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Need help with my writing homework on Economy: strategic management process. Write a 2500 word paper answering; Strategic management can be defined as the set of decisions and actions resulting in formulation and implementation of strategies designed to achieve the objective of an organization. It involves taking decisions about products, location, and the organization’s structure – these determine the survival of the organization in the short and long term. Strategic management is a comprehensive procedure and starts with a strategic diagnosis. It continues with a series of additional steps, culminating in new products, markets, technologies and capabilities. The strategist’s work is to challenge the prevailing setup with a single question: “Why”, and to ask the same question as many times as necessary to make the future as clear as the present for managers at all levels.

Gary Hamel1 estimated that American senior managers generally spend about 3npercent of their time thinking and planning for the future. While 3 percent may be enough for a start-up Internet company, whose leader’s mission is an Initial Public Offer (IPO), cash in and early exit, it is not good enough if the senior management’s principle aim is to build an enduring company like Gillette.

The systematic study of strategic management was pioneered by Ansoff. Igor Ansoff2 conducted extensive research on acquisitions by American companies between 1948 and 1968. He found that acquisitions based on a rational strategy fared far better than those that were based on opportunistic decisions. Ansoff’s strategic success paradigm identifies the conditions that optimize profitability. The key elements of this paradigm are as follows:

There is no universal success formula for all firms.

The level of turbulence in the environment determines the strategy required for the success of a firm.

The aggressiveness of the strategy should be aligned with the turbulence in the environment to optimize the firm’s success.

The management’s capabilities should be aligned with the environment to optimize the firm’s success

Internal capability variables i.e. cognitive, psychological, political, anthropological and sociological variables, all jointly determine the firm’s success.

Mintzberg: Strategy as a Craft

The next most influential thinker in the field of strategic management after Ansoff was Henry Mintzberg3. Mintzberg added a new dimension to strategic management by bringing the personal side of the manager into the picture. He proposed an intuitive view of strategic management, and attacked the rationalism of his contemporaries with regard to the subject. In his first book, The Nature of Managerial Work which was written in the year 1973, he advocated a more humane approach to strategy formulation as a deliberate, and coined the term “crafting strategy.” He saw strategy formulation as a deliberate, delicate and dangerous process. Mintzberg also identified five types of “ideal” organization structures: simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy, divisionalized form and ‘ad hoc’ racy (ICFAI Center for Management Research, 2003).

Michael Porter: Strategy and Competitive Advantage

Michael Porter4 introduced generic strategies like focus, cost leadership, cost differentiation to reduce the uncertainties of the competitive environment.