This document provides an overview of strategic management and strategy. It discusses key concepts including: - Strategy involves achieving competitive advantage by meeting customer needs better than rivals. - Strategic management consists of strategy analysis, formulation, and implementation. These elements are interdependent. - Strategy analysis evaluates the external environment and internal capabilities to determine how well positioned an organization is. - Strategy formulation takes place at the business and corporate levels based on strategic analysis and creative insights. - Strategy implementation requires effective communication and a flexible organizational culture. - Corporate, business, and functional strategies operate at different levels within an organization.

1. Strategic Management
Master of Business Administration
Muhammad Abdullah

2. What is Strategy?
• Strategy has a long antecedent – Sun Tzu The Art of War
& Karl Von Clausewitz
• Strategy is about achieving a competitive advantage
• Meeting customer needs better than rivals
• Porter (1996) competitive strategy is about being
different

3. Studying Strategy
I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in
war more than in any other subject we must begin by
looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than
elsewhere the part and the whole must always be
thought of together.
Karl Von Clausewitz 1780-1831
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Sun Tzu 544-496 B.C.

4. Some Definitions….
“Strategy noun: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or
overall aim: time to develop a coherent economic strategy; [mass
noun] shifts in marketing strategy”
C Soanes and A Stevenson (Eds), “The Oxford Dictionary of English”, Oxford University
Press, 2003
“Strategy is about how an organization sets about getting to where
it wants to get ”
J Thompson and F Martin, “Strategic Management: Awareness and Change”, 5th
Edition, Thomson, 2005, p.xvii
“Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the
long term, which achieves advantage for the organisation”
G Johnson and K Scholes “Exploring Corporate Strategy”, 6th Edition, Pearson, 2002, p10

5. Agenda
I. Strategy Dimensions
 Strategy Process
 Strategy Content
 Strategy Context
II. Organizational Purpose
III. Introduction to the Readings

6. Strategy Dimensions

7. Strategy Dimensions
Aspects of the Strategy Process

8. Strategy Context
Industry, organizational and International

9. What is Strategy?
• Markides (1999) selecting a strategic position an
organization can call its own based on:
• Who should the organization target as customers?
• What products or services should be offered?
• How can the organization do this efficiently?

10. What is Strategy?
• Kay (1993) an organization’s strategy is ‘…the match
between its internal capabilities and external
relationships’
• Internal: what the organization is capable of doing
• External: Its relationship with
employees, customers, shareholders, and suppliers.
• The use of analytical techniques allows the firm to
influence its position in the market

11. The Matching Concept:
Strategy as “Fit”
Internal
Analysis
- Resources &
Capabilities
MATCHING
External
Analysis
- Environment
PROCESS
Strengths, Weaknesses
Opportunities, Threats
•
•
•
•
SWOT is the most misused technique by students
Avoid a long list - what is really important?
Try to “match” SW with OT
Should be a summary of analysis useful as a basis to judge
future options against

12. What is Strategy?
• The process of creating a strategy is called strategic
management
• Strategic management consists of: strategy analysis, strategy
formulation, and strategy implementation
• In reality these elements are interdependent and should not
be considered in isolation
• Strategy analysis, formulation, and implementation all need to
be considered if the organization is to meet the needs of its
environment

13. What is Strategy?
• Strategy analysis is a useful starting point for crafting strategy
• It includes the general and competitive environment facing
the organization
• It also deals with the organization’s internal environment
• Strategic analysis helps the organization evaluate how well it
is positioned to exploit external opportunities

14. What is Strategy?
• Strategy formulation usually takes place at the business and
corporation level
• Strategic analysis is important for strategy formulation
• So too is creative insights which synthesize experiences that
exist within the organization to form a novel strategy
• An organization is seldom faced with only one strategy which
means it is necessary to evaluate competing strategies

15. What is Strategy?
• Strategy implementation requires the organization to be
sufficiently flexible
• A given strategy must be effectively communicated with
stakeholders inside and outside the organization
• The organization’s values are crucial in sign-posting to
individuals what the organization considers important
• An organization’s culture will determine how it responds to
opportunities that exist

16. What is Strategy?
• A vision is often associated with the founder of an
organization
• It represents a desired state the organization aspires to
achieve in the future
• A mission seeks to answer the fundamental question of why
an organization exists
• Campbell et al. (1990) make a distinction between mission
and sense of mission

17. The Ashridge Mission Model
Why the company exists
Purpose
The competitive
position and
distinctive
competence
Strategy
Values
Behaviour
Standards
The policies and behaviour patterns
that underpin the distinctive
competencies and the value system
What the
company
believes in

18. What is Strategy?
• The assumptions on which an organization has been built and
the basis on which it is run are its theory of business
• It includes assumptions about
markets, customers, competitors, and its internal capabilities
• Organization encounter difficulties when their theory of
business no longer fit with reality
• A organization’s theory of business becomes obsolete when it
has achieved its objectives

19. STRATEGIC DRIFT
• Over time, paradigms about “what works” to deliver success can
become entrenched. However reality of what is required may drift away
from organisational “position”  Strategic Drift
G Johnson and K Scholes “Exploring Corporate Strategy”, 6th Edition, Pearson, 2002, p81

20. What is Strategy?
• Corporate strategy is concerned with which markets an
organization wants to compete in
• Business strategy deals with how an organization will compete
in its chosen industry or market
• Functional strategy occurs according to functional lines such
as R&D, marketing and finance

21. What is Strategy?
• The Design School seeks to match the capabilities of the
organization to the opportunities within its competitive
environment
• This rationalist approach is exemplified by Michael Porter’s generic
strategies
• The Learning School emphasizes deliberate and emergent strategies
• A deliberate strategy is one the organization intends to pursue
• An emergent strategies involves managerial learning and
experience that coalesce into a realised strategy

22. What is Strategy?
A strategic management framework
A strategy must
take account of
the organization’s
stakeholders if it is
to succeed

23. Strategy

24. What is Strategy?
Mintzberg et al
Plan
Ploy
Position
Perspective
Pattern
Terminology
Vision
Mission
Objectives
Strategies
L Bellamy - Leeds Business School - 2011

25. Intended vs Realised Strategy
H Mintzberg “Five Ps for Strategy” in H Mintzberg, J Lampel, J B Quinn and S
Ghoshal “The Strategy Process: Concepts, Contexts, Cases”, 4th
Edition, Prentice Hall, 2003, p5

26. The Matching Concept:
Strategy as “Fit”
Internal
Analysis
- Resources &
Capabilities
MATCHING
PROCESS
Strategy as “Stretch”
Strategic Position
External
Analysis
- Environment

27. Strategy Formulation/ Formation
• Classical Perspectives
– Planning, Positioning, Design
• The Strategist(s)
– Learning, Cognitive, Entrepreneurial
• ‘Forces’
– Culture, Environment, Configuration, Powe
r
Mintzberg et al (2008) Strategy Safari.