Strategic Management , Corporate Structure, and Executive Leadership

Strategic Management
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Institution
Strategic Management
Question 1
There has been a number of factors that influence strategic management following the changing dynamics of businesses and the business environment in the contemporary era. Globalization, social responsibility aspects, and environmental sustainability issues are some of the major influences on the overall concept of strategic management.
According to Wheelen et al. (2017), globalization from a business perspective can be understood as the expansion and integration of markets and corporations beyond the international boundaries. The expansion and integration have revolutionized strategic processes in various ways, either by directly influencing the management or influencing the support structures of the corporation. The interconnected nature of the financial systems, a key aspect of globalization has led to the adoption of financial systems that are compatible with the global governance of finances. It has also led to the emergence of other institutions to facilitate transactions at a global scale. The World Wide Web, also a key component of globalization has added a different domain to the businesses, the e-commerce, and has revolutionized the supply chain as the corporation can be placed anywhere around the globe. The rapid changes in technological advancement have led to an increased economic interdependence and the diffusion of knowledge (Höllerer et al., 2017), necessitating the adoption of new strategic management approaches and mindsets to incorporate the globalization aspect.
Social responsibility has introduced the ethical perspective to the strategic management of a corporation as it is concerned with the duties that the organization has on the overall wellbeing of the community where it operates (Wheelen et al., 2017). The introduction of this fairly new concept into the corporate domain has led to the incorporation of the social concern by organizations into their core strategies and has also led to an increased consciousness of the duties that the corporation has on the entire society. The incorporation of the social aspect onto the strategic management has led to the adoption of varied social responsibility strategies by different corporations. The realization that organizations’ responsibilities extend further than the economic responsibility has led to tweaking of general and specific objectives, missions, and most importantly, the strategic goals to address the social aspects ethically.
Aside from the social and economic responsibility towards the community, environmental responsibility is the other important duty that the organizations have today. In the recent past, strategies that are environmentally conscious that aim at cutting on carbon footprint, tackling climate change, energy preservation among others have been a major focus for organizations that are cognizant of sustainability. This is also fueled by the fact that sustainably responsible organizations not only have a competitive advantage but also saves on costs (Wheelen et al., 2017). Environmental sustainability has now become a significant component of strategic management, embedded in both internal and external objectives and has become a core aspect of public relations. More often than ever, global corporations and even the local enterprises are rolling out sustainability strategies, committing to a lot of actions aimed at ensuring environmental sustainability. Those corporations with no acute sustainability plans are being compelled to have one by external forces or risk succumbing to competitive pressure.
Question 2
A company is often composed of different entities that jointly work together to achieve a common goal. Corporate structure functions to bring together the different components of an company and organize it based on the industry sector or goals that the firm seeks to achieve. Organizational structure can be classified into two broad categories: the physical and social structures to denote the relationship between physical and social elements respectively (Winnubst, 2018). It is the social aspects of the corporate structure that give rise to the cultural element of organizational behavior, which refers to the shared believes, expectations, and values that define how a particular organization operates (Wheelen et al., 2017). Depending on how well or badly the organization implements the corporate structure and the culture, an organization can leverage it as a strength or let it becomes liability.
The ability to capture and blend the different dimensions of organization structure: the hierarchical, functional, and inclusion dimension portrays an organization as having a formal structure that is a recipe for effective management (Ahmady et al., 2016). The hierarchical dimension alienates the different ranks in an organization; the functional dimension depicts the roles and work performed by the different entities in an organization; while the inclusion dimension shows the proximities of the different entities to the core functions of the organization. The inability to identify and blend the dif...