Business Strategy

Cathy Baker

December 14, 2011

Management Policy and Strategy MT460:02

Unit 2

Business Strategy

Why is strategy important to business?

Strategy is a large-scale, future-oriented plan for interacting with the competitive environment to achieve company objectives.

A strategy reflects a company’s awareness of how, when, and where it should compete; against whom it should compete; and for what purposes it should compete.

Therefore strategy is important to business because it is the planning and directing of a company, and it determines how much money will be used for every aspect of the business, the types of partnerships you will be entered into, the types vendors that you will be using and the types of services that will be offered including how they will be offered and with what features that will be used.

The main components of the strategic management process include 11 processes:

1. Company Mission Company Mission, Social Responsibility, and Ethics

The mission of a company is the unique purpose that sets it apart from other companies of its type and identifies the scope of its operations. The company mission describes the company’s product, market, and technological areas of emphasis in a way that reflects the values and priorities of the strategic decision makers.

Social responsibility is a critical consideration for a company’s strategic decision makers because the mission statement must express how the company intends to contribute to the societies that sustain it. A firm needs to set social responsibility aspirations for itself, just as it does in other areas of corporate performance.

2. Internal Analysis Internal Analysis

The company analyzes the quantity and quality of the company’s financial, human, and physical resources. It also assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s management and organizational structure. Finally, it contrasts the company’s past successes and traditional concerns with the company’s current...