Functional Strategies Essay

Part A

An organization needs three functional strategies: the product, the people, and the support processes. Product strategies include the design, the production-operations and marketing. These strategies include how and where products will be produced. Once the products are produced, a marketing plan must be developed. The people strategy is human resources. This process includes hiring employees, motivating them and compensating them fairly. The support process strategy includes information systems and financial-accounting systems. This process includes the choice of system technology, budgeting, and managing the financial-accounting area.

When organizations adopts a competitive strategy they must decide what separates them from their

Each have their own role in ensuring the organization does what it’s in business to do and whether it achieves its strategic goals. In order for successful implementation of the corporate strategy, it must have the resources, capabilities, and competencies that are being developed and used in the competitive and functional strategies. According to Mary Coulter the author of our textbook “Strategic Management in Action”, competitive and functional strategies implemented must support the overall strategic direction and corporate strategy. The three corporate strategic directions are moving an organization forward, keeping an organization as is, or reversing an organization’s decline. Moving forward’s the organization’s activities or operations or to “grow”. Keeping an organization “as is” means it is not growing but it is not declining either. This is a stability strategy. Reversing an organization’s decline is recognizing an organization has problems and may be seeing declines in one or more performance areas. This is discussed with a renewal

Entrepreneurs seek out new opportunities and are willing to take risks. A small business is an independent business that is independently owned, operated, and financed, with fewer than 500 employees. Small businesses don’t necessarily engage in any new or innovative practices and usually have little impact on their industry. These type of organization are important in three areas: job creation, new start-ups, and innovation. Small businesses just getting off the ground create new jobs and seem to have more stability. Innovation leads to technological changes and employment growth.

There are mixed opinions on the importance of spending time on strategic planning. The strategic planning process for entrepreneurial ventures and small businesses is a less formal approach. A lot of time shouldn’t be spent on developing elaborate business plans. A business plan is useless without customers. Researchers generally agree that the strategic planning process in small organizations versus large organizations should be less formal. Flexibility is crucial to an organization’s competitive success and should be aware of and open to environmental change. If the process is too formal, rigid or cumbersome, flexibility may be lost which is a crucial part of its success. Value is more in “doing the process” itself,