Introduction and Overview

Objectives:To define management / corporate strategy and to examine its link with strategic decision making.

To explore the core areas of corporate strategy.

Lynch, R. (2000) Corporate Strategy (2nd ed.) London, FT/Prentice Hall, Ch 1, 3 & 6Johnson, G. & Scholes, K. (1999) Exploring Corporate Strategy (5th ed.) London, Prentice Hall, Ch 1, 3 & 4Truss, C., Mankin, D. & Kelliher, C. (2012) Strategic Human Resource Management, Oxford, Oxford University Pressde Wit, R. & Meyer, R. (1998) Strategy (2nd ed.) London, Thompson, Ch 1

To consider the process, content and contexts within which strategic decisions are arrived at

To analyze the environment

To consider the contribution of Michael Porter

Define corporate strategy and explain its various elements.

Explain the core areas of corporate strategy and how they interlink with the wider environment.

Distinguish between process, content and context of a corporate strategy.

Corporate Strategy is concerned with an organization's basic direction for the future: its purpose, its ambitions, its resources and how it interacts with the world in which it operates.

(Lynch, 2000:5)

Sense of purpose - changes with time, with the size of the organization, with the resources it has at its disposal and with the competitive nature of the environment.

Let us take as our example your organization:

What is its purpose?How has this purpose changed?What will be its purpose into the future?

Along with purpose organizations require plans or actions, which need to be, developed to enable the purpose to be realized.

Let us link back to your organization! What plans/actions have been set in motion to help deliver the purpose?

Corporate strategy is the pattern of major objectives, purposes or goals and essential policies or plans for achieving those goals, stated in such a way as to define what business the company is in or is to be in and the kind of company it is or is to be. (Lynch, 2000:8)

Organizations are then faced with three areas in which the essential management of such purposes, plans and actions remain essential:

The organisations internal resources;The external environment within which the organisation operates; The organisations ability to add value to what it does.

Who benefits from this added value:

ShareholdersEmployeesManagementGovernment

SustainableDeveloping the processOffer competitive advantageExploit linkages between the organisation and its environmentVision

Involves the entire organizationHas minimum and maximum objectives over timeCovers the range and depth of the organizations activitiesDirects the changing and evolving relationship of the organization with its environment

Is central to the development of sustainable competitive advantage

Is crucial to adding value

1 Environmental scanning 2 Strategic analysis2 Strategy development / formulation3 Strategy implementation4 Evaluation & controlHowever, problems arise:Influence of judgment and valuesSpeculation!

Context - the environment within which the strategy operates and is developed

Content - the main actions of the proposed strategy

Process - how the actions link as the strategy unfolds

The prescriptive approach

The emergent approach

What they say about the three core areas: linear / sequential / interrelated

Source: adapted from Truss et al. (2012)

Value added test

Consistency test

Competitive advantage test

Consider the following contexts:public organizationsnon-profit organizationsinternational operations - globalisation.

What are the key strategic principles at play here?