week 2 Journal

Bipin Lamichhane

Strategy choice and impact

Week 2

            Assignment questions

a)      In your own words and using referenced quotes describe what “strategic management” is

b)      How business strategy is is similar to military strategy? How is it different?

c)      What do you understand by the term strategic analysis, strategic development and strategic implementation?

d)     Write about your experience with today`s case study. What answers did you give? Was it easy to answers the questions? Did your group agree with each other?

Answers

a)      Strategic management is about the identification and description of strategies that managers can carry so as to achieve better performance and a competitive advantage for their organization. Strategic management mainly involves three processes: strategy formulation, strategy implementation and strategy evaluation.

According to some analysts “Strategic Management is a way in which strategists set the objectives and proceed about attaining them. It deals with making and implementing decisions about future direction of an organization. It helps us to identify the direction in which an organization is moving”.

b)      In case of similarities I think both business and military focus on the chain of command. The instruction and order are flows from top level and followed by low level. Both of them tend on building strong strategy. Military and business strategy both aims to gain competitive advantage, both uses their strength to exploit their competitor weakness.

Talking about the differences, I think the main difference is the purpose or mission. The military strategy is focused on security or to win wars but the purpose of business is to promote the interests of their stakeholders: creating value for all constituencies such as investors, employees, partners and the community.

Another difference can be the command and control. Military strategies seem more commanding and also focus controlling but business strategies seems appealing and focus on self motivation rather than controlling.

c)      Strategic analysis involves the proper evaluation and research. It is the starting point of strategic management process and consists of advance work. Analyzing is not easy task as we live in the world where everything changes on daily basis. Strategic analysis includes the task like analyzing organization goals and objective, analyzing internal and external environment, analyzing the political situation etc.

Strategic development is done after analyzing the all situation and scenario. In this stage top level managers develop mission, vision and values of company. Strategic development also involves the development of backup plan in case of failure. According to the Peter Edelman (senior executive president Voith Turbo )  strategy development is question based process:

 Where are we now?  Where would you like to go?   How do you get there?

Strategic implementation is choosing the right strategy and implementing it thoroughly. These include the planning process, building resource capabilities and structuring the organization. While implementing all the strategy other factors like structure, skills, staff, style and systems are coordinated with each other.

d)     The case study we did today was interesting. At first it looks a bit difficult but after reading about a paragraph the concept was clear. The case study was about the growing population in Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Swindon and opportunity that come along with. People are attracted to migrate in these cities because of many advantages. Some of them are, housing and commercial property cost is much less than other cities which attract many multinational companies to open their new branch. Transportation facility is better, all three cities have good motor and railway connection to London and also big universities like Cambridge and Oxford are nearby. In Milton Keynes lands are available to build roads and infrastructure. There are malls and many stores and wide variety of food from different culture and it also have attracts bilingual people.

Their growth strategy is considered “mad” mostly by the older residents of town as their homely suburban feel would disappear due to the construction of businesses, malls, centre’s, roads and universities. The city will be more crowded and polluted. The idea of establishing universities seems ridiculous as there are reputed universities near Peterborough and Milton Keynes.

Yes I would definitely live in any of the three towns because the opportunity for business is growing day by day, there is good transportation facility and cost of land and building is also cheap.

It was easy to give answers and all our group members did agree with each other.

References

·         Mary Coulter (5^th Edition, 2010). Strategic Management in Action. Pearson Publishers and Distributors.

·         Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes (9^th Edition, 2011). Exploring Strategy : Text and Cases.  Publisher, Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.