Elements Of Strategic Management Process Argumentative Essay Example

for senior managers and decision-makers to effectively deal with this concept. The paper concludes with some closing remarks.

The concept of strategy has been present in both organizations and wars throughout history, resulting in many studies and writings on the subject.

In today's world, there are various perspectives and approaches to defining strategy. The main aim of this chapter is not to give a definitive definition of strategy but rather to present an outline that can act as a framework for understanding the connection between Strategic Intelligence, strategy formulation, and implementation. It is crucial to acknowledge that strategy can be seen from different angles. While the following list is not exhaustive, it includes some crucial aspects that should be incorporated in any comprehensive definition of strategy.

The dimensions discussed here can offer insights into the benefits of thinking strategically for our business. Some traditional views include: Strategy as a coherent, unifying, and integrative pattern for decision-making; Strategy as a blueprint for the organization's future direction, encompassing long-term objectives, action plans, and resource allocation priorities; Strategy as the definition of the firm's competitive domain, including business segmentation, strategic positioning, and competition plans; Strategy as a response to external opportunities and threats, leveraging internal strengths and weaknesses to achieve long-term competitive advantage and adapt to a changing environment; Strategy as a logical system for differentiating managerial tasks at corporate, business, and functional levels by defining overall missions and resource allocation priorities; Strategy as a definition of the firm's intended economic and non-economic contributions to its stakeholders.The unifying perspective regards strategy as the essential structure that enables an organization to maintain its crucial continuity and effectively navigate the

changing environment to achieve a competitive edge.

While developing a "strategic thinking" mindset may not always result in a comprehensive organizational strategy, strategic planning alone cannot ensure strategic thinking. Many strategic planning systems rely on extensive analysis of internally generated historical data and numbers, resulting in an extrapolation of past trends into the future. In contrast, strategic thinking considers both the internal and external environment.

The process of strategic management involves both introspective and extractive evaluation of the business and its environment. When discussing strategic planning, design, or thinking, it is important to also consider strategic management. According to Michael Porter, "The essence of Environmental Scanning Strategy Formulation formulating competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment," which highlights key dimensions of strategic management.

The statement suggests that formulating a strategy involves a process, regardless of its structure, formality, or rationality. This process, known as the strategy process, involves various steps that an organization needs to go through before arriving at a strategy. The second part of the statement emphasizes that this strategy process should ultimately lead to a competitive strategy.

The outcome of the strategy process is an action plan that directs the company in attaining its goals in a competitive setting. This component of strategic management, referred to as strategy content, concentrates on deciding which strategies to employ. Furthermore, the statement underscores the significance of harmonizing the company with its distinct organizational and environmental conditions while formulating strategies.

The aspect of strategic management known as strategy context examines the where, when, who, and why. It is important to analyze the implementation, evaluation, and control (Figure 1) as it encompasses the four fundamental

elements of strategic management. These elements offer insight into the strategy process (how), strategy content (what), and strategy context (where, when, who, and why). Environmental scanning involves both internal and external scanning. The external environment comprises the task environment and the societal environment.

The task environment, also referred to as the industry, comprises competitors, customers, suppliers, and interest groups. On the other hand, the societal environment encompasses broader factors like technological and political-legal aspects. Additionally, the internal environment includes elements such as the corporation's structure, culture, and resources. Strategy formulation involves determining the corporate mission/vision, objectives, strategies, and policies. Meanwhile, strategy implementation is about putting these strategies and policies into action through programs, budgets, and procedures.

Evaluation and control involve monitoring corporate activities and performance results to compare actual performance with desired performance. Strategic intelligence, also known as competitive intelligence (C'), refers to knowledge and foreknowledge about the organization's external operating environment. The goal of CLC is to enable proactive decision-making by converting necessary business information into actionable form and making it accessible at the appropriate time.

The orientation and utilization of CLC is both tactical and strategic. The CIA time horizon emphasizes present, past, and future events. Some CLC processes serve the strategic level, while others focus on operative monitoring or both. SSL actions solely support strategic decision-making by monitoring aspects with strategic significance. Strategic Intelligence is a form of Competitive Intelligence produced for strategic purposes.

Customers of SSL consist of individuals who participate in strategic decision-making. Users of SSL are mainly individuals involved in strategy development. Furthermore, a SSL mime horizon encompasses a wide range of significant events, including past, present, and future

events (Figure 2). In summary, Strategic Intelligence can be defined as a component of Competitive Intelligence that involves a systematic and ongoing process of generating essential intelligence with strategic value in a usable format to assist long-term decision-making.

The Scope of Strategic Intelligence, as shown in Figure 2, encompasses Competitive Strategic Intelligence, Competitive Intelligence, and Market Intelligence at different levels. The need for Strategic Intelligence is crucial, including both content needs and communication needs such as format and timeliness. The higher the strategic analysis level, the more interactive the intelligence communication becomes, requiring less quantity of information.

Strategic intelligence needs related to content include impact-analysis or so-what analysis, which examines how a certain phenomenon affects a company's business. Business driver analysis investigates the main driving forces that impact the business environment. Scenarios with probable outcomes and long-range views of battlefield developments are also important. Instead of company profiles, in-depth competitor and key-customer analyses are conducted. A bird's eye view of the business environment provides overall battlefield illustrations. Relevant macro issue and trend analysis and their impact are considered, as well as the analysis of critical strategic themes.

Strategic intelligence is a part of strategy development. The roles of SSL activity in strategic decommissioning can be categorized into six basic roles.

An essential aspect of intelligence analysis is to define the current competitive arena in which the company operates. This includes assessing the business environment and identifying the ores and factors that shape the company's competitive landscape.

Figure 3 illustrates the strategic business environment or competitive environment. It showcases a generic model that includes various elements like General Trends, Industries, Suppliers, Scope, Own Industry, Customer Industries/Segments,

Competitors, Customers, Companies, Interest Groups, Market, Suppliers and Value Chain Dimension.

The intelligence department should have the capability to predict the competitive environment that the company may encounter in the future.

The future is all about change, with some aspects being predictable and others not. Scenario planning plays a role in supporting strategic planning by anticipating emerging competition, technologies, and customer needs ahead of time. This allows for a proactive change of direction based on predictions. The extensive literature on change management emphasizes that having strategic intelligence is essential for initiating change.

Challenging and questioning the underlying assumptions is a crucial task for intelligence. It involves identifying and challenging various assumptions held by management, such as economic, political, technology-related, market, and customer-related assumptions, which can have an impact on strategic thinking.

Using intelligence, one can identify and evaluate weaknesses and vulnerabilities within a company, which is typically done when analyzing competitors. This enables the assessment of strengths and vulnerabilities in relation to market opportunities and threats.

Intelligence plays a crucial role in implementing and adapting strategy in response to changing competition. After formulating a strategy, there are two phases of implementation. The initial phase involves competitors recognizing and reacting to the key elements of the strategy. Gathering intelligence on their responses helps assess its effectiveness and make necessary adjustments to counter any countermeasures initiated by the competition. Additionally, establishing an ongoing reporting and collection program is essential to monitor competitor actions once a successful strategy is in place. These SSL roles support strategic management activities throughout the various stages of strategy development.