate objectives, mission statements, tactical objectives, and strategic business unit objectives. The laid down objectives should suggest a strategic plan where the plan should provide the details of achievement of these objectives.
Strategy implementation is another process of strategic management. It involves the allocation of adequate resources like technology, support, financial, time, and personal. These should be the establishment of a chain of command, implementation of specific programs, management processes which include results monitoring, and evaluation of efficiency efficacy. It also extremely undergoes SWOT to figure out strengths, weaknesses opportunities, and threats of both internal and external to the unit in the question.
Case study
In the past, most organizations and firms have been collapsing due to improper management. In turn, the entire workers lack the proper guidelines and strategies for effective performance. Most of the failure is attained through the use of organizational resources in unproductive means, frauds in the organization, wastage of more resources for low production among others. Consequently, business management organizations come up with devices to curb this problem.
For effective performance in the marketplace, there should complete application of management strategies. Such include strategy formation which includes the entire process that contributes to the implementation and application of strategic measures (Roony 2004, pg 66).
Strategic change is another step that involves making alterations to the present management policies with the ones which can lead to productive results. Change is also vital in any business organization because they are able to cope with the ever-changing technologies in the world. Network-level strategy is another step in the implementation of strategic management. When more than two organizations move beyond transactional relationships and jointly work towards a common objective, they make a network or partnership or an alliance. Their shared strategy is known as a network-level strategy. The last step in the case study is the corporate level strategy which includes the joint participation of organizations and firms towards a common goal.
Strategy formation
This is the entire process that leads to strategic activities in practice. Managers should find a way to realize a strategic pattern of actions. The strategists aim at getting an organization to exhibit strategic behavior. Preparation of detailed analyses, making extensive slide presentations drawing up plans, and holding long conferences might all be necessary means in the achievement of this issue, but eventually, it is the organization’s actions directed at a marketplace that counts (Roony 2004, pg 66).
The major issue opposing managers is therefore how the strategic behavior can be achieved. The main question remains on how can a successful course of action in practice be realized. In strategy formation activities, the process of strategic reasoning is divided into four categories of activities. Such include: identifying, diagnosing, convincing, and realizing. The strategic problem-solving activities occurring in the mind of the strategist are essentially similar to the ones encountered in organizations at large.
Organizations and firms too require solving strategic problems and attaining a successful outline of actions. The only difference is felt in that in the context of organization involving many individuals, with different perspectives, experiences, interests, values, and personalities direct to different needs for structuring the process (Roony 2004, pg 121).
Strategic conception activities
In dealing with strategic issues or problems, managers of organizations must suggest potential solutions. Away of action must be found that will enable the organization to relate itself to the environment in a way it will be able to attain its purpose. There should be option generation which implies the creation of potential strategies. There should be also option selection which involves evaluation of potential solutions by the managers.
Strategy realization activities
A strategic issue or problem can be resolved only if concrete action is undertaken that achieves results. Managers should come up with adjustments to their organizations or business systems or commerce actions in the market, they shout not only talk, think or decide but also do to obtain a tangible impact. Actions taking should also be utilized. A problem-solution must be carried out so that intended actions can be implemented to become realized actions. The performing concrete actions encompass all issues of a firm’s or organization’s functioning. Performance control is another aspect that should be put into consideration. It entails the measurement of whether the actions being taken in the organization are in line with the selected option and whether the consequences are in line with what was aimed at (Keno 2001, pg 66).
In strategy formation, roles vary became responsibilities, and tasks are divided in different ways. The variation is due to different labor divisions. There should demand deliberate strategizing. All firms require to plan. At the operational level, most of the firms have some degree of production planning, manpower planning, and resource planning, and financial planning. With strategic behavior, prominent advantages strongly force organizations to be engaged in deliberate strategizing. Such includes commitment, direction, optimization, coordination, and programming.
Strategic planning perspective
Supporters of the strategic planning perspective argue that there should be deliberate execution and planning of strategies. According to them, anything that comes up unplanned is not a strategy. A successful model of actions that were not intended cannot be termed as a strategy but should be seen for what it is as just plan luck (Ruefli 1990). In the management of the strategy process, the strategic planning system determines the strategic direction for the organization and each of its business units and divisions.
Strategic change
In the modern world of transforming economies, new technologies, shifting demographics, fluctuating preferences of consumers, government reforms, and dynamic competitions, the question of whether the firm should change should not arise but how and what direction should be followed. In analyzing an organization, change is a must. Organizations should keep on aligning with the environments, either through reaction to external events or through practically shaping the business in which they operate. While a change in an organization is persistent, not all change in the firm is naturally strategic (Siegel 1992, pg 93).
The ongoing operational type of change is what is being witnessed in most firms. To remain effective and efficient, organizations must constantly make fine-tuning alternations through the upgrading of existing procedures, reassigning of people, and improvement of the activities. Such changes in operations aim at performance increase of the organization within the confine of the present system and also within the basic setup used to support the organization with the environment.
Managers have the challenge of implementing strategic changes on time, keeping the organization in step with the changing threats and opportunities in the environment. Some areas of the organization’s business system can be potted while others require to undergo a transformation from the organization to stay up to date and competitive in agreement with external factors and conditions is known as a strategic renewal.
Areas of strategic renewal
Organizations are complex systems comprising many different elements, each of which can be transformed. So as to gain more insight into the different areas of potential change, organizations and firms require to be disassembled analytically into several components sectors. The most basic distinctions that can be made within an organization, are between the organizational system and the business system.
The business system comprises the way a firm carries out its business while the organizational system refers to the ways in which the firm gets its people to cooperate and work together to carry out the business. Strategic change is for reaching by definition. Strategic change is addressed when the basic transformations are made into the organizational system or business system. For instance, when a lemon-flavored coke is added to the product portfolio, it is interesting, but this cannot be termed as a strategic change. Strategic renewal is even more for reaching, as several strategic changes are implemented in a variety of areas to keep the organization aligned with the market demands (Moore 1995, pg 129).
The magnitude of change is the size of change steps. It is divided into two parts; the first one is the scope of change in an organization, the scope of change can differ from broad to narrow. Change is said to be broad when many parts and aspects of the firm are altered or changed at the same time. The other part is the Amplitude of organizational changes. It can also vary from high to low. Amplitude is said to be high when the organizational culture, business system, structure, processes are an essential departure from the previous situation.
The pace of change
It takes quite some time for strategic renewal to occur. There are varieties of means through which the process of strategic renewal can occur over time. These should be evenly spread out of strategic change measures over an extended period thus allowing the firm to follow a steady pace of strategic renewal. However, it is possible to group all alternatives into a few short irregular ruptures, thus giving the renewal process and tremulous, stop-and-go pace.
There has been a demand for the revolutionary change process. This entails the process whereby a radical and abrupt transformation occurs within a short duration of time. A big bang approach to the strategic alteration is generally required especially when organizational rigidity is so deeply fixed that smaller pushes do not bring the organization into movement (Mercer 1991, pg 57). If the organization threatens to become paralyzed by these inherited inflexibilities, in the business system only the way to move forward can be to drastically break with the past.
Network-level strategy
Both an individual business unit and a group of business units can have strategies. There is a possibility that companies do not implement their strategies in spending isolation but coordinate their strategies to functions as a team. When more than two organizations move beyond transactional relationships and jointly work towards a common objective, they make a network or partnership or an alliance. Their shared strategy is known as a network-level strategy. Apart from strategy being concerned with relating firms to their environment, it also concerns relating firms to their environments. Many questions arise from the existence of networks.
Such include; the benefits attained from engaging in long-term collaborative relationships with other organizations the more advantages associated with firms in keeping their distance and interacting with one another in a more transactional and market way (Drejer 2002, pg 123). In addressing such questions, the issue of inter-firms relationship rises as what should be the kind of relationship between the organizations and another firm in its surrounding.
Relational actors
There has been a distinction between the industry and contextual actors. Industrial actors comprise those organizations and individuals that carry out value-adding activities and use the outputs of these activities. On the other hand, contextual actors are those individuals whose actions unintentionally or intentionally place the conditions under which the industry actors must function. The development of inter-organizational relationships is mainly influenced by the goals pursued by the individuals or parties involved. However, other several factors have had an impact on how relationships disclose. The relational factors can be grouped into four categories as below. Legitimacy.
Here the relationships are commonly impacted by what is thought or estimated to be legitimate. Urgency is another factor whereby, timing as a factor shapes inter-organizational relations. When one or both firms are under time pressure, relationships develop quite differently in achieving results. This is opposed to a situation whereby both organizations can have interaction without the occurrence of a sense of urgency (Espy 1986, pg 84).
Frequency is another factor that determines inter-organizational relations. When parties plan to engage in a one-off contract, they usually have differences in behavior than when they await a more structural relationship broadening over multiple interactions. More so a relationship with a low rate of interfaces tends to have different development than one with high reliability of interactions. Last but not the least, power strongly shapes relationships between organizations. Power is the capability of influencing other individual’s behavior. Organizations and firms have many power sources. What is more important in an inter-organization is that a firm can gain power from having a level of resource dependence, there exists a different behavior from a firm to the other when they are relatively independent to one another.
Rational arrangements
An organization and its environment are presented as distinct entities in the classic dichotomy. Within an organization, coordination is attained through means of direct control which to transaction cost economists refer to the form of organization as a hierarchy.
In the 1990s a rubber industry company based on continental AG was rated as the first active industry. It specialized in car and truck tires and other technical products of rubber. In one year’s time, its performance declined drastically (Courtney 2002, pg 92). More losses were evident during this era. In 1993, management strategies were implemented where the company regained and even improved its transaction standards. In fostering strategic innovation, it strived for technological leadership and meetings among other strategies to attain its economic recovery.
Recommendations and conclusion
Globally, business transaction plays a vital role in providing countries income. In most, countries business is the key economic activity. Irrespective of the size of the organization’s firm, not unless the right measures and application of the required strategies are put in place, required objectives and goals cannot be achieved in business. The management of any business should come up with strategies of proper management. Such includes a better relationship between the employers and the employees, proper management of finances, and proper utilization of time in the workplace. The interaction among conventional functions can lead to decentralized management.
In any business, power should be fully exercised so as to have a proper hierarchy system in the marketplace. Also in the marketplace, both internal and external requirements should be met to attain efficiency in business. The only way to succeed in a business transaction is to put in place the managerial planning and strategizing the business activities ensuring continuous changes so as to cope with the transforming world.
Bibliography
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