MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES
MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES AT DIFFERENT BUSINESS LEVEL
Management Strategies
deals with the issues, concepts, theories approaches and action choices related
to an organization’s interaction with the external environment. Strategy, in
general, refers to how a given objective will be achieved. Strategy, therefore,
is mainly concerned with the relationships between ends and means, that is,
between the results we seek and the resources at our disposal. For the most
part, strategy is concerned with deploying the resources at your disposal
whereas tactics is concerned with employing them. Together, strategy and
tactics bridge the gap between ends and means.
Some organizations are
groups of different business and functional units, each of them must be having
its own set of goals, which may not necessarily be same as the goals of the
corporate headquarters looking after the interests of the entire organization.
Since the goals are different and the means to achieve them are different,
strategies are likely to be different. This understanding has led to the
hierarchical division of strategy at two levels: a business-level
(competitive) strategy and a company-wide strategy (corporate strategy) (Porter,
1987). In addition to these strategies, many authors also mention functional
strategies, practiced by the functional units of a business unit, as another
level of strategy.
Corporate Strategies: These are concerned with the broad, long-term questions of “what
businesses are we in, and what do we want to do with these businesses?” The
corporate strategy sets the overall direction the organization will follow. It
matters whether a firm is engaged in one or several businesses. This will
influence the overall strategic direction, what corporate strategy is followed,
and how that strategy is implemented and managed. Corporate strategies vary
from drastic retrenchment through aggressive growth. Top management need to
carefully assess the environment before choosing the fundamental strategies the
organization will use to achieve the corporate objectives.
