An analysis of Strategic management

An analysis of Strategic management Initially strategic management was of most use to large corporations operating in multiple industries. Increasing risk of error, costly mistakes and even economic ruin are causing todays professional managers in all organizations to take strategic management seriously in order to keep their company competitive in an increasing volatile environment. (Frery 2006) Different authors have described strategic management as followed: The strategic management is used to present to strategic formulation, implementation and evaluation with strategic planning referring only the strategy formulation (Pearce Robinson 2000) the intention of the strategic management is to develop and produce new and different opportunities for future. As Mr. Potter refers that Strategy is the direction of an organization over the long term which achieves advantage in a changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences with the fulfilling stakeholder expectations. This in turn led to organizational development activities as reorganizing, new definitions of roles, jobs and etc. (Potter 1996) And also it can be carried in the strategic management is that set of managerial decision and action that determines the long run performance of a corporation. It includes environment scanning (both external and internal).strategic formulation (strategic or long range planning), strategic implementation and evaluation and control. As this definition implies, strategic management focuses on integrating management, marketing, finance, and production / operations, research and development and computer information system to achieve organizational success. (Hoskisson, Hitt Wan 1999) The study of strategic management therefore emphasizes the monitoring and evaluating of external opportunities and threats in light of a corporations strengths and weaknesses. Strategic management as a field of study incorporates the integrative concerns of business policy with a heavier environmental and strategic emphasis. Therefore strategic management has tended to replace business policy as the preferred name of the field. (Hoskisson, Hitt Wan 1999) The strategic management is a core area for an organization in order to explore the problems which result in success or failure. Strategic management has been defined as that set of decisions and actions which lead to the development of an effective strategy or strategies to help achieve corporate objectives. (Luffman, Lea, Sanderson and Kenny 1996) Basic stages of strategic management: The strategic management process consists of four basic stages. Environmental scanning, strategic formulation, strategic implementation, and evaluation and control. Environmental scanning:- Before an organization can begin strategy formulation, it must scan the environment to identify possible opportunities and threats and as well the strength and weaknesses. Environmental scanning is the monitoring, evaluating and disseminating of information from the internal and the external environments to key people within the organization. A organization use this method to avoid strategic surprise and to ensure its long term health. Research has found a positive relationship between environmental scanning and profit (Thomas, Clark Gioia 1993) Strategic formulation:- This is the expansion of the long range plans for the effective management of environmental opportunities and threats as well as the organization strength and weakness. It consist of defining the corporate mission, identify achievable objective, rising strategies the setting policies. Strategy formulation issue include deciding what new business to enter, what businesses to abandon, how to allocate resources, whether to expand operations or identify, whether to enter international markets, whether to merge or form a joint venture and how to avoid a hostile. Because every organizations have limited resources itself. So strategists ought to decide which alternative strategy will be benefit for the firm most. Top managers have the best perception of understanding effect of strategy formulation and they are the persons who have the authority to commit the resources necessary for implementation. (Hitt Michael 2006.) Strategic implementation:- Strategic implementation is the most difficult stage in strategic management. This process requires a firm to establish annual objectives, devise policies, motivate employees and allocate resources for the implementation of the formulated strategies. This is the process that converts the strategies and policies in to the action through the development of programs. Strategy implementation includes developing a strategy-supportive culture, creating an effective organizational structure, redirecting marketing efforts, plan the budgets, developing and utilizing information system and linking employee payment to organization performance. (Hitt Michael 2006.) Evaluation and control:- Strategic evaluation is the final stage in the strategic management. The purpose of this process is to evaluate the actual performance of an organization to do the comparison with the desire result. Because the strategic management processes were inappropriately used, operational managers must know about it. So that they can correct the employee activity. Evaluating and controlling is the major element of the strategic management to identify the weaknesses in previous executed strategic planes and thus stimulated the entire process to begin again. And all strategies are the subject to future modification because external and internal factors are continuously changing. Followings are the three fundamental strategy evaluation activities Reviewing external and internal factors that are the bases for current strategies. Measuring performance. Talking corrective action. (Hitt Michael 2006.) The phases of the strategic management: A firm generally evolves through the following four basic phases of strategic management Basic financial planning (phase. 1):- The project is based on the analysis very little proposed with the most information from the organization. The sales typically offer the small amount of environmental protection, information. Such simple operational planning is only pretending, strategic management, and it is quite time consuming. The time horizon is usually one year. (Gluck, Kaufman Welleck 1982) Forecast based planning (phase.2):- In addition to internal information, managers gather available data from environment to extrapolate the current trend of five years and future. This phase also time consuming. The process gets very political as managers compete for larger share and funds. The time horizon is usually three to five years. (Gluck, Kaufman Welleck 1982) Externally oriented planning (phase.3):- Top level management controls the planning process by the introduction of strategic planning. The company tries to increase its responsiveness to changing markets and competition through strategic thinking. Top management typically develops five-year plan with the help of consultants but input from lower levels. (Gluck, Kaufman Welleck 1982) Strategic management (phase.4):- The employees at many levels from various departments and works groups develop and integrate a serious of strategic plans aimed at achieving the companys primary objectives. The complicated annual five years plan is replaced with the help of all levels of the organization throughout the year. (Gluck, Kaufman Welleck 1982) Levels of strategic management: Strategy exists at a number of levels in an organization. They are, Corporate level strategy:- This is concerned about the overall scope of an organization and how value will be added to the different units of an organization. Corporate strategy tropically fit with the three main categories of stability, expansion and reduction of expenditure. (Ansoff 2002) According to Michael potter, a firm must formulate a business strategy that incorporates cost leadership, differentiation or focus in order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage and long term success in its chosen areas or industries. (Potter 1993). Alternatively, according to Kim and Mauborgne, an organization can achieve high growth and profits by creating a blue ocean strategy that breaks the previous value cost trade off by simultaneously pursuing both differentiation and low cost. (Kim Mauborgne 2007) Eg:- Nicholas piramal follower a corporative growth strategy in order to have more share formulation drugs In corporate strategy, Johnson, Scholes and Whittington present models in which strategic option are evaluated against three key success criteria, Suitability (would it work?) Feasibility (can it be made to work) Acceptability (will they work it) (Johnson, Scholes Whittington 2008) Business level strategy:- The second level is business level strategy which is about how various businesses included in the business strategy and compete in their particular markets. Because of this reason business strategy is called as competitive strategy. This typically concerns issues such as pricing strategy, innovation or differentiation instance by better quality. So where ever corporate level strategy involves decision about the overall organization as a whole, strategic decision related to particular strategic business unit within the overall organization. (Johnson, Scholes Whittington 2008) According to Potters statement The business strategy must be maintained continually, in line with changes in the business and its environment. It should be formally reviewed at least annually as part of the business planning round; it provides the context for progress reporting on strategic themes. (Potter 1993). The business strategy must always show progress against plans to date, to enable planners to determine the current business environment and the impact that specific change programs and projects will have on the organization as a whole. There must be accurate, timely information about: Major investments to date, the corporate risk register, For each major investment, the risks associated with it. (Potter 1996) Operational strategy:- The third level of strategy is at the operating end of an organization. This is an approach taken by the functional areas to achieve the corporate objectives and strategies by maximizing the resources productivity.

Sperm Sorting :: DNA Sex Selection Reproduction Genetics Essays

Sperm Sorting Humans have tried for some time to determine the gender of their child while it is still in the womb. Craving sweets or a slower heart rate means you’ll be having a baby girl. Eating a lot of salty foods, having an especially active baby or carrying your baby low means it’s time to start painting the baby’s room blue1. Advances in science have moved us beyond these old wives’ tales and allowed us to exactly determine the gender of a child before it is born through the use of an ultrasound. A major decision for most people currently is if you want to know what gender your baby will be before it is born. While some are making that choice, others are choosing their child’s gender. I intend to address how this is possible, and if allowing such a choice is ethical. A significant change in gender determination is in progress. Many people are worried about the possibilities that eugenics will bring, including the possibility of gender determination through DNA modification. What these people are overlooking is, gender selection is already in use, and DNA modification is not necessary. Three hundred babies have already had their gender predetermined in the United States through the use of a process called sperm sorting2. Sperm sorting was initially developed as a means to regulate the gender of offspring in cattle. Sperm sorting is achieved through exploitation of the size difference between the X and Y chromosome. The X and Y chromosome are those that will determine the gender of an offspring. The egg of a female contains two X chromosomes, and each sperm from the male contains either an X or a Y. If the sperm that inseminates the egg contains a Y chromosome the egg will mature into a male, if the sperm that inseminates the egg contains an X, the egg will mature into a female. The X chromosome is approximately three times as large as the Y chromosome. Early methods of sperm sorting took advantage of the weight difference that is a result of their size difference. A sample of sperm was collected in a test tube, and then spun in a centrifuge, which separates the sample by weight. The X sperm will be at the very bottom of the tube while the Y sperm will be closer to the top. The major problem with this method is the high rate of speed at which the centrifuge spins in order to separate the sperm causes many collisions.

Sydney Harbour Bridge

Australia is known all over the globe for several reasons. The natural beauties of the country and the wild life are always on the top of the list. But when thinking about Australia there are two super structures that come to mind, The Sydney Opera House and The Sydney Harbour Bridge. In this short report it can be found small history along with a short description about the Sydney Bridge.II. Main Body II. 1 History The first plans to build a bridge actually goes back to year of 1815, but it wasn’t until 1922, after being delayed manly because of the WWI, that the parliament approved the laws for the construction of this massive structure. The actual work didn’t begin until 1924 and took 8 years, a 1400 men work force, and several tragic accidents to finally finish it (Australian Government).The official opening ceremony was on 19 March 1932, were the Premier of New South Wales was supposed to cut the ribbon, but a man in military clothe riding a horse, slash the ribbon before the ceremony began, declaring the bridge opened in the name of the people of Australia. II. 2 Description Also known as the â€Å"Coathanger† by many residents of the city of Sydney, the Harbour Bridge is, until the date, the world’s largest, but not longest steel arch bridge.This 53,000 tons structure is located in the Sydney Harbor, uniting the Central Business District (or CBD) at Dawes Point with the commercial and residential areas in the North Shore at Milsons Point (Wikipedia 2010). The bridge is about 500 meters long. Today carries eight traffic lanes, two rail lines, one in each direction, a pedestrian pathway on the eastern side and a cycleway on the western side of the bridge. The arch summit is about 135 meters above the average harbour water level. There are four pylons at each end of the arch that weren’t part of the initial design and they don’t actually fulfil any structural purpose.These structures were added latter on to improve the appearance of the bridge, but now they were all put into use, the most famous being the one located in the south east of the bridge. This particular pylon now holds a three stories museum with the bridge history (Wikipedia 2010). III. Conclusion As can be seen the Sydney Harbour Bridge not only works as a mean to cross the harbour in a more efficient way, but it has become one of the most important landmarks of Australia, thanks to its architecture, beautiful views and tourist attractions.It doesn’t matter if you’ve been there or not, when somebody talks about Sydney, is almost inevitable but to think about this structure. ?IV. Bibliography Wikipedia 2010, Sydney Harbour Bridge, viewed 2 December 2010,   http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Sydney_Harbour_Bridge

Afric A Free Trade Zone - 984 Words

In the late 1800’s Europe began its quest to gain more land and control over Africa. Not only does Europe want to grow economically, but it also wanted to gain more resources. They believed that Africa would be simple to acquire, since it had a weak economical structure. The Scramble for Africa occurred in 1884, where European countries met at the Berlin Conference. Here, fourteen major ambassadors of Europe met and developed rules for who would receive which parts of Africa. However, the most important European countries that were present here were France, The U.S, Germany, and Britain. They wanted to gain money, raw materials, markets, and access to trade routes. Some of the raw materials that they wanted were oil, rubber, iron, gold, diamonds, ivory, and most importantly cheap labor. All of Africa was divided between Europe, except for one part which was the Congo. The Congo was a free trade zone, the only problem with that, was that it was in the middle of Africa and very difficult to access. Many people would die before they even reached the Congo due to diseases such as Malaria. Heart of Darkness is a book by Joseph Conrad where Conrad depicts how slavery and imperialism go hand in hand. In this book there is a man named Marlow, who was an adventurer, and he wanted to explore the Congo. His aunt told lies which were able to get him on a boat as the captain . Imperialism is when a country tries to extend its power into another country through military force. This isShow MoreRelatedChina in Africa Essay20116 Words   |  81 Pagesstories’ merely reinforces this fact. The current role of agriculture and rural development in African national economies and its potential for improving material standards of living and life chances is thus of pressing concern. It is time to 3 AfRIC AN AGRICULTURE ask if agriculture spells welfare enhancement or decline for Africa’s rural dwellers. The report African Agriculture and the World Bank: Development or Impoverishment? by Havnevik et al (2007) offers a critical reflection of the WorldRead MoreGlobalization of South Africa8279 Words   |  34 Pagesadvantage, disadvantage, trade and FDI in SA from globalization perspective. South Africa(SA) is the one of the post BRICs country and it has largest economy market in Africa. Following the democratic elections of 1994, SA corporations moved with alacrity into the rest of Africa and beyond. Mining houses led the way, followed by manufacturers and financial institutions. Multinational companies also have branched in SA because it is a beachhead for the Africa and takes 70% of African trade. The Government