Unfolding the Essentials of Strategic Management

Strategic management is viewed as the set of decisions and actions that result in the formulation, implementation and control of plans designed to achieve an organization’s vision, mission, strategy and strategic objectives within the business environment in which it operates (Pearce and Robinson, 2007). Strategy formulation has for the past decades been widely regarded as the most important component of the strategic process – more important than strategy implementation or strategic control. Nonetheless, strategic planning has taken on new importance in today’s world of globalization, deregulation, advancing technology, and changing demographics, and lifestyles. At the same time, there is also discussion whether we can separate “execution” and “implementation” from strategy formulation. Roger Martin, a professor and author, has joined the discussion and argue

Additionally, it will make it easier to discuss and analyze the effective implementation of the new corporate strategy in Danske Bank. In this sense, it can be argued that the strategy formulation in Danske Bank is the new corporate strategy “New Standards – New Normal”. Their strategy is to have strength in their technology and eBanking capabilities, and they want their competitive advantage to lie in their ability to focus on the requirements of international clients for service, flexibility, speed and quality (Danske Bank, 2015). The strategy implementation identified in Danske Bank is the communication, interpretation, adoption, and enactment by the CEO’s in bringing the strategy formulation to life. The strategy execution is the (successful) result of the decisions made. Arguably, this can be seen as the result of “effective implementation” of a strategy, which will be analyzed in the