Strategy Development Process - Literature review Example

Title: STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT PROCESS Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Introduction A strategy is formulated by an organization in order to shape its future. Organizations consider a strategy formulation as a process of getting into the long-term goals in the future which are then implemented if considered viable. In order to have a clear understanding of strategy formulation, it is equally important to first consider analyzing the definition of strategy. According to Tan & Matthews, 2009, a strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions. A strategy helps an organization to come up with working strategies giving direction on when and how it actually forms in organizations. Streams of behavior could be separated to enable identification of strategies in those streams of behaviors. Afterwards an investigative on where the strategies originated is conducted so as to give a clear distinction between plans impacted by leadership plans and with the intended need in relation to aspiration of the organization. There exist intended strategies which has goals at the end unlike emergent where its patterns are realized even though it has no intentions (Enz, 2010). In order to understand emergent strategy as having no intentions, a number of illustrations ought to be demonstrated. Some of the illustrations are brought from the various industries such as manufacturing, magazine, airline, food retailing, and automobiles among others. In order to give an elaborate understanding, this paper is aimed at highlighting the differences that exist between emergent and deliberate strategy (Trent, 2007). A strategy is considered as perfectly deliberate in three conditions. They include; intention for the strategy ought to exist, teamwork should be embraced and finally, collective intentions attained should be exactly as intended. Organizations that involve themselves in perfectly deliberate strategy expect to meet their goals in the end. Leaders and other members work together to ensure the goals are achieved (Enz, 2010). Perfectly emergent on the other hand means that a pattern of action is followed in respect to time and its consistency without necessarily putting much consideration into its intentions. In entrepreneurial terms where there is no strategy it is counted to be no strategy at all. In other words, it is difficult to formulate a strategy without the intended objective. It is therefore the role of the organization or leadership to ensure that there is an intention for that strategy. There comes a case when emergent strategy does arise and considered important (Moser, 2006). Literature review An emergent strategy though has no intentions is very important at some point. For instance, in the federal express, emergent strategy will respond to unplanned opportunities and challenges. In some case, because of poor planning, emergent strategy may lead to disasters. For instance, in the mid 1980s FedEx went out of its way of package delivery and embarked on emerging technology of facsimile machine According to a research conducted by Bain & Company, 2009, benchmarking emerged first tool in terms of global management. Since strategy was researched on a couple o decades ago, researchers have realized that the speed at which businesses grow is high. Strategies have been worked on for a long period of time and have become foreshortened into tactics. The mass markets that use to exist in the early years have gone away. In order to remain relevant in the market, control have been lest to control the market thus diminishing with time. Consequently, decisions have been limited thus ground breaking strategy is being taken over by competitors. In respect to FedEx Express, the company decided to do away with the traditional way of doing business and transformed to electronic mode of sending mails by use of Zapmail. With the hopes that by changing mode of operating business, the firm suffered a great challenge because the machine they had introduced had technical problems which made customers suffer greatly. Additionally, the firm to anticipate the numerous businesses might opt to purchase their own fax machine. This didn’t take long as Zapmail was shut down due to emergent strategy. The main mistake that FedEx did was venturing into a business domain that was outside their intended strategy which was package delivery. However, emergent strategy does not always lead to failures but a time brings huge successes into the organizations. For instance, Southern Bloomer Manufacturing Company had a sole responsibility of making underwear for people in mental hospitals and those in prisons. The reason behind this was the fact that, the management perceives that the same product made by companies such as Calvin Klein may not be suitable for people living under such conditions. They believed that because prison life is harsh, it therefore needed durable underwear to withstand it. As a strategy of Southern Bloomers went ahead to sell underwear that were heavy cotton fabric material. It did not take long when people from the outside world discovered underwear from the Southern Bloomers for its durability. Sales increased and they went out of their intended strategy of supplying underwear to institutional needs for durable underwear. At one particular time, Don Sooner paid a visit to a gun shop. Although Sooner had no interest in acquiring a gun, he noticed a potential use of a scrap fabric at the gun shop. He realized that the patches used in cleaning inside of a gun barrel that the shop was selling were actually of low quality. According to him the scrap fabric which he had could perform a better job that what the patches can actually do. Far much better off that the rest gun cleaning patches, Southern Bloomer supplied patches which left no threads or lint. Unlike the other patches, they lest threads and lint which negatively affects the reliability and accuracy of a gun. It was through their quality products that Southern Bloomer made thousands of pounds worth of sales every month. To Sooner, it was an emergent strategy (Philpott & Powers, 2010). There are numerous examples of companies which employed emergent strategy in the past and are now ripping fruits of success. Some of the examples include; FriendFinder is a social site where subscribers can post pictures. In the past, subscribers would post explicit profile pictures on FriendFinder, which is a B-tier network used as a social site. The company was left with no choice but to make a choice of either blocking the behavior or leaving it continue. Instead they made a decision of implementing the idea and named it AdultFriendfinder, this came up and became the leading social network meant for swingers and sold the site later at a handsome price (Davila, Epstein & Shelton, 2007). Viagra was originally used by clinicians to boost blood pressure as a medication. The clinicians later used the side effects of Viagra to make more money that it should been if it were for high blood pressure alone. Finally, nyQuil, this is a medication that was used to cure cold. After a period of time, Doctors realized a more role for the medicine. When patients were injected with NyQuil they went into a deep sleep. They later reposition the medicine as a remedy for nighttime cold. Strategic management is defined a coming up and implementing cross-functional decisions and thereafter evaluating to ensure it meets the intended objectives of the organization. The process involves identification of organizational goals, policy formulation in order to ensure these objectives are met. After which necessary resources are gathered for the implementation of the formulated policies and procedures. New strategies are only essential to any industry or company if it is implemented. However, research indicates that less than 50% formulated strategies are implemented. Failing to implement any new strategy is just failing to formulate it. Many scholars have argued that strategy is a tool in which an industry tries to exploit all the available opportunities in the environment. The success of any firm depends greatly with how it converts its plan into action. It is therefore clear that performance of a firm depends with how it implements its strategies. The strategy tools have become more essential in business operations like never before mainly due to rising market competition in the contemporary society. All the business in the state of competition requires new tools to overcome the competition challenge, one of the main tools identified by the experts is the new strategies. This assay will therefore link the common patterns of existing theory in strategic management and the organizational behavior. It also aims at explaining strategy act as a stream of decision other than the role of the top management team as it is emergent (Link, 2008). Researchers from the fields of sociology, economics, psychology, organizational behaviors and public administration have contributed in the development of strategic management. However, researchers from various fields have used different perspectives to give an understanding of the strategic management. A good example is where researchers in the field of economics used rational perspective while those from the field of psychology used the humanistic perspective (Curie, 2006). Research on emergent strategic management has been reliant on some perspectives guiding a researcher. Some of the best classifications of the strategic approaches include: Tan (2004) adaptive, linear and interpretive schools, (Peng, 2004) ten schools of thought, (Pandela, 2004) logical incremental, rational and cultural schools of thought, (Peng, 2008) mechanistic and organic, and cognitive, rational and micro perspectives. To start with Chafee, he based his classification on the major perspective in which each type is developed upon. The focus point of linear model is the planning. The emphasis of this perspective on methodological and sequential action is a clear indication of rational decision making process; good environment and more basic view of strategy with the main role for top management. With this model, time is viewed as static. For the adaptive model, more emphasis is put on the continuous evaluation of the environment as well as subsequent organizational adaptation. In this case, environment is more dynamic and more emphasis is put on means and goals of strategies are viewed as more important. On the other hand, the interpretive model views the organization as a collection of social contracts and strategy is an organization main activity propagated by shared values and beliefs. All the business in the state of competition requires new tools to overcome the competition challenge, one of the main tools identified by the experts is the new strategies. This assay will therefore link the common patterns of existing theory in strategic management and the organizational behavior. It also aims at explaining strategy act as a stream of decision other than the role of the top management team as it is emergent. Researchers from the fields of sociology, economics, psychology, organizational behaviors and public administration have contributed in the development of strategic management. However, researchers from various fields have used different perspectives to give an understanding of the strategic management. Mintzeberg’s classification (1998) Pure deliberate and pure emergent strategies A perfectly deliberate strategy it happen as intended. For this strategy to be successful three conditions are involved; an intention must have existed before the strategy was rolled, secondly, teamwork should be embraced and finally, collective intentions attained should be exactly as intended. Organizations that involve themselves in perfectly deliberate strategy expect to meet their goals in the end. Leaders and other members work together to ensure the goals are achieved (Hoque, 2006). Perfectly emergent on the other hand means that a pattern of action is followed in respect to time and its consistency without necessarily putting much consideration into its intentions. In entrepreneurial terms where there is no strategy it is counted to be no strategy at all (Currie, 2004). Tactics to emergent strategy Umbrella setting In planning a goal, organization should not be specific in determining the end result ahead of time, it is important to develop guard rails for the intended strategic objectives. This mean that the minimum threshold required to come up with intended objectives could be reached at by learning to attain on a daily basis. In some cases, the organization will decide to lose a given amount of pounds within a fixed period of time in order to test the viability of emergent strategy. Losing the money will not be an issue but the main issue is when to attain the goal (Pless & Maak, 2011). For an organization to attain its goals, it should consider setting an umbrella strategy to monitor the outcome. The actions of an individual will determine how to get into the end result of the strategy (Grattan, 2011). In order to understand the umbrella strategy, it is rather important to cite an example. Architectural firm best illustrates this strategy. When designing a building, partners have set in their policies to design excellent and unique ones possessing high visibility which the community to feel proud of (Duggan, 2013). At some point, the firm under umbrella strategy will perform their usual designs on hotels, offices and art centers. Rarely, the firm is invited to small projects, at the end; the central goal will not have been altered (Jermy, 2011). According to Mintzberg, 2006, nearly all the strategies in the real world have umbrella characteristics. In other words, organizational leadership will not look upon other actor in the strategy in respect to both planned and entrepreneurial strategies or employing other strategies fully, this only happens to those organizations which no longer are on the leading end. Emergent strategy therefore takes over when the leadership can hardly nudge (Christensen & Raynor, 2003). Continuous strategy learning The business world is no longer predictable as it use to be in the past. It is equally important to encourage learning continuously on how the strategy will work in the past and its end result. It is at this point therefore where organizations should learn that a strategy is a path of reaching a destination (Montgomery & Porter, 2001). Emergent strategy in most cases associated with bad results but to some extent give impressive outcomes if well monitored. Emergent strategy can benefit and organization in that it can go much ahead of competition hence bringing in a huge benefit (Leondes, 2003). To illustrate this benefit of emergent strategy, Buffalo wings creation is brought into perspective. According to the New Yorker, Frank Bellissimo earned an award for inventing Anchor Bar in Buffalo wings. Earlier, Bellissimo was supplied with necks and backs in order to make flavor for his sauce (Peng, 2014). Instead of throwing the wings away, he decided that he will make cook the wings for his customers to feed on. As a result, Buffalo wings were introduced. Since no other restaurant had thought of such an idea. Anchor Bar became successful (Dyck & Neubert, 2010). Emergent strategy helps in the development of existing products. For instance, in the advancement of technological products, Companies that have ventured into technology will improve features of their products to stand tall from their competitors. This is only done through emergent strategy (Kazmi & Kazmi, 2008). Putting out fires in business terms means that unexpected issues ought to be done away with so that they do not affect the operation of the business. In order for an organization to emerge successful, it should consider putting much effort on the planned strategy first then emergent strategy later (Jansson, 2007). Planned strategy is used to give direction of where the business is heading to while emergent is used to overcome competition. The fact is, if a company puts much of its efforts on the emergent strategy, the planned strategy will lose meaning hence inviting troubles which the company had not planned at all (Kandula, 2009) Emergent strategy does happen on an intention and not by accident. A corporate strategic plan should give room for new potential benefits that had not yet been planned for earlier. 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