Strategic Management And Competitive Advantages

Traditional and contemporary organisations need to be highly competitive in order to survive in today’s aggressive business world. The dynamic marketing environment requires managers to develop different strategies and apply the most appropriate one for the particular establishment. To create a good strategy managers need to understand the nature of the industry and look at the competition. The process of defining the strategy is so important that many companies are requesting professional strategists to tailor a strategic plan for their business. This plan can be a guide to a well-designed strategic management which can help a company in achieving its objectives. One of which is a competitive advantage which cannot be complete without strong …show more content…
“Strategy is a rational process of deliberate calculation and analysis, designed to maximize long-term advantages” (Whittington, 2001) . It is significantly important for businesses, as a realistic and specific strategy can keep a company away from failure. Nevertheless managers need to ensure that the strategy is up-to-date with this fast growing and changing market. The key element to keep up with the changes on market is to choose the correct approach through which the organisation will accomplish its goals. There are three generic strategic approaches to outperform the rest of the companies in the industry: cost leadership, differentiation and focus (Porter, M. E., 1980) . A firm should concentrate on a particular approach, otherwise Porter (1985) suggests that the company ends up with a blurry strategy “being all things to all people which is a recipe for below-average performance” (Porter, 1985) . The development of a strategy is prepared by means of a strategic planning which consists of step-by-step system. The main benefit of the system is that it helps in understanding strategic issues (Johnson, Whittington & Scholes, 2011) . The stages of the strategic plan comprises the short-term aims which are essential for accomplishing the long-term objectives. It can be …show more content…
On other hand, good execution is not always the ladder of becoming truly superior in the specific area. The important bit is, actually to have a strategic sense of guiding your organisation how to compete. Strategic management is fundamental for a firm to become competitive in the business world. It asks organisations to answer three main question: 1) Where are we now? ; 2) Where are we going? ; 3) How do we get there? (Coade,2014) . Different divisions of strategic management are concerned with answering each question. The first question is about strategic analysis of the environment. Initially, the firm must know their current position so that later on they can improve and get into a competitive position on the market. The next step is to determine the strategic vision of the company, which is the idea of the direction towards success (BusinessDictionary.com, 2014) . When you are competing in the industry you need to become familiar with the competitors and their strengths and weaknesses. A good method for evaluating these characteristics is SWOT analysis. Once you know them you can do better and do different. The main idea is to understand the need to change your mission from attempting to be the best to trying to be unique (YouTube, UNC Chapel Hill, 2014) . Otherwise you are using well-known techniques which can be easily duplicated by others. Therefore, the firm will not succeed in