Essential Tools for Operations Management: Tools, Models and Approaches for Managers and Consultants

CHAPTER 1

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

INTRODUCTION

Many works on strategic management treat the subject as consisting of several component parts such as goal formulation, strategic evaluation, strategy implementation and strategic control, but advise that these are components of a framework and may not exist as discrete orderly steps in a strategic management decision-making process. It is further suggested that there are a number of characteristics of strategic decision making concerned with the scope of an organization’s activities, the matching of the organization to the environment and then matching the organization’s activities to its resource capability.

Figure 1.1 Hierarchy of strategies.

From The Essential Management Toolbox: Tools, Models and Notes for Managers and Consultants, S.A. Burtonshaw-Gunn, 2008. Reproduced with permission.

Within this first chapter there are a number of well - known business models, many of which help to achieve a comprehensive analysis of the business in order to determine its future direction, or at least make decisions based on informed choice and then plan how this can be best deployed or realized. In addition, the words “strategy” and “strategic management” relate to a number of levels within an organization and a hierarchy of these together ...