Strategic management has been defined in many ways and it deals with organization’s
performance and strategy. Strategic management can be defined as the process of planning,
implementing, monitoring, and evaluating strategic plans by the top management of an
organization to achieve goals and objectives by incorporating the limitation of resources and the
effect of internal and external environment (Tucci & Roy, n.d).
Currently many organization use strategic management to achieve their objectives and optimize
their operations. Each organization chooses a specific approach to strategic management based
on firm’s size, culture, and firm’s structure. The strategies implemented could be intended
strategy, emerging strategies, or realized strategy depending on the flexibility of organization to
adapt to changes (Ketchen & Short, 2012).
A modern company that can clearly explain strategic management is Unilever which is a global
company that produces varies products including beauty products like soap. The strategy
management needed to be aligned with the firm’s mission and vision statement. The strategy
Unilever implemented is called ‘Path to Growth’ which focuses on capital efficiency, operating
cost, global buying, and attention on their brand (DeLong and Srivastava, 2010).
The implementation of the above strategy followed five main steps that start with strategic
analysis. After that it was followed by external and internal environmental analysis, formulation
of business strategy, and finally implemental of the strategy (Aladwani, 2001). The
implementation process was very difficult because it involves different department to make
decisions, changes have to be incorporated, and organizational culture that enables changes to be
adopted was needed.
Unilever focused on having strong leadership for successful implementation of strategic plans.
The reason is that leadership creates an organization culture that foster change, improve resource
management, provides strategic direction, implement strong ethical code of conduct to ensure
integrity, enhances innovation, and improve brand awareness (Yusof & Aspinwall, 2000).
Additionally, Unilever has considered the multicultural nature of its operation and taken steps to
make sure every staff feels accepted.
A total quality management plan is prepared to evaluate the performance of the strategic
management by top management. The top management is consisting of executive directors and
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