Strategic management can be defined as a bundle of acts and decisions which is undertaken by the manager of the firm as it decides the firm’s performance. Strategic management is a continuous process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which an organization is involved; evaluates its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reevaluates strategies on a regular basis to determine how it has been implemented and whether it was successful or does it needs replacement.
- A strategy is Significant because it is not possible to foresee the future. Without a perfect foresight, the firms must be ready to deal with the uncertain events which constitute the business environment.
- Strategy deals with long-term developments rather than routine operations, i.e. it deals with the probability of innovations or new products, new methods of productions, or new markets to be developed in future.
- A strategy is created to take into account the probable behavior of customers and competitors. Strategies for dealing with employees will predict the employee behavior.
The strategy is a well-defined roadmap of an organization. It defines the overall mission, vision and direction of an organization. The objective of a strategy is to maximize an organization’s strengths and to minimize the strengths of the competitors.
Strategy, in short, bridges the gap between “where we are” and “where we want to be”.
Career options after strategic management are-
- Financial Analyst.
- Research Investigator.
- Business Analyst.
- Product Strategist.
- Project Analyst.
- Project Management Coordinator.
- Process Coordinator.
- Marketing Consultant.
Some popular higher education opportunities include-
- Strategic Management - Master
- Master of Business Administration (MBA)
- Master of Human Resource Management (MHRM)
- Project Management (PMP) - Certificate
- Certified Management Consultant (CMC) - Certificate
- Canadian Securities Course (CSC)
- Microsoft - specialized courses Use LinkedIn!
Therefore, we can see that strategic management is a combination of strategy formulation and strategy implementation. It is the highest level of managerial activity, usually performed by an organization’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and executive team. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise. Strategy formulation involves doing a situation analysis-both internal and external; both micro-environmental and macro-environmental, concurrent with this assessment, objectives are set. This involves crafting vision statements (long-term view of a possible future), mission statements (the role that the organization gives itself in society), overall corporate objectives (both financial and strategic), strategic business unit objectives (both financial and strategic), and tactical objectives, these objectives should, in the light of the situation analysis, suggest a strategic plan. The plan provides the details of how to achieve these objectives.
Strategic management can, therefore, be summed up in the following points.
- Specifying an organization’s objectives,
- Developing policies and plans to achieve these objectives,
- Allocating resources to implement the policies.
