Strategic Position
Introduction to strategy
Strategy a course of action, including the specification of resources required to achieve objective. The long term direction a company believes it should take based on the combination of information available today and intelligent assumptions about the future.
Different levels of strategy
Corporate strategy - What business or business a firm is in or should be in and how integrated these business should be with one another. Characteristics
• company wide
• involves mission
• determination of ends
• needed due to development of SBUs
• all managers it no matter which level.
Business strategy - How each business attempts its mission within its chosen area of activity. How to complete successfully, how to achieve mission, which products and market to develop.
Characteristics
• market
• analysis of competition
• at SBU level
Functional strategy - how the different functions of the business supports the corporate and business strategies. Characteristics
• operational
• detailed
• day to day
• various function ‘s contribution
Context of strategy - It does not matter the type of organization, all will have strategies but the context will be different. The organization could be.
• Small or large
• Public or private sector
• Multinational or not
• Profit or not for profit
• Tangible or services
J, S & W identified three strategy lenses for strategy as
• As a design — rational, top-down process — rational managers and the rational model – deliberate
• Strategy as experience —adaptation of what has worked in the past based on experience, assumptions, decisions to satisfice rather than optimize - emergent
• As ideas — based on innovation, diversity of ideas, informal interaction and experimentation, but prevent strategic drift. - emergent
Freewheeling opportunism – (emergent
• ) Concentrates on finding, evaluating and exploiting short term product market...