STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Strategic Management

Strategic Management

Introduction

Strategic management is a business process of continuous adaptation of competitive arena, which is an iterative process through which the firm faces uncertainty about the future, trying to anticipate and prepare responses to the developments of the environment in which it operates. Strategic management includes philosophies and methodologies of business with their respective strengths and weaknesses, proposing and passing the classic dilemma between the degree of formality of reference models - which are often not able to describe the processes of creating intuitive strategies - and the ability of vision with which managers formulate strategies for success (Wernerfelt 1999: pp. 171-180). Amid all the criticism levelled at models that are strictly formal, there are several reasons for adopting a strategic planning process.

With globalization increases the instability of the external environment: interactions among the various stakeholders with distinctive interests, are increasingly complex, the competition is more intense. Firms must assess and manage risks and identify opportunities before others in order to survive in an increasingly dynamic, competitive arena (Cretu et al. 2007: pp. 230-240).

Resources are limited, so their use must be planned.

The complexity of product development-services increases concurrently with a life span of products increasingly contract: this involves such profound implications on organizational structures and the use of resources, which only require coordinated planning, can give.

One consequence of the increasing complexity of products-services is the increased need for specialized personnel, a need which must be properly planned to avoid being unprepared to new opportunities and new skills and abilities and consequent demands.

Planning means to motivate employees and catalyze their commitment to success.

Strategic management requires thinking in terms not only of past and future, a prerequisite for survival in the dynamism of the contemporary world.

Strategic planning is a tool of control, especially if, through proper deployment, the control lever is moved into the causes-conditions-actions such as enabling the success of strategies.

Part I

Today, the concept of organization has changed and has gone from linear thinking to systems thinking, where things are not seen as isolated structures but as members of a whole process; in that sense, we can say that the organization is a system of relations between individuals through which people, under the command of the Managers pursue common goals. These goals are a product of planning and decision making processes where the objectives are created based on the ability to learn with the employees - knowing that the organizations will truly harness the enthusiasm and learning ability of staff possess (Hayes et al. 1994: pp. 77-87).

The strategy concept is ancient, originating in the military field, and since the times of ancient Greece had high concept components planning and decision-making or actions. The strategy can be defined from two perspectives: from the perspectives of what an organization intends to do and from the perspective of what an organization does finally.

In the first perspective, the strategy is “to define the overall program and achieve the objectives of the organization and implementing its ...