Written Assessment
Writer:
1. Critically evaluate the current strategic position (environment+ resources and capabilities) of the organization and critically discuss the basis and sustainability of its competitive advantage.
To the author's opinion, Google has been using 3 strategies over the time since the company Executive chairman Eric Schmidt was appointed.
The author suggests that Google uses both prescriptive and emergent strategy and over the last five years developed a green strategy. "A prescriptive strategy is one whose objective has been defined in advance and whose main elements have been developed before the strategy commences"(Lynch 6th edition 2012).
The company states its mission statement: "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful"(Google 2012). Since it was established and it was the leading line of Google development, I think that the main elements such as the search algorithm were developed before strategy commences.
On the other hand, as Minzberg captured the essence of the emergent approach:
"..While recognizing the importance of thinking ahead and especially of the need for creative vision in this pedantic world, I wish to propose an additional view of strategist-as a pattern recognizer, a learner if you will-who manage a process in which strategist (and visions)can emerge as well as be deliberately conceived." (Lynch 6th edition 2012). The hyper competition and high changeability in the search engine market (high rate of change) require an Emergent strategy in order to stay ahead in front of competitors and to keep the organizations' sustainable competitive advantage over time. As demonstrated in figure 1.2, compared to its competitors, Google dominates the global search engine market by far (karmasnack.com 2012).
The reasons for that will be discussed further ahead on the environmental and