What Happened to Circuit City

Mintzberg, H. Research . (1972) On strategy-making', Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Academyo f Management,N Minneapolis.

Later, Wurtzel decided to expand the business into discount stores (Romero, 2013, p. 31). Business was flourishing for Wards, that in 1961 the company decided to expand its business even further by adding discount stores. But, in 1975, taking on expansion too quickly almost caused the company to file bankruptcy. To prevent going bankrupt, the company decided to scale back on the number of unprofitable outlets by closing or selling them. Then in the late 70’s the business began to make a comeback. It grew rapidly so much so that the company had fifty-three superstore by 1983 and thirty-seven smaller electronic stores (Romero, 2013, p. 32). According to Hart, Matulich, Rubinsak, Sheffer, Vann, and Vidalon (2012), “In 1984, Wards changed its corporate name to Circuit City Stores, Inc. and became publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange” (p.

Chandler (1977) believes strategy is about using the necessary recourses so the organizations are able to carry out their long-term goals and aims. Which relates to Johnson (1987, pp. 4-5) who states, “Strategic decisions occur at many levels of managerial activity and will be concerned with the long-term direction”.

In his article, “The Fall and Rise of Strategic Planning,” Henry Mintzberg (1994) provides his views on the process of strategic planning. He offers that most companies and organizations start a strategic planning process with little understanding of the definition or actual purpose of planning. He tends to admonish much of the conventional understanding concerning strategic planning and proposes his interpretations. He states that “the most successful strategies are visions, not plans” (Mintzberg, 1994, p. 107).

Circuit City hopes to reduce the price of goods that can compete with Best Buy and Amazon, but it also give up its original competitive advantage.

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

Different levels of managers evaluate and make strategic decision from different aspects. They contribute to strategies establishment based on their own areas.

Please discuss Mintzberg’s Mode of Strategic Decision Making by using real example and must relate with Three Characteristics of Strategic Decisions.

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

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

Johnson, Wittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér (2014, p. 3) defines strategy as ‘the long-term direction of an organisation’.

Traditionally, strategic decisions were thought of as "big decisions" made by general managers. However, big strategic decisions may not be the only source of competitive

Strategic decisions: This level of decision making comes from the top down. These decisions are long term and involve the vision of the company. This type of decision making is usually made at management level. Long-term forecasts of business turnover set against likely market conditions will help to determine these decisions. These decisions look to the future of the organization and will help the organization grow. Strategic decisions can involve major resources manpower, new premises or expenditure on new technology or equipment. This is why they take time to process.

Strategic Thinking can be described as a process which enables senior management to create a strategy, debate relevant issues, evaluate the internal and external environment, create strategic goals for the organisation and carry the strategy through effectively. (Decision Processes International, 2008)