STRATEGY AND CHANGE



Strategy and Change

Strategy and Change

Introduction

Nowadays, business world is rapidly changing. Organisation must formulate a strategic plan to compete and sustain in the highly competitive business environment. The competition and uncertainty in the marketplace necessitate change, either in systems, processes and people. Effective management of change obliged top executives to put into practice strategic management process to cope up with upcoming business challenges. Thus, this assignment provides an insight on strategic management process, the process of external analysis, change management process, the differences between emergent and deliberate strategy, use of ROI or EPS as a primary measure of corporate performance, and the process of internal analysis.

Discussion

Q1#

Strategy can be defined as the long-term plan of the company for how the company makes a fit between external (opportunities and threats), and internal (strengths and weaknesses) to remain competitive. Strategic management process is the process of determining and implementing the mission of the organisation by matching organisation's capabilities with the external environment.

The most essential part of the strategic management process is strategic planning. Strategic management process involves both strategic planning and execution and refers to the process that identifies and executes the strategic plan of the organisation, by making a fit between company's internal strengths and weaknesses and external environment. Strategic planning includes five essential tasks: (1) define the business and develop a mission, (2) evaluate organisation's internal and external environment, (3) formulate a new statement of business, (4) translate the mission into strategic objectives, and (5) formulate a course of action or strategies (Aho & Uden, 2013, pp.14-24).

Others define the strategic management process are the process where organisations carried out situation analysis, formulate strategy, implement strategy and evaluate strategy. Such elements are vital in developing a strategic management process. Businesses revise their strategic management process to deal with market challenges and changes take place in the market. For example, Wal-Mart has a strategic principle of low prices, every day. Thus, Wal-Mart formulated its strategies and strategic management process to meet this goal, such as the marketing mix of Wal-Mart emphasises on lower prices.

Despite several benefits of strategic management process a business has, there are several limitations. The most complex and difficult phase of strategic management process is the implementation. In this phase, management requires effective means of communication to keep the workforce motivated during the change. Strategic management process is time consuming as managers need to carry out internal and external market analysis to cope up with rapid changing customer needs and marketplace. At times, strategic management process ignores managerial functions. In addition, strategic management process impedes organisational flexibility, as well as diminishing viability.

Strategic management process highly emphasises on future aspect to offer competitive business advantage. In doing so, organisations overlook the ethical issues they encounter during strategic management process. The most prevailing ethical dilemmas faced by most of the organisation includes arising issue of unfair competition, where businesses are forced to charge unfair prices, as well as big firms have the advantage due to ...