Strategic Human Resource Management Essay

‘Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through it’

Strategy is a set of complicated tactics formulated by the executives of a company directed towards the achievement of company’s goal (Salmela, 2002). It is about all the path ways that a company would follow to reach its ultimate goal. It is a company’s strategy which helps to identify what it does better than the other companies in the industries, which may be different from what it does best. For successful strategy formulation and implementation, a company should know the needs of customers and should have knowledge of its competitors. Through a good strategy a company would identify that opportunity which makes it different from the others (Thompson, 2005).

Changes in strategy are inevitable as the Department’s goals and objectives alter to meet the demands of

A corporate strategy is a plan based on the corporate aims and objectives which defines the overall scope and direction of the business by identifying its choice of business, markets and activities. For an organisation facing such

In an essence, the strategy is beyond a direction or future blueprint for growth & sustain in the global completive environment rather than just an asset of an organization. “The problem of performing strategy, how is it done, who does it and what they use to do it, is so important for both strategy theorists and practitioners. (Jarzabkowski, 2005 :1)

Strategy planning involves considerable time. The long time spans could distract the managers from current strategic goals (Grant Attwood, March 2008). The management must be well informed, of the business shocks and the referral changes. Execution must respond to the unanticipated events.

The strategy of the company follows the mission and vision statement and is an assessment of the internal and external environment. A strategist can then select appropriate strategies or plans of action for his or her organization (Achua & Lussier 2010, p. 427). The strategies of companies include such actions as diversification, joint ventures, mergers, and acquisitions, new product development, and entering new markets.\

Alfred Chandler(1963) defines strategy as ‘ the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals’. And Michael porter(1996) sees it as ‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’.

The ability to sustain the business in the market is definitely a tough job. That explains why behind every company there is a strategist to come up with innovative ideas to achieve specific goals. The need for a structural organization to grow, a plan such as a unique strategy is needed. A strategy is a unique plan, a long term plan for a structural organization to achieve a targeted goal. It involves unique activities that enhance the organization to outshine from the competitors and still preserve it. There are different strategies to take into consideration but the definition of strategy that this essay will outline here focus on three questions below:

What has ultimately come out of our discussion is a contrasting view to some classical explanations that all strategies are planned. According to Mintzberg successful strategies can emerge from within an organisation without prior planning and may be as a result of any unforeseen circumstances. Strategies can take root in all kinds of places where people have the capacity to learn and the resources to support that capacity. The strategies of most companies are a combination of the intended and the emergent. What it means for the management is that it needs to recognise this process of emergence and to intervene when required, to ward of bad emergent strategies and encourage good ones. And to make this judgement management needs to wear the strategic thinking hat.

The inflexible nature of deliberate strategy greatly reduces its litheness for creative and reactive process. Emergent strategy therefore possesses a much greater adaptability, particularly in tentative times and more difficult business environmental conditions.

Our business and our industry are facing many challenges. Internally or externally, developing a strategy is not a one-time event, nor is it limited to just a certain set of initiatives. Instead, it is a collective set of actions to achieve the ultimate goal of improving our profitability. Parts of the strategy must and will remain flexible.

Changing circumstances and ongoing management efforts to improve the strategy cause a company 's strategy to evolve over time—a condition that makes the task of crafting a strategy a work in progress,

Strategy was shaped from the top but also from every person in the company as she adapted the deliberate strategy to her work. The existence of an emergent strategy led to the question of how top management could influence it (through, among other tools, MCS). The concepts of interactive and boundary systems (Simons 1995)—with the purpose of managing these ‘‘unexpected’’ decisions—captured this new role for MCS. If day-to-day actions modify top management deliberate strategy, then why should top management go all the way to formulating it? The answer to this question led to the next step in the evolution of our understanding of the strategic process. Research suggested that top management does not formulate a deliberate strategy that is then randomly mixed with the emergent strategy. Rather, top management knows that the deliberate strategy is never implemented; instead of trying to force it, top management focuses on defining the guidelines that shape the emergent strategy (Burgelman 2002). The process of setting up these guidelines to induce certain strategic behavior is captured in the idea of intended strategic actions (lower left quadrant). These guidelines reflect top management’s objectives rather than prescribe what the organization should do. This idea was further refined through the observation that emergent strategy included two very different types of outcomes. Often emergent strategy evolved

Strategic planning is an organization 's process of defining its strategy, or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to pursue this strategy. In order to determine the direction of the organization, it is necessary to understand its current position and the possible avenues through which it can pursue a particular course of action. Generally, strategic planning deals with at least one of three key questions: "What do we do?", "For whom do we do it?", "How do we excel?"