The Strategy Safari : A Guide Tour

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

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).

Chapter 6 – Strategy Formulation: Situation Analysis and Business StrategyChapter 7 – Strategy Formulation: Corporate StrategyChapter 8 – Strategy Formulation: Functional strategy and Strategic Choice

According to Slack et al. The corporate strategy or business strategy is the guide lines for the whole corporation’s businesses in relation to its markets, customers, and the competitors (2007). In the same context, the same authors discussed the link between the corporate strategy and

Strategy formulation has been acknowledged as one of the most crucial factors of ensuring the long-term growth of the business. However, the manner in which strategy is formulated, and most importantly, the nature of the strategy chosen for the company determines its future position in the marketplace (Grant, 2005).

This paper begins with a summary view to develop the concept of strategy and why its implementation is difficult. The following sections then cover the core discussion of this paper to support the aforementioned

Throughout this paper I will be looking in-depth at two of the most well recognized strategic management theories, Intended Strategy and Emergent Strategy. I will be evaluating the suitability of the emergent and intended approaches to strategic management and measure the appropriateness of each theory using various academic models (such as PEST analysis, Porter's 5 Forces, Porter's Generic strategy) in order to consider the differing environmental contexts of my chosen organization - Oxfam.

Strategy is usually related and sometimes confused by people with planning. But as time course shows in the study of companies, there are different approaches of how a company can develop its strategy. Johnson, and Shcoles, in their book “Exploring Corporate Strategy” had studied the different ways that companies develop their strategy. The authors had formulated and structured three general ways how companies build it, there are: the design, experience and ideas lenses. “Exploring Corporate Strategy” literature explains that these are the main streams how people perceive that strategies are developed, but these streams are not exclusive but inclusive and can be combined to develop each company’s

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’.

In the book “Good Strategy and Bad Strategy”, Richard Rumelt illustrates examples of success and failure of business management to explain the true meaning of the strategy, and tells companies how to develop a correct strategy and adhere to core of management strategy. He also emphasizes the central role of strategic management as to remind the readers to understand the huge difference between a good strategy and bad strategy. This book has three sections: good and bad strategy, sources of power, and thinking like a strategist. I will be evaluating strengths and weaknesses under these topics. After finish reading the book, I had gained a better understanding of what a good strategy means to the success of a company. According to Rumelt, a good strategy is coherent, where companies pursue multiple objectives that are connected with each other. Rumelt points out that a good strategy consists of three elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action. (71) First, diagnosis means to define the obstacles and challenges that the companies are facing, and guidelines help the people to overcome the obstacles. Lastly, coherent action is the activities or actions that company did to be consistent with its guiding policy. Today, many of us lost the focus of the strategy, which results in the downward of businesses and organizations. Rumelt has defined the strategy as acknowledging the main problems and take coherent action to overcome the problems. Moreover, he illustrates

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

“Competitive strategy involves positioning a business to maximize the value of the capabilities that distinguish it from its competitor’s” (Porter 1980:47). A successful business plan requires first and foremost the formation of an appropriate strategy. Through the implementation of a suitable strategy, the company is able to obtain its own industry niche and gain an understanding of its customers (Porter 1985). Whichever strategy is adopted it must be adequately integrated within the firms goals and missions to achieve a competitive advantage (Parker and Helms 1992).

In the domain of management, strategic management encompasses identification together with definition of strategies. Usually, managers employ these strategies to strive for high performance as well as competitive advantage for a business establishment. In this respect, strategic management draws higher profitability if well planned and executed. In addition to that, it includes decisions as well as acts managers set about, and which determines the outcome of the organization’s performance. Incisively, a science is whatever skill that manifests detailed use of facts for a particular purpose. Subsequently, art is clearly characterized as the skill critical for any human tasks. Not only is strategic management a behavioral science,

Before formulating a strategy, leaders have to identify the need for change by careful analyzing the environment in which an organization exists. In other words, the organizational analysis is the starting point of the whole process of strategic planning. At this stage, strategy formulation, the leaders set objectives then analyze both the internal and external environment of the organization. Porter’s five forces model enable managers to assess the forces that make some

As per the Hambrick and Fredrickson article, most strategic plans only emphasize one or two of the five elements of a good strategy