Lecture notes
Introduction to Leadership and Corporate Strategy
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An introductory summary to leadership and corporate strategy.
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Introduction to Leadership and CorporateStrategy
Strategic Management Overview
What is Strategic Management?
Strategic management is the management of an organization’s overall purpose, to ensure that the
needs and enablers of the present are balanced with those of the future.
Levels of Strategy
Corporate-level Strategy
Corporate-level strategy: concerned with the overall scope of an organisation (in terms of the
industries and markets in which it competes) and how value is added to the constituent / principal
business of the organisational hole. Corporate-level strategies issues include:
• Geographical scope
• Diversity of products and or services
• Acquisitions of new businesses
• How resources are allocated between the different elements of the organisation
For example, for a news corporation, diversifying from print journalism into television and social
networking are corporate level strategies.
Competitive / Business-level Strategy
Competitive / Business-level strategy: concerns how the individual business should compete in their
particular markets (that’s why it also known as competitive strategy). Whether these individual
businesses are stand-alone businesses or business units within a large corporation is irrelevant (i.e.
they can be either). Business-level strategy typically concerns issues such as innovation, appropriate
scale, and responses to competitors’ moves. Where the businesses are units within a larger
organisation, business-level strategies should clearly fit (i.e. match) with corporate-level strategy.
Functional / Operational Strategy
Functional / Operational Strategy: concerned with how the components of an organisation deliver
effectively the corporate- and business-level strategies in terms of resources, processes, and people.
, For instance, Myspace engineers had to keep developing enough processing capacity to cope with
the strategy of rapid growth.
Comparative Table of Levels of Strategy
STRATEGIC BUSINESS FUNCTIONAL
FOCUS OF DECISION Achieving competitive Implementing Day-to-day operations
advantage strategies
SCOPE Whole organisation Business unit Department
LEVEL OF DECISION Senior management Head of business unit Supervisory
MAKING
TIME HORIZON Long-term Medium-term Short-term
Who Deals with Strategic Decisions?
Diagram showing that everyone within the organisation can be touched by strategic management (I
think).
Characteristics of Strategic Decisions
• Provide long-term direction (consistency)
• Ensure strategic fit with business environment
• Set courses of action
• Allocation of resources and competences
• Define the organisation and provides values and expectations to power players
What do strategists have to consider when making strategic decisions?
Long-term strategic planning vs. strategic agility (ability for companies to stay competitive in their
business by adjusting and adapting to new innovative ideas)
Stability vs. dynamism
Turbulent Environments, Transient Advantage & Strategy
Strategic management is no longer about developing a single, long term strategy (McGrath, 2013).
Strategy is about dynamic manoeuvring not positioning; speed of competitive response increasingly
important (D’Aveni et al, 2010).
Abandon stability as a strategic goal (McGrath, 2013).
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