Question

Wk4 Journal ArticleI need an article/review on the subject " Accounting" with a 500 word summary of the article, that will aid the strategic management effort of an organization and with 2 references. Please

Answer 1

Strategic management is the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by a company's top management on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization compete.

Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans designed to achieve these objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models often include a feedback loop to monitor execution and inform the next round of planning.

Michael Porter identifies three principles underlying strategy: creating a "unique and valuable [market] position", making trade-offs by choosing "what not to do", and creating "fit" by aligning company activities with one another to support the chosen strategy.

Corporate strategy involves answering a key question from a portfolio perspective: "What business should we be in?" Business strategy involves answering the question: "How shall we compete in this business?" In management theory and practice, a further distinction is often made between strategic management and operational management. Operational management is concerned primarily with improving efficiency and controlling costs within the boundaries set by the organization's strategy.

Environmental analysis includes the:

• Remote external environment, including the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental landscape (PESTLE);
• Industry environment, such as the competitive behavior of rival organizations, the bargaining power of buyers/customers and suppliers, threats from new entrants to the industry, and the ability of buyers to substitute products (Porter's 5 forces); and
• Internal environment, regarding the strengths and weaknesses of the organization's resources (i.e., its people, processes and IT systems).

Strategic decisions are based on insight from the environmental assessment and are responses to strategic questions about how the organization will compete, such as:

• What is the organization's business?
• Who is the target customer for the organization's products and services?
• Where are the customers and how do they buy? What is considered "value" to the customer?
• Which businesses, products and services should be included or excluded from the portfolio of offerings?
• What is the geographic scope of the business?
• What differentiates the company from its competitors in the eyes of customers and other stakeholders?
• Which skills and capabilities should be developed within the firm?
• What are the important opportunities and risks for the organization?
• How can the firm grow, through both its base business and new business?
• How can the firm generate more value for investors?

The answers to these and many other strategic questions result in the organization's strategy and a series of specific short-term and long-term goals or objectives and related measures

Reference.

• Nag, R.; Hambrick, D. C.; Chen, M.-J (2007). "What is strategic management, really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field" (PDF). Strategic Management Journal. 28 (9): 935–955. doi:10.1002/smj.615. Retrieved October 22, 2012.
• Ghemawat, Pankaj (Spring 2002). "Competition and Business Strategy in Historical Perspective". Business History Review. SSRN 264528 .
• Hill, Charles W.L., Gareth R. Jones, Strategic Management Theory: An Integrated Approach, Cengage Learning, 10th edition 2012