WEEK 2

Week 2 (3/6/2013)

Strategic management:

Strategic management is a process of analyzing, decision making and taking actions for the organization to generate and maintain sustainability of the competitive advantages. In strategic management, managers identify strategies and implement it to achieve the best performance and a competitive advantage for the company. (extension.harvard.edu)

The analysis of the manager plays very vital role in strategic management. He/she must maintain the proper level of the knowledge about the general and competitive environment to do an effective analysis. Managers should perform the SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats). It means mangers should identify the strengths and should implement it properly, minimize the weakness and should grab the opportunities and discard the threats.

For general knowing we can state strategic management as a planning for the predictable and unpredictable circumstances.

Strategic management is very important aspect for the small and local organizations to lager and multinational organization to remain competitive in the market. In this dynamic market scenario strategic management helps to survive.

Strategic management helps to incorporate the various departments in the organization in order to achieve better performance. It also monitors the goals and objectives of the organization.

Definition of strategic management:

Strategic management is the set of managerial decision and action that determines the long-run performance of a corporation. It includes environmental scanning (both external and internal), strategy formulation (strategic or long range planning), strategy implementation, and evaluation and control. The study of strategic management therefore emphasizes the monitoring and evaluating of external opportunities and threats in lights of corporation’s strengths and weakness.

(David Hunger & Thomas. L., Essentials of Strategic Management)

Similarities between business strategy and military strategy:

S.N.	Basis	Business strategy	Military strategy
1.	Experience	Without experiences business Leaders can’t make good Strategy to remain competitive in this dynamic World.	Experience is very important for Military officers to make strategies to survive in war and to maintain Security.
2.	Extensive Preparation	Good preparation is needed to make and implement the Strategy for the success.	It is also very important in the Perspective of military.
3.	SWOT Analysis	Proper SWOT analysis is required to understand own self and competitors.	SWOT analysis is needed to own Self and enemy.

Difference between business strategy and military strategy:

S.N.	Basis	Business strategy	Military strategy
1.	Purpose	The purpose of business Strategy is to maximize the Stake holder’ value.	The purpose of military strategy is to maintain security.
2.	Success	Success is to remain competitive in market.	Success is to survive in war and to Maintain security.

 Strategic analysis:

Strategic analysis is the process of looking what’s happening outside the organization now and the coming future. Basically it deals with two questions:

Ø  How changes are going to affect you?

Ø  What would be your response the changes?

We can state it as a strategy as it is performed by top level management with long term perspectives and for the organization as a whole. And we can explain it as analysis because it breaks down the huge and complex things to smaller pieces which makes easy to manage. External factors have very strong influence to the organization. Managers should tackle the changes of external factors to remain competitive in market. So, it the main reason to give very important emphasis for the external factors. (strategicanalytics.com)

Strategic analysis also helps to increase the organizational effectiveness:

Strategic analysis helps to:

Ø  Helps to identify what will happen in coming future.

Ø  It will evaluate the changes very precisely.

Ø  It helps for the preparation to tackle with those changes.

 Strategic development:

Strategic development is all about change. Mangers should be able to improve their strategy with the changes in technologies, information flow, political changes and global competition. Until and unless managers can’t tackle such things it’s very difficult to maintain the success. Effective and efficient managers can handle these dynamics and can lead the organization to the success.

Strategic development has 4 components:

Ø  Awareness

Ø  Planning

Ø  Development

Ø  Results

 Strategic implementation:

When strategy is made in organization, it is useless until and unless it is implemented with proper manner. So, we can explain strategic implementation as the process of developing, utilizing and integrating whole organizational structure to follow the strategy made by managers to get the competitive advantages.

Some major steps in implementing a strategy are listed below:

Ø   Developing an organization to make a capable of implementing the strategies in correct manner.

Ø   Using available resources in strategy driven activities.

Ø  Making strategy which will support polices.

Ø  Applying the best policies.

Ø   Giving reward for the completing of pre determined work.

Ø  making use of strategic leadership. 

  Reference:

  extension.harvard.edu. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.extension.harvard.edu/courses/strategic-management

strategicanalytics.com. (n.d.). Retrieved 2013, from http://www.strategyanalytics.com/

strategyanalytics.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.strategyanalytics.com/