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Analysing A Company’S External / Internal Environment
What is Strategy? Michael E. Porter
Chapter 1: What is Strategy
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Strategy itself has been deep rooted in society dating back to the Old Testament, and historical Greek times with writings from Homer, Euripides and other major Greek world influencers (Bracker, 1980). Much of origin of strategy was founded during battles and wars amongst the Greek. The revitalization of strategy became wide spread during World War II and the introduction of economies of scale. Strategy would now transform to not only prove beneficial in war, but also business. Large companies had influence in the way business could be done and the number of mid-to-large size organizations became more prominent (Bracker, 1980). As strategic management became more sophisticated the phases of development emerged. Strategy had become common thought …show more content…
Environmental scanning consists of monitoring, evaluating and understanding all of the information that makes up the external and internal environments of the organization. The External environment is made up of short and long term opportunities, threats and variables out of the control of the organizations industry. For example, the way online shopping acts as an external threat to brick and mortar retailers. The Internal environment is comprised of the members and variables within the organization. The organization 's structure, culture and resources are also taken into …show more content…
Corporate strategy focuses on the general big picture of the organization. The main focus of corporate strategy directional strategy, portfolio analysis, and parenting strategy. The business strategy is developed at the product level with an emphasis on competitive positioning comprised of competitive and cooperative strategies. The functional strategy is focused on a sector of the business such as marketing, research and development or human resources (Hunger, 2010). I see the strategies acting as a funnel from Corporate strategy, to business to
New businesses will take longer to thrive with the United States falling economy. The faltering job market and the deepening slump in housing threaten to hurt consumer spending. Consumers are becoming more conscious of their spending and therefore using cash to pay for smaller necessary purchases. The cost of entertainment and other presumed luxuries may be pushed to the background by most families, when having to choose whether to pay for a bill or treat the family out. Thriving businesses will understand the need to provide a service or product at affordable prices.
Most of the common activities in our daily life present an opportunity to negotiate, whether or not we realise it. Meta-reflecting upon my negotiation experiences during the class and other activities have led me to identify few common themes. In this assignment, the two themes I will be discussing are (1) the importance of being clear on the strategic intent and big picture thinking, and (2) the importance of managing the negotiation process through understanding the various phases and visualising negotiation as a train journey.
Both Porter and Miles and Snow’s strategy typologies are based on the concept of strategic equifinality, or the ability for firms to be successful via differing managerial strategies (Hambrick, 2003, p. 116). Porter 's strategy is more generic while Miles and Snow’s is more specific in nature. Porter’s generic strategy typology is based on economic factors centering on the source of a firm’s competitive advantage and the scope of a firm’s target market (González-Benito & Suárez-González, 2010). Porter’s typology emphasizes a firm’s cost, product differentiation or non-differentiation and market focus. When utilizing Porter’s strategy typology, a firm must first decide to target its products toward the mass market versus a market niche or focus. Secondly, a firm will determine if it wishes to minimize costs or differentiate its products with differentiation meaning that firms will most likely forego lower costs (Parnell, 2014, p. 184). This can lead a firm to develop a myriad of strategies between these options. Strategies which may have or not have focus, may or not be differentiated, may or not be low cost or any combination of strategies. In contrast to Porter, Miles and Snow’s typology is more specific in nature.
Wit, BD & Meyer, R 2010, Strategy: process, content, context : an international perspective, Cengage Learning EMEA, London.
Business strategy is the means by which firm’s plans to achieve its goals and objectives. It can also be termed as organization long-term planning. The strategy covers periods between 3-5 years and sometimes longer. Businesses use two major types of strategy, general or generic and competitive strategies. The overall strategy involves strategies of growth, globalization and retrenchment. The competitive advantage includes low pricing, product and customer differentiation. We will look at the business strategy used by Marks and Spenser (Cole, 1997). The company is a British multinational located at Westminster London and specializes in clothes and luxurious food products.
The thesis “Strategy and Structure” has been published in the year of 1962 and that book and way of thinking was aimed to companies that are big and had problems with coping of their size.
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review, 86(1), 25-40.
The scope of this essay is to address coherently with examples a number of key areas of strategy; strategy and its importance, challenges in relation to development and implementation of strategies, and a discussion of the relevance of strategy in the modern
Johnson, G. and Scholes, K. (2005) Exploring corporate strategy: text and cases. Ed.7. Harlow: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Thompson, A. A., Strickland, A. J., & Gamble, J. E. (2008). Crafting & executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage (16th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Irwin.
As defined in the textbook, functional strategy is the approach a functional area takes to achieve corporate and business unit objectives and strategies by maximizing resource productivity. (Wheelen and Hunger, P. 238) There are four levels of functional strategy, Marketing, Finance, Research and Development, and Operations. The Two that I have analyzed for Google are Marketing and research and development. Marketing Strategy deals with pricing, selling, and distributing a product. Research and development s strategy deals with product process innovation and improvement. It also deals with the appropriate mix of different types of research and development and with the questions of how new technology should be accessed. (Wheelen and Hunger, P. 239)
John G. S., 2008: Strategically thinking about the subject of Strategy [e-journal] 9(4) p.2 Available through:
Strategic managers think in terms of three levels of strategy; Corporate, Business and Functional Level strategy. Corporate-level strategy is concerned with the strategy of the organisation as a whole, and includes all the units and product lines that make up the corporation (Samson & Daft, 2012). AirA...
Environmental scanning is the process of gathering information about events and their relationships within an organization's internal and external environments. The basic purpose of environmental scanning is to help management determine the future direction of the organization (Barnat, 2004). For a business to succeed, it is important to study the business environment of the firm that consists external and internal influences that affect the firm’s decisions and performance (Grant, 2010). Environmental scanning includes the assessment of Macro and Micro environmental analysis.
b. External threats are those which are from the surrounding environment of a company and affect its performance.