Strategic Management and Michael Porter: a Postmodern Reading

Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2011). Essentials of strategic management (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.

Pearce, John A. , & Robinson, Richard B. . (2009). Strategic management. formulation, implementation, and control. United States: McGraw-Hill.

1. To provide an introduction to the conceptual framework of strategic management using a non-business situation.

This article was really interesting as it discussed a matrix developed for creating strategies by a professor at Harvard. Michael Porter the creator, discussed the notion of how powerful this tool is because companies or organizations look at competition too narrowly. The five competitive forces include:

Pearce, J. A., II, Robinson, R. B. (2011). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (12th ed.). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin

Hunger, J. D., & Wheelen, T. L. (2011). Essentials of strategic management (5th ed.). Upper

Pearce, J. A. II, & Robinson, R. B. (2009). Strategic management: Formulation, implementation, and control (11th ed.). [University of Phoenix Custom Edition e-text]. New York: McGraw-Hill. Retrieved August 20, 2011, fr

“Decision making, strategy, and action

The various typologies associated with the strategic management model are being highlighted by Andrews et al (2009). One of which is the Miles and Snow's Typology. Developed from the studies of business strategies by Raymond Miles and Charles Snow, this typology posits that managers attempts at business strategy is aligning that strategy to the prevailing conditions of the external environment. Another premise of this typology is surrounding the four basic types of classification - defenders, prospector, analyzers and reactors.

Michael Porter’s article, “What is strategy?” sets to explain that both operation efficiency (OE) and strategy are required for reaching superior performance, but further clarifies and emphasizes the misnomer that OE is not strategy.

There are two schools of thought pertaining to how firms should choose the competitive strategy that best suits them. One is of the opinion that firms should choose one of the generic strategies and commit all resources to making it work. Porter belongs to this category. They believe that the value chain necessary for cost leadership is quite different from that of differentiation strategy and that while differentiation deals with better quality, cost leadership deals with lowering costs wherever possible.(DESS and DAVIES 1984) What porter articulated here is that there is need for strategic clarity.

(To make a summary of the article while answering the question, the answer directly related to the questions are highlighted )

Strategy can be defined as being different from one’s competitors, finding the race to operate and accomplished it. According to Michael Porter (1996), while becoming better at what you do is desirable, it will not benefit you in the long run because it is something other competitors can also do. Strategies for organizations are originally developed by Michael E. Porter in 1979 by introducing the five forces model. A company can identify the industry profitability and attractiveness by analyzing the five forces of Porter (Johnson et al., 2008). And then a reasonable strategy can be set up in line with the strengths and the weakness of an organization is able to create a plan for a stronger position for the organization within its

There is no exact definition for Strategy because it is defined in different ways as some people think that make a plan to get success in future is a strategy while others think that future is hard to predict. Exceptionally, some Japanese companies have no strategies though these companies have a good cost and continuous improvement. The definition for strategy is to explain the direction and scope of any company for the long term to achieve advantage for the company or to fulfill the needs and expectations. Strategy is different from Operational effectiveness and they work in different manner in the companies. Michael Porter, who is a professor at Harvard Business School and a strategy expert, says that it should determine how organizational resources and skills should create advantage. Accordingly, Strategy can also be defined as an organizational change during actions in the organizations for better and advantageous results or to determine how we win and get success in the future period. It is a needful developed plan with respect to market to compete the world. Organizations should be responsible for competitive changes according to the market. It is the main goal for any Organizations. Business/IT strategy is very important to know the success rate of your business. Apart from Business Strategy, the other two main types of strategy are Corporate Strategy and Team Strategy. These strategies give competitive advantage of cost leadership, differentiation and focus. The

First stage of planning model is about setting various goals of an organization. If strategy for The Comfort Zone was applied on the lines of planning school, it would set goals such as strengthening market position, expansion by entering new market and invest for better functioning of an organization. External and internal conditions which include forecasting competitive environment and study of strengths and weaknesses respectively are then studied. Evaluation of a project may be done using techniques such as PEST or value