Strategic Management and its Importance in Today's Corporations

Strategic Management
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Abstract
In their pursue for success, managers have noted that due to certain reasons, some companies grow and flourish with minimal effort while other companies despite their continuous struggle still and up with losses and fail. Reasons for this difference have been studied to comprehend the most valuable managerial actions that separate the two and among them have been found to be strategic management. This paper provides an introduction to strategic management and through an analysis discusses why strategic management is increasingly important in corporations and provide a recommendation that is applicable to the corporations
Table of Contents Title Page ...........................................................1  Abstract…………………...…………………………………………………2 Table of Contents……………………...……………………………….3 Introduction........................................................4 History...............................................................4 Strategy.............................................................5 Corporate Strategy..............................................5 Strategic Management.........................................5 Analysis.............................................................6 Conclusion.........................................................8 Recommendations..............................................8
Introduction
In their pursue for success, managers have noted that due to certain reasons, some companies grow and flourish with minimal effort while other companies despite their continuous struggle still and up with losses and fail. Reasons for this difference have been studied to comprehend the most valuable managerial actions that separate the two and among them have been found to be strategic management (Nedelea & Paun, 2009).
Per Hunger & Wheelen (2011), organizations engaging employing strategic management often outperform those that do not apply. Achieving the right fit between an organization's environment and its strategy, structure, and processes positively affect the performance of that organization (Wheelen & Hunger, 2011). Once a company expands and develops a multilayered management team and a complex environment, it can longer rely on intuition in development of strategy. As the business environment grows in complexity, strategic management is required as a tool to make this complex environment manageable (Wheelen & Hunger, 2011).
History
Strategy in the past was only seen as an aspect for the military since military history is full of stories containing strategy. From the beginning of time leaders who were planning battles, have always designed defensive and offensive moves against their enemies. The word strategy is from the Greek word "strategia" for generalship (Schermerhorn, 2011). However, it was in the 1940s that this notion began changing, and the term strategy has evolved from Budgeting, Extrapolation, Strategic Planning, to Complex Systems Strategy. it was between 1974 and 1979 that Igor Ansoff developed a theory that embraced business firms and other environments affecting business to come up with a theory of strategic management and wrote the first book entitled Strategic Management that was published in 1979 (Schermerhorn, 2011).
Strategy
The word strategy has several meanings that have relevance and usefulness to individuals responsible for coming up with strategies for their businesses, organizations, and corporations. However, for the purpose of this paper strategy is defined as the process of determining the long-term goals and objectives of a business and adopting the appropriate courses of action including allocation of the required resources to achieve these goals (Nickols, 2011).
Corporate Strategy
Corporate strategy is the top management's plan to conduct and also direct the business of the corporate group. This includes an organization-wide business comprising of various moves proposed to establish business positions in various industries and approaches to manage the company's businesses successfully (Srivastava & Verma, 2011).
Strategic Management
The same way strategy has several meanings so does strategic management. According to a study conducted by Wheelen and Hungers (2006), strategic management is a set of managerial decisions and actions determining the corporation's long-term performance (Huiru, .2011). Strategic management involves scanning of the environment (external & internal), formulation of strategy, implementation, evaluation and control. Strategic management most importantly requires the analysis of SWOT factors (Wheelen & Hunger, 2006).
Analysis
With the globalization of the world markets as it is being currently observed, the business environment is changing at an increased pace than any time in history. Therefore, to remain relevant, competitive and successful is dependent on the management approaches that the corporate managers employ. Strategic management gives the management team a powerful tool and mechanism for coping with the increasingly complex business environment that is comprised of diversity in culture, technology, politics, competition, and economic forces that pull and push business in different directions. It does this by off...