Strategic Management

Angela Rivers

Strategic management is a field that deals with the major intended and emergent initiatives taken by general managers on behalf of owners, involving utilization of resources, to enhance the performance of firm’s in their external environments. It entails specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and programs. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business and its progress towards objectives. Recent studies and leading management theorists have advocated that strategy needs to start with stakeholders expectations and use a modified balanced scorecard which includes all stakeholders.

Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and over Tactics. Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about "strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency." The initial task in strategic management is typically the compilation and dissemination of a mission statement. This document outlines, in essence, the raison d'etre of an organization. Additionally, it specifies the scope of activities an organization wishes to undertake, coupled with the markets a firm wishes to serve.

Following the devising of a mission statement, a firm would then undertake an environmental scanning within the purview of the statement.

Strategic formation is a combination of three main processes which are as follows:

* Performing a situation analysis, self-evaluation and competitor analysis: both internal and external; both micro-environmental and macro-environmental.

* Concurrent with this assessment, objectives...