Strategic Management



Strategic Management

Variable

Independent

Dependent

Moderating

Controlling

Eesley and Lenox's (2006) study

Secondary stakeholders actions

Firm's responses

Environmental issues

Industry and time period

Coombs and Gilley's (2005) study

Stakeholder management, the interaction of SM and firm's financial performance

CEO compensation

Financial performance

Industry, firm and CEO specific

Buysse and Verbeke's (2003) study

Environmental strategy

Stakeholder management

Environmental leadership

Country, industry and firm size

Introduction

When the executives start developing strategies for their corporations, they always start by analyzing the environment of the company. These analyses include the environmental conditions of the company, as well as, the industry. The executives then start the assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the company, as well as, the competitors. Keeping in mind the strategic analysis of the company, internal and external, strategies are made. These strategies are made which set a distinctive strategic position of the company (Carton & Hofer, Pp. 165-170, 2006). The strategies also help the organization in making further strategies which can help them in maintaining their competitive advantage, as well as, maintain a healthy competition in the market. A company makes its strategy either to compete with the competitors through strategies like low cost leadership or premium price (www.hbr.org). The value chain of the company is then aligned with the strategies in a way that they help each other. The value chain then crates the marketing, manufacturing, human resource and other decisions (Davenport & Leibold, Pp. 225, 2006). The final strategies are then made making use of these strategies and the final shape to the process of strategic management is given. The financial targets are also set and the budget is allocated to different departments so that they can start pursuing their strategies.

Discussion

The logic used in the case studies is that the strategies of a company, as well as, the options available to the strategic managers are bound by the internal and external environment. In simpler terms, it is the structure of an organization that ultimately shapes its strategies. The roots of the structuralist approach found its base from the industrial economics in the past century. The economics of industrial organization has been a dominant power in the strategy formulation and strategy implementation in such organizations for more than thirty years (Carton & Hofer, Pp. 165-170, 2006). This theory suggests, as taken in the study done by Eesley and Lenox's (2006) that the performance of a firm is dependent on the conduct of the firm, which is in turn dependent on the structure of the organization. The structure on which all of this is based upon includes the barriers to entry, the number of suppliers, the buyers and many such reasons. In the view of the world that is deterministic, the external conditions of a firm, which is its structure, ultimately decide what the corporate strategies of the firm will be.

There are many examples in the history of business where one can find that the structure of a company ultimately decides the corporate strategies that will be followed by the company (David, Pp. 198-200, 2005). The Model T of Ford to the ...