Preview

Strategic Management

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
7628 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Strategic Management
“Notable Quotes”

"Like a product or service, the planning process it self must be managed and shaped, if it is to serve executives as a vehicle for strategic decision-making."
—Robert Lenz

"The difference between now and five years ago is that information systems had limited function. You weren’t betting your company on it. Now you are."
—William Gruber

"Weak leadership can wreck the soundest strategy."
—Sun Tzu

"A firm that continues to employ a previously successful strategy eventually and inevitably falls victim to a competitor."
—William Cohen

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds."
—Albert Einstein

"The idea is to concentrate our strength against our competitor’s relative weakness."
—Bruce Henderson

This chapter focuses on identifying and evaluating a firm’s strengths and weaknesses in the functional areas of business, including management, marketing, finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and management information systems. Relationships among these areas of business are examined. Strategic implications of important functional area concepts are examined. The process of performing an internal audit is described. The Resource-Based View (RBV) of strategic management is introduced as is the Value Chain Analysis (VCA) concept.

The Nature of an Internal Audit
All organizations have strengths and weaknesses in the functional areas of business. No enterprise is equally strong or weak in all areas. Maytag, for example, is known for excellent production and product design, whereas Procter & Gamble is known for superb marketing. Internal strengths/weaknesses, coupled with external opportunities/threats and a clear statement of mission, provide the basis for establishing objectives and strategies. Objectives and strategies are established with the intention of capitalizing upon internal strengths and overcoming weaknesses. The internal-audit part of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    The internal forces being analyzed include processes and systems, technological, and intellectual property, during the implementation of a strategy in a company. Strengths allow an organization to gain competitive advantage by properly using resources and capabilities. Weaknesses limit the company ability to meet customers’ needs and put the organization in disadvantage (Pearce & Robinson, 2009). MCS biggest strengths are the ability to implement, control, and monitor new processes, which have allowed the company to offer quality services in a timely manner. The use of technology is also one of the biggest strengths for MCS. The company counts with a good information system, which has streamlined many processes within the organization, and at the…

    • 1378 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mgc1 Study Guide 2

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Identify elements of the external environment and internal resources of the firm to analyze before formulating a strategy.…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Eth 125 Diversity

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Ways they are identified are by race, gender, religion and ethinicity. With in these are Five characteristics that go along with these Distinguishing Physical or cultural traits, involuntary membership, in group marriage, awareness of…

    • 500 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Best Essays

    Strategic Management

    • 2510 Words
    • 11 Pages

    1. Determine the impact of the company’s mission, vision, and primary stakeholders on its overall success.…

    • 2510 Words
    • 11 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Strategic Management

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages

    For its Zara brand, Inditex manufactures the majority of the garments sells and undertakes all of its own distribution from manufacturing plants to its directly managed retail outlets. Benetton outsources most of its production and most of its retail outlets are owned and operated by franchisees. Which is a superior system?…

    • 251 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Once an analysis of these external factors has been evaluated, the paper will provide a study of the internal strengths and weaknesses of the company. This will be done on a general basis, from a financial viewpoint and the relative strength of the individual products within their product portfolio.…

    • 5120 Words
    • 21 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Strategic Management

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    4. Returns can only be measured in accounting terms such as return on assets, return on equity, or return on sales.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Week 5

    • 1861 Words
    • 12 Pages

    • An understanding of sources of competitive advantage requires the analysis of firm’s internal weaknesses and strengths as well internal attributes ( resources , capabilities and core competences). • Financial resources : Debts , equity , retained earnings. • Physical resources :Machines , manufacturing facilities , buildings. • Human resources : Experience , knowledge , judgment , risk taking propensity ,wisdom of individuals. • Organizational resources : History , relationship , trust , culture , firm’s reporting structure and information flow , management control 2 system , compensation policies.…

    • 1861 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Some researchers emphasize the importance of the internal audit part of the strategic management process by comparing it to the external audit. Some refers to the other side of the view. However one cannot say with degree of certainty that either external or internal factors will always be more important in seeking competitive advantage. Understanding bothe external and internal factors and more importantly understanding the relationships among them will be the key to effective strategy formulation. Because all believe that those external and internal changes are continually changing through time. This is the essence and challenge of strategic management and will decides the survival of the firm in the market.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Strategic Management

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Let’s look at what “strategic management” and “strategic management process” mean. First, strategic management “is the process of analyzing the current situation, developing appropriate strategies, putting those strategies into action, and evaluating and changing those strategies as needed (Coulter, 2013). And “strategic management process “implies sequential and interrelated activities leading to some outcome. In the strategic management process, the interrelated activities- situation analysis, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation – result in a set of strategies the organization uses in doing its business (Coulter, 2013).” In the MTV case, strategic management and strategic management process are illustrated when they created the MTV channel in the early 1980’s in which they targeted an audience of teens and young adults. And then they added reality television in 1992. Even though for years the MTV ratings declined they still had a massive audience. By 1981 they had increased their subscribers to 2.1 million. When MTV’s audience expanded this allowed the company to expand and lead them to owning many MTV channels and show. This company grew tremendously which lead them to go global and digital in the United States as well as other countries around the world. With their global strategy they have reached over 520 million households in 160 countries. They used the first-in-market strategy. They also set up a plan for their company after the industry critized their digital strategy.…

    • 676 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Business Model Yum Brands

    • 6465 Words
    • 26 Pages

    An internal organizational analysis aims to investigate a company`s business model, its mission, vision, goals, resources, competencies and undertaken strategies to compete on the market. It gives an overview of the organizations strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and consequently threats. By conducting a proper internal analysis a company can identify its competitive advantage over its competitors and use the outcomes to derive new scope of strategies and possibly effectively direct the organization on the long run. There are several major and crucial areas companies audit internally, that is to say organizations value chain, cultural web, business model, capabilities assessment. After conducting such analysis companies identify possible areas where immediate action is needed for improvement, its threshold capabilities, core competencies by which they gain competitive advantage.…

    • 6465 Words
    • 26 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Strategic Management

    • 3511 Words
    • 15 Pages

    Strategy – Yahoo has set a long term strategic direction for the business and its resources.…

    • 3511 Words
    • 15 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    An Internal Analysis of a company focuses on the strengths and weaknesses of internal factors that give a company certain advantages and disadvantages in meeting the needs of its target market. Strengths refer to core competencies that give the firm an advantage in meeting the needs of its target markets. Weaknesses refer to any limitations a company faces in developing or implementing a strategy. The aim of the internal analysis is to identify the company’s strengths and weaknesses and as a result the company should be able to identify what it is or is not capable of doing and what it needs to address before pursuing certain strategic options.…

    • 1459 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    A business entity needs to develop strategies to enable them to keen this competitive edge down to its sharpest point. This can be summarised as an entities strategic intent, the way in which it will apply its internal assets, both tangible and intangible, to its external environment. The first stage, and indeed an ongoing process for successful business entities in developing these strategies, is the careful evaluation of both the internal and external environment. This ‘strategic audit' is carried out in such a way as to distil a large amount of complex data and variables into a theoretical framework which allows managers to apply certain normative statements or conditions to them. The Theoretical Framework is broken down into Internal and External models, (and SWOT which examines both.) There are many different models, but some have become generic to strategy formation and are widely applied. For the internal environment there are; the BCG Matrix, Value Chain and the Strengths and Weaknesses section of SWOT analysis. For the External Environment there is PEST, Porter's 5 Forces and the Opportunities and Threats section of SWOT analysis. Whilst these provide a useful and readily comparable framework, each of the models makes assumptions about the nature of the environment and the nature of the interdependency of the factors (Kotler 1980), and for any strategic choice to be made from this framework requires the manager to fully understand the weaknesses in the models. Narayana (1986) suggests that the validity of strategic models is always questionable as the relationships between all the factors are…

    • 2147 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    larry page

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages

    “Many leaders of big organisations, I think, do not believe that change is possible. But if you look at history, things do change, and if your business is static, you are likely to have issues”…

    • 447 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays