strategic management

• Strategy control is a key component of the strategic management process, which involves monitoring and adjusting the implemented strategies to ensure they remain aligned with the organization's goals and objectives.
• Strategic management involves understanding and articulating the difference between strategic management and strategy, the importance of strategic management, intended, emergent, and realized strategies, the history of strategic management, and the basic strategic management process
• Strategic management is a comprehensive process designed for firms to best use their resources and capabilities to provide superior firm performance
• Strategies are broad goals that, as accomplished, help the organization move forward toward its vision
• Strategy formation dates back to ancient times, particularly used in warfare, and the strategic process creates a framework for an organization to set a course for success
• Issues faced by companies like Tesla are the focus of strategic management, helping answer why some firms outperform others
• Strategic management examines how actions and events involving top executives (like Elon Musk), firms (like Tesla), and industries (like the electric car market) influence a firm’s success or failure
• Strategic management involves the utilization or planned allocation of resources to implement major initiatives taken by executives on behalf of stakeholders to improve the performance of firms in an environment
• Intended strategy is the strategy that an organization hopes to execute, usually described in detail within an organization’s strategic plan
• Emergent strategy is an unplanned strategy that arises in response to opportunities and/or unexpected challenges
• Emergent strategies can lead to disasters if not carefully planned
• Emergent strategies can also lead to tremendous success, like in the case of Southern Bloomer Manufacturing Company
• Southern Bloomer initially aimed to serve institutional needs for durable underwear
• Southern Bloomer's performance was excellent, servicing about 125 facilities, but this led to a vast amount of scrap fabric being sent to landfills, which was wasteful and costly
• Co-founder Don Sonner's emergent strategy for Southern Bloomer involved repurposing scrap fabric for gun-cleaning patches after a visit to a gun shop
• The gun-cleaning patches from Southern Bloomer became popular due to their high quality, not giving off threads or lint that could affect guns' accuracy and reliability
• Realized strategy is the strategy that an organization actually follows, shaped by intended, deliberate, and emergent strategies
• In the case of Southern Bloomers Manufacturing Company, realized strategy has been greatly influenced by both its intended strategy of serving institutional needs for durable underwear and the emergent strategy of producing gun-cleaning patches
• An unrealized strategy refers to the abandoned parts of the intended strategy, as seen in the case of aspiring author David McConnell who turned to selling perfume, leading to the creation of the successful Avon company
• Strategic planning involves intended, emergent, and realized strategies, with organizations responding to changes using emergent strategies
• Most organizations create intended strategies they hope to follow, but changes in the organization's situation give rise to new opportunities and challenges, leading to emergent strategies