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August 8th, 2017 
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Business Strategy
Strategy in an organization is defined as finding out the nature of both the enterprise along with the setting, modifying, and applying efforts to realize its goals. It is the direction as well as the scope of organisations over a long-term that achieves benefit for organisations through the process in which resources are configured in challenging environments for the purpose of meeting the market needs and fulfilling the expectations of the stakeholders (Elms et al.,2010).
Processes of forming integrative strategy combined with equal consistency and materialization facilitates highly effective work management especially complex types of work. When an organisation allows high degrees of participation by its members it facilitates improvements in the results of the organisation. This mostly applies to administrative works, engineering as well as professional works (Lavarda, Giner, & Bonet, 2011).
Corporate strategy in a firm is made up of a chain of nationalized strategies. Conversely, some major forces that cause change at this moment in time are exerting more pressure towards the fulfilment of a more incorporated strategic approach that will see every one of the national environment being associated with the international system. In larger firms different branches in the corporate hierarchy specialize on diverse strategic planning levels. It is the duty of the managers in particular environments of operations to develop sub strategies which are later integrated with broader strategy (Leontiades, 1987).
A clear strategy on Business Unit has its heart in attaining competitive advantage on the basis of the business decisions made on the location, the time and the mode in which to compete. This strategy drives greater financial performance as well as seeking to bring into line the corporate strategies, business unit and functional strategies. This strategy is exclusively placed to append value due to the realistic emphasis laid on the business results. This strategy should reveal corporate imperatives and should as well be seen in functional strategy. Thus, this will ensure that corporation needs and needs of the customers and those of the shoppers or consumers are met. In addition, a business leader will be in a position to achieve his objectives on the business performance (InDeed Holdings Jersey Limited, 2011).
Operational strategy is crucial to execute strategies thus a business leader should identify and list his priorities of a collection of several programs to deliver the required strategy. On the other hand the execution which involves an implementation of programs follows as the business follows up to improve the ways of identifying the programs that have been undertaken. A successful execution of strategies is caused by relating several business benefits with capabilities through portfolio configuration (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).
In addition, operational strategies seek to identify risks and evaluate them. The strategies determine how risks can be of significance to the business as well as come up with the preventive or curative measures. It is done by stating the intensity of the probability or consequences of every risk ranging them from high to low. Scaling comes in handy otherwise called risk maps to plot the significance of occurrences of risk (CranfieldUniversity, n.d).
Strategic management refers to the process involving an assessment of the corporation with its environment so as to fulfil the objectives of the firm. These objectives include adapting along with adjusting to the environment through manipulating opportunities and reducing threats. The corporate mission of strategic management is to make use of, along with coordinating all the resources plus the venues presented to the management in the process, attentively progressing any given strategic agenda by enforcing a sort of an alignment that is Omni-directional among them (Alkhafaji, 2003).
Strategic management that is effective focuses on keeping an eye on external forces and trends along with internal performance, refreshing intelligence and revision of strategy when needed and in the required format. There is also a greater need to move emphasis from the measurement of performance to its management. This is due to the ubiquitous nature of the systems for performance measurement. In addition, real performance management improves performance while maximizing the public services benefits (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).
On the other hand, even as strategic management provides necessary framework designed in support of successful performance management, in itself, performance management sometimes enriches strategic planning through clarifying strategy as well as finding strategy. For example an experience in the systems of performance management that is in continuity can inform the planners as regards the realistic opportunities, expectations and limitations encountered in strengthening the programs performance in their operating context. The performance reports also help in identifying strategies that tend to be effective in particular areas while identifying those that are not as well (Poister, 2010).
Strategic planning is used to identify the corporate mission of a company. It clearly defines where a company or an organisation is going and the threats involved. Strategic planning deals with the process of formulating strategy through laid down concepts, tools and processes. It is aimed at putting to an endorsement of strategic thinking, operations as well as progressive learning. It thus ensures the vitality of an organization, its effectiveness and the capacity to add on to public value (Poister, 2010).
Nevertheless, the modern strategic management practitioners are generally criticized for their focal point on maximizing profits while other researchers have criticized its lack of relevance. This, to the modern society, is portrayed as a major problem mounting tension for this field to re-evaluate its system of belief, assumptions and practices putting into consideration the greater social impact (Poister, 2010).
The risk management process should by no means be ignored by businesses for it helps anticipate disaster, accidents or losses thus minimizing the cost on fighting them. It positively gives a timely and budgetary control for the business plan as well as the allocation of resources. It also improves on the planning of the business, the making of decisions and prioritization. Besides, achieving success in an environment of global business calls for proper management of challenges as well as expectations. Therefore a company should utilize the stakeholder or else socio-political strategies of risk management (Reuvid, 2005).
Organisational objectives are established in different levels ranging from the top with the corporate bodies all the way down to the team and individual objectives that generate operational activities. They are frequently decoded into targets that aid into motivating the organization to reach its short-term goals. Therefore, objectives offer clear structures for all the different activities carried out by an organisation. Managers can thus make changes that are required for progress by measuring the achievements of the objectives (The Times 100, 2011).
Core competencies are unique capabilities that afford some competitive advantage levels. These competencies involve knowledge, skills, systems and functions that are underlying. The factor that greatly determines the core competence of an organisation is the unique advantage earned over the competitors. In an organisation that deals with IT, functions as well as capabilities and skills are termed competent if they can support business processes directly (Hayes, 2011).
Organisational values define the behaviour of each individual in an organisation. They are worthwhile traits that govern the actions of an organisation towards its internal community, customers, and suppliers. Values together with experiences of the individuals in the firm bond to form the corporate values or culture. In this case, business leaders will determine a lot in the setting and establishing a conducive environment for the parties involved in the firm, depending with the kind of values they embrace. It is upto them to select the right individuals in whom they believe to have similar values that fit in the culture of the workplace (Heathfield, 2011).
Identifying as well as developing clear and concise meaning of corporate values will instil an understanding into the minds of the employees who in return contribute towards a direction of a company. Thus, a business leader should nurture and support the impact relayed by the values they implement in order to gain the confidence of their employees. In addition they will model and demonstrate these values in deeds in their contribution, their decision making and intrapersonal as well as interpersonal interaction. Prioritization will be anchored in the corporate values.
Hofstede Model has been used in the study of organisations and it has greatly benefited the researchers involved due to its approachable nature. It demonstrates that values are defined in four layers. He points out that culture to him resembles an onion. It is a structure that is peel able every layer after another so as to reveal what is contained inside. The most concealed layer is the one that represents ideas of people on different things. These are different preferences of individuals on different dealings of circumstances over others (Barling & Cooper, 2008).
In his model as well visible practices carrying invisible meanings of culture extend transversely the three layers that are outside. He demonstrates how exogenous influences like nature forces affect the cultural origins for instance historically or technologically. He also argues that influences from outside forces rarely influence norms but rather the cultural origins for instance technology (Barling & Cooper, 2008).
This multilevel nature by Hofstede Model is essential in the sense that it is easy for an organisation to identify a visible area along with the one that is concealed. However, this is only achieved through having keen interest and understanding those elements that are visible in the system of the culture (Barling & Cooper, 2008).
Stakeholders also referred to as stockholders comprise of major suppliers, consumers, creditors, stockholders, employees and management. Their expectation is for their demands to be satisfied by the company. They for instance provide capital for a company and in exchange get appropriate investments returns. Employees on one hand give the needed skills and labours in a company in return expect job satisfaction and fair wages and salaries. On the other hand, major creditors offer financial support expecting more value along with timely payment. Major customers pay money for products as well as services from the company expecting to get the value required for those purchases (Alkhafaji, 2003).
Stakeholders are essential in the sense that they are the capital givers of a business. They therefore have an upper hand as far as possession is concerned giving them the mandate to remove any ineffective or incompetent managers. Therefore, for this to take effect there should be an application of a number of governance mechanisms. One of these is holding annual meetings for stockholders to let shareholders air their views concerning the performance of the management. Conversely, opposing the management often does not take effect due to the difficulty they encounter in financing their personal challenges. Besides, most of them do no have enough shares to have real influence on corporate policy. They are as well numerous and spread worldwide (Alkhafaji, 2003).
It is therefore essential for the company to take into consideration the interest of its stakeholders when formulating strategies. If not, the company stands to lose the shares from stockholders, employees who will quit jobs, support from the creditors, customers who will buy from the competitors and the suppliers who will move to other dependable buyers. On the other hand, if their interests are considered, the company implies to the stakeholders that the formulation of strategies will be effected with the claims of the stakeholders in mind. In addition for there to be success the manager of the company should be capable to balance the demands of the stakeholders with their differing interests in formulating as well as implementing strategy (Alkhafaji, 2003).
New strategies formulated by business leaders are as a result of the constant pressure to act in accordance with the demands laid down by the stakeholders. These strategies are aimed at improving the levels of value offered to the customers as well as the stakeholders. However, the execution of these strategies is coupled with several challenges that these business leaders have to face. Most of the businesses, according to results findings by previous researchers, experience between 60-70% failures to introduce new strategies in their businesses. This is as a result of inadequate planning, implementation among other reasons (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).
Shareholders persistently exert pressure designed for acquiring greater profitability hence reasons for business owners to redefine previous strategies more frequently. However devastating it may sound, these changes in redefinition of strategies go in favour with the demands of the customers due to their changes in their priorities and needs. On the other hand, an increase in the complexity channels by organizations in attempts to produce products as well as services that cross multiple boundaries in relation to the geography and functions of the organization. Therefore, there remains higher chances to fail as a result of the facilities and workforce needed to be involved to realize the program of strategic management (Franken, Edwards, & Lambert, 2009).
Mendelow Interest Grid Interest is one of the methods used that is most applicable with smaller projects. This involves rating the power of the stakeholder deriving from their positions of jobs against their definite stake in the business using a matrix of 4 by 4After clearly understanding the influence of the stakeholders in the organisation it is important for a business leader to analyse the salience of these stakeholders. Salience in this case refers to the process whereby relative importance and the requirements of stakeholders are assessed (Duardo, 2007).
After mapping them out, they are then prioritised from the most important to the least important. In this case a most important stakeholder is the project owner who can be rated higher than an internal user. Lastly, depending on the levels earned by the stakeholders after the prioritisation, each group is assigned its relevant time. For instance, the most important ought to be managed closely and therefore the communication plan if well executed should assign every second of the day to such a one. Others will only require weekly or monthly communication (Duardo, 2007).
Finally, it is important to distinguish the needs of the stakeholders and those of the shareholders. Shareholders have shares in a company and therefore are part time owners of the company whereas stakeholders do not own the company but rather have interest in it. Therefore, in most cases conflicts arise when the two have different interests for instance shareholders will want profits that are short term whilst the desires of the stakeholders tend to be costly and lead to reduction of profits. Therefore, business owners ought to balance their wishes with the wishes of the stakeholders or else jeopardise their profit generating ability in the future (Chinyio, 2010).
References
Alkhafaji, A. F. (2003). Strategic management. United Kingdoms: Routledge.
Barling, J., & Cooper, C. L. (2008). The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Behavior: Micro approaches. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Chinyio, E. (2010). Construction Stakeholder Management. United Kingdom: John Wiley and Sons.
CranfieldUniversity. (n.d). Managing risk. Retrieved June 17, 2011, from http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/layer?r.i=1074410020&r.l1=1074404796&r.l2=1079050214&r.l3=1074404839&r.s=m&r.t=RESOURCES&topicId=1074404839
Duardo. (2007, December 17). On Prioritising Your Stakeholders (Simple). Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://onprojects.net/2007/12/17/information-requirements-stakeholder-analysis-management/
Elms, H., Brammer, S., Harris, J. D., & Phillips, R. A. (2010). New Directions in Strategic Management. Business Ethics Quarterly , pp. 401 -425.
Franken, A., Edwards, C., & Lambert, R. (2009). Executing Strategic Change. UNDERSTANDING THE CRITICAL MANAGEMENT ELEMENTS THAT LEAD TO SUCCESS , 51 (3).
Hayes, I. S. (2011). Developing a Core-Competence Based Strategy. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://www.clarity-consulting.com/developing_a_core-competence_strategy_summary.htm
Heathfield, S. M. (2011). Develop Your Values and Value Statements Within Your Strategic Framework. Retrieved July 6, 2011, from http://humanresources.about.com/cs/strategicplanning1/a/strategicplan_3.htm
InDeedHoldingsJerseyLimited. (2011). Business Unit Strategy : Distinctive Competitive Advantage. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://www.in-deed.com/Competitive_Advantage
Lavarda, R. B., Giner, M. C., & Bonet, F. P. (2011). Understanding how the strategy formation process interacts with the management of complex work. European Business Review , 23 (1), 71-86.
Leontiades, J. (1987). Multinational Corporate Strategy. U.S.A: Lexington Books.
Poister, T. H. (2010). Th e Future of Strategic Planning in the Public Sector: Linking. Atlanta, Georgia: Georgia State University.
Reuvid, J. (2005). Managing business risk. United Kingdom: Kogan Page Publishers.
TheTimes100. (1995-2011). Strategy. Retrieved July 1, 2011, from http://www.thetimes100.co.uk/theory/theory–aims-objectives–361.php
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