Week 27

1.      In your own words and using referenced quotes explain why strategy theories developed in the last 10 years tend to be quite different from those developed in the 1960’s.

According to Rod Blagojevich “A successful economic development strategy must focus on improving the skills of the area's workforce, reducing the cost of doing business and making available the resources business needs to compete and thrive in today's global economy.” (Strategy Quotes, 2012)

According to Jack Welch “A strategy is something like, an innovative new product; globalization, taking your products around the world; be the low-cost producer. A strategy is something you can touch; you can motivate people with; be number one and number two in every business. You can energize people around the message.” (Strategy Quotes, 2012)

The trends of changes in strategy, its importance and some of its aspects is shown by the above quotes. We can find a drastic change and development in strategy since the 1960s.

The situation and condition were different during 1960s. The political and economic conditions were stable and there was very low competition too. But the world today is nowhere near the 1960s. Today all of these factors changes day by day and there is not any certainty of future. The strategists needs to be more flexible and creative in order to provide best results because the needs and demands are constantly increasing.

Strategy Theory Response can be used to differentiate between the strategies theories developed in the last 10 years and 1960’s:

Complexity Theory:

“Nothing is predictable” will be the conclusion if we look after the recent strategies. In order to adapt to the change, “Flexibility” has been considered to be the major determinant. “Emergent Strategy” could be its best example because this strategy is being followed by every organization/company. Whereas, “Deliberate Strategy” would not be a good choice here because it takes so much time for the implementation therefore the whole scenario could change in the course of its implementation.

Options Theory:

In Porter’s five forces model theory we can find out that the competitive rivalry upon the bargaining power of suppliers and buyers, availability of substitute goods and the threat of entrants/new entrants are the main source for competition. But, now we can see that the concept has completely changed, as it is said that flexibility is now the major determinant for the competitive advantage. As the market is changing unpredictably, the biggest advantage for any organization would be opening up the door of flexibility for any time.

Rapid Adaptation:

The last ten years has seen a huge development in new technologies and the day by day increasing in customer’s wants. It will be very wise to say that any positioning strategies or unique resources would not help in achieving competitive advantage in today’s date. The businesses today needs to change their strategies as per the change in the market and it’s very hard to apply the traditional tools like the SWOT Analysis because the changing market is very difficult to analyze.

2.      You attend a job interview for an entry level managerial position and mention that you completed a 30 week strategy module. Your interviewer seems interested and explains that this job role would enable you to become involved in the strategy making process. In 200 to 300 words explain to your interviewer how the module has helped to prepare you for a strategy role.

The job of strategy making is very difficult and complex. Formerly, strategy making was considered to be a long term planning made to achieve certain objectives and goals. Nowadays, it has a completely different meaning and is considered to be a task for creating an environment where an organization/company is able to adapt to change and at the same time is flexible too.

All aspects of “STRATEGY” has been covered by the module “Strategy: Choices and Impacts”. The course has all the necessary topics covered from the definition, its implication to the future of strategy too. At starting, the module has stated that any action and plans made and implemented to achieve organizational goals is strategy. This module has helped us to develop skills and knowledge of wide range of strategic tools. Additionally, it has helped us in learning how to implement a perfect strategy and how to make best choices. But most importantly, this module has provided us with all the required knowledge and skills with which we can use them in the real life / practical scenario.

This module has helped me to learn and understand many analytical tools used in businesses. I have been able to understand the nature and understanding of the business and the strategies that can help to tackle with the arising problems with the help of various analytical tools like SWOT Analysis, TOWS Analysis, PESTEL Analysis and Porter’s Five Forces Model.

For a strategists, interpersonal roles are very important. As for me, the various interactive activities, research tasks and the presentations that were included in this module has helped a lot in developing my interpersonal skills and also my creativity skills which are very important in developing strategies. “Definition” is not the only area focused by this module but has also been applied with practical scenario. We are provided with various interesting and useful case studies which are related to strategy and we needed to solve them using our skills and creativity. This was very useful and interesting.

Lastly, I am very grateful towards my lecturer and tutor “Dr. Gurutez Tej” for teaching us with perfection and helping us out in every problems we faced during the course of study. I would like to say that this model is very useful and practical in a sense that it has given me with all the skills and knowledge that I would require to be a good and successful strategist and I am pretty confident that I would be a good strategist and a good manager in future.

Reference:

·        Johnson, Whittington and Scholes (2011) Exploring Strategy, 9th Edition, Pearson Education, Chapter 12.

·        Clarke, C. J. (1997) ‘The Strategic Planning Society – The First 30 Years’ Long Range Planning 30(3) pp 327-333.

·        Sull D. and Eisenhardt K. (2012) ‘Simple Rules for a Complex World, Harvard Business Review, September, pp69-141.

·        Grant, R and Jordan, J (2012) Foundations of Strategy, Wiley, chapter 10.

·        Reeves M. and Daimler M. (2011) ‘Adaptability: The New Competitive Advantage’, Harvard Business Review, July-August, pp135-141.

·        Amabile, T (1998) How to Kill Creativity, Harvard Business Review, Sep 98 pp77-87.

·        Richard D'Aveni in Johnson & Scholes & Whittington (2007) Exploring Corporate Strategy, pg239.