Factors Affecting and Theories Influencing Strategic Management

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Abstract
Every business regardless of their size has to plan ahead of its time. Strategic management is a crucial aspect in planning and assists firms to come up with highly refined plans to venture into new markets, maintain their market or develop and introduce new or redesigned products among other approaches. These strategic approaches are bound to evolve over time, regardless of the inputs from the company. This paper addresses the aspects within the business environment that tend to affect the evolution of the strategic management approaches. To help with the understanding of the concepts, the process of strategic management is elaborated upon. The paper dwells deep on some of the theories that help explain industry influences on the strategic management approaches such as PESTEL and the Porter's forces along with the internal influential factors. Conclusively, every business is set to have their strategic management affected by these changes and it is recommended, that they embrace the changes as they are ways of stimulating growth.
Introduction
Strategic management is one of the skills that are crucial in business management. It is a conscious process that involves planning, monitoring assessment and analysis. At the heart of strategic management are the goals and the objectives that the firm in question has set up, the resources and the time frame. It is a process that can be lightly defined as an art and a science that involves formulating, implementation and the evaluation of the cross functional decisions, which can enable the organization in question to achieve its goals and objectives. An in-depth evaluation of the process reveals that it integrates some of the core process in business management, such as marketing, accounting, finance, development, production, information technology and operations. All of these processes have to be intertwined and manage to an extent where they lead to success of the strategies and there after the goals and objectives in the strategic plans. The term strategic management is also used in synonymous manner with the term strategic planning. The latter is more common in the business world and vocabulary, while the former is more common in the academia realms (Strategicmanagementinsight.com, 2014).
As such, it is common to find that the term strategic management may be used to refer to the aspect of formulation, implementation and the evaluation. On the other hand the term strategic planning may commonly be used to refer to the aspects of strategy formulation alone. The bottom line for strategic management is to create opportunities that the business model can rely on in the future. This implies long range planning with a good twist optimizing today's trends for tomorrow. The aspects of strategic planning are quite old considering that concept gain traction in the 1950s and later became popular in the 60s and the 70s. At the time it was taken that this was a solution that fit all the financial and planning problems. However, strategic planning was put aside in the 80s, during the economic boom of the time (Strategicmanagementinsight.com, 2014). This was due to the fact that the models did not yield as much returns as was the expectation. Over the years companies have had to evaluate and change their strategic management models. The market is affected by a myriad of factors and the organizations have to keep track of the changes and reevaluate their strategies. Failure to review strategic management approaches and models could spell doom for the organization. It is for this reason that strategic management evolves within the organization over time as the organization tries to adapt to the changes in the current market and the expected changes in the future (Strategicmanagementinsight.com, 2014).
Stages of Strategic Management
There are a variety of factors within the business environment that influence the way business processes are carried out on a daily basis and with respect to the future. Strategies that are viable today are not going to be necessarily viable in the near future. As such strategic management is a continuous process and though there are a couple of precise steps that can be followed depending on the business and the goals at hand, the process tends to repeat itself over time with some adjustment. However, this is not to say that the process involves a couple of rules that have to be followed. Rather, strategic management is more of a philosophy approach that is used in business management. The best way to implement the strategies in any organization is when all the parties involved understand what it entails and what their part in the puzzle. There are five stages that are common in any form of business oriented strategic management (Clayton, 2014).
Setting goals and objectives
This is the first stage of the strategic management process, as the business sets out their goals with a clear vision of the status in the future. Before any forms of plans are made, it is common to have a clear aspect to be accomplished after all the efforts. In strategic management, this stage entails three steps; first the short and long term objectives have to be identified, secondly the means processes of achieving these objectives have to be brought on board and lastly the objectives have to be customized for different staffs. This is one of the most crucial stages given that every other staff has to understand their role and at the same time the goals have to match their aspirations (Clayton, 2014). This stage also includes the formulation of mission statement that resonates with staffs', shareholders' and the business's goals. Any form of friction between these three elements, could mean failure of the strategies devised.
Analysis
This is a stage that determines the success of the other two stages in the process. At this stage the information as well as data that is required for the accomplishment of the vision is collected and analyzed. It is also at this stage that the business tries to establish its needs as part of its sustainable aspect, as well as the direction the business is taking and the initiatives that will help it to get the success. It is at this stage that the business evaluates both the internal and the external environment with reference to the factors that can affect the accomplishment of the objectives negatively or positively. This means that the organization has to carry out the assessment of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats to the business.
Formulating Strategy
During the formulation of the strategies, results of the analysis stage have to be evaluated and implications understood. This means that the organization will use the analysis results to determine the resources it has and willing to commit in order to achieve the objectives both in the short term and in the long term. At the same time the organization has to determine the recourses that need to be outsourced. Once all the issues that are facing the company are assessed with reference to their level of priority, the formulation process can begin. For every approach that is devised, an alternative has to be devised in case there are unforeseen developments in the future (Clayton, 2014).
Implementation
At this stage all the strategic plans are put in actions. The strategies have very many moving parts and all the staffs have to be made aware of their roles, duties and expectations as well as how they all fit in with the overall objectives and the time frame. If the current strategy does not work, a new one should be implemented in its place. It is also at this stage that all the resources required are secured for the smooth operations of the strategies.
Evaluation and Control
It is crucial that all the strategies...