Strategic or institutional management is the conduct of drafting, implementing and evaluating

cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives.[1]
It is the process of specifying the organization's mission, vision and objectives, developing
policies and plans, often in terms of projects and programs, which are designed to achieve these
objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the policies and plans, projects and
programs. A balanced scorecard is often used to evaluate the overall performance of the business
and its progress towards objectives.

Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and over Tactics.
Strategic management provides overall direction to the enterprise and is closely related to the
field of Organization Studies. In the field of business administration it is useful to talk about
"strategic alignment" between the organization and its environment or "strategic consistency".
According to Arieu (2007), "there is strategic consistency when the actions of an organization
are consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn are with the market and the
context."

“Strategic management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and the
industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and
strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy
annually or quarterly to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or
needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed circumstances, new technology, new
competitors, a new economic environment., or a new social, financial, or political environment.”

Strategy formulation
Strategic formulation is a combination of three main processes which are as follows:

• Performing a situation analysis, self-evaluation and competitor analysis: both internal and
external; both micro-environmental and macro-environmental.
• Concurrent with this assessment, objectives are set. These objectives should be parallel to
a time-line; some are in the short-term and others on the long-term. This involves crafting
vision statements (long term view of a possible future), mission statements (the role that
the organization gives itself in society), overall corporate objectives (both financial and
strategic), strategic business unit objectives (both financial and strategic), and tactical
objectives.
• These objectives should, in the light of the situation analysis, suggest a strategic plan.
The plan provides the details of how to achieve these objectives.

Marketing action plan

• Placement and execution of required resources are financial, manpower, operational

support, time, technology support
• Operating with a change in methods or with alteration in structure
• Distributing the specific tasks with responsibility or moulding specific jobs to individuals
or teams.
 • The process should be managed by a responsible team. This is to keep direct watch on
result,comparison for betterment and best practices, cultivating the effectiveness of
processes, calibrating and reducing the variations and setting the process as required.
• Introducing certain programs involves acquiring the requisition of resources: a necessity
for developing the process, training documentation,process testing, and imalgation with
(and/or conversion from) difficult processes.

As and when the strategy implementation processes, there have been so many problems arising
such as human relations, the employee-communication. Such a time , marketing strategy is the
biggest implementation problem usually involves , with emphasis on the appropriate timing of
new products. An organization, with an effective management, should try to implement its plans
without signaling this fact to its competitors.[3]

In order for a policy to work, there must be a level of consistency from every person in an
organization, specially management. This is what needs to occur on both the tactical and
strategic levels of management

Strategy evaluation
• Measuring the effectiveness of the organizational strategy, it's extremely
important to conduct a SWOT analysis to figure out the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats (both internal and external) of the
entity in question. This may require to take certain precautionary measures
or even to change the entire strategy.

In corporate strategy, Johnson and Scholes present a model in which strategic options are
evaluated against three key success criteria:

• Suitability (would it work?)

• Feasibility (can it be made to work?)
• Acceptability (will they work it?)

[edit] Suitability

Suitability deals with the overall rationale of the strategy. The key point to consider is whether
the strategy would address the key strategic issues underlined by the organisation's strategic
position.

• Does it make economic sense?

• Would the organization obtain economies of scale, economies of scope or
experience economy?
• Would it be suitable in terms of environment and capabilities?

Tools that can be used to evaluate suitability include:

• Ranking strategic options

• Decision trees
 • What-if analysis

[edit] Feasibility

Feasibility is concerned with whether the resources required to implement the strategy are
available, can be developed or obtained. Resources include funding, people, time and
information.

Tools that can be used to evaluate feasibility include:

• cash flow analysis and forecasting

• break-even analysis
• resource deployment analysis

[edit] Acceptability

Acceptability is concerned with the expectations of the identified stakeholders (mainly

shareholders, employees and customers) with the expected performance outcomes, which can be
return, risk and stakeholder reactions.

• Return deals with the benefits expected by the stakeholders (financial and
non-financial). For example, shareholders would expect the increase of their
wealth, employees would expect improvement in their careers and customers
would expect better value for money.
• Risk deals with the probability and consequences of failure of a strategy
(financial and non-financial).
• Stakeholder reactions deals with anticipating the likely reaction of
stakeholders. Shareholders could oppose the issuing of new shares,
employees and unions could oppose outsourcing for fear of losing their jobs,
customers could have concerns over a merger with regards to quality and
support.

Tools that can be used to evaluate acceptability include:

• what-if analysis
• stakeholder mapping

The strategy hierarchy

In most (large) corporations there are several levels of management. Strategic management is the
highest of these levels in the sense that it is the broadest - applying to all parts of the firm - while
also incorporating the longest time horizon. It gives direction to corporate values, corporate
culture, corporate goals, and corporate missions. Under this broad corporate strategy there are
typically business-level competitive strategies and functional unit strategies.

Corporate strategy refers to the overarching strategy of the diversified firm. Such a corporate
strategy answers the questions of "which businesses should we be in?" and "how does being in
these businesses create synergy and/or add to the competitive advantage of the corporation as a
whole?"

Business strategy refers to the aggregated strategies of single business firm or a strategic
business unit (SBU) in a diversified corporation. According to Michael Porter, a firm must
formulate a business strategy that incorporates either cost leadership, differentiation or focus in
order to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage and long-term success in its chosen areas or
industries.

Functional strategies include marketing strategies, new product development strategies, human
resource strategies, financial strategies, legal strategies, supply-chain strategies, and information
technology management strategies. The emphasis is on short and medium term plans and is
limited to the domain of each department’s functional responsibility. Each functional department
attempts to do its part in meeting overall corporate objectives, and hence to some extent their
strategies are derived from broader corporate strategies.

Many companies feel that a functional organizational structure is not an efficient way to organize
activities so they have reengineered according to processes or SBUs. A strategic business unit
is a semi-autonomous unit that is usually responsible for its own budgeting, new product
decisions, hiring decisions, and price setting. An SBU is treated as an internal profit centre by
corporate headquarters. A technology strategy, for example, although it is focused on technology
as a means of achieving an organization's overall objective(s), may include dimensions that are
beyond the scope of a single business unit, engineering organization or IT department.

An additional level of strategy called operational strategy was encouraged by Peter Drucker in
his theory of management by objectives (MBO). It is very narrow in focus and deals with day-to-
day operational activities such as scheduling criteria. It must operate within a budget but is not at
liberty to adjust or create that budget. Operational level strategies are informed by business level
strategies which, in turn, are informed by corporate level strategies.

Since the turn of the millennium, some firms have reverted to a simpler strategic structure driven
by advances in information technology. It is felt that knowledge management systems should be
used to share information and create common goals. Strategic divisions are thought to hamper
this process. This notion of strategy has been captured under the rubric of dynamic strategy,
popularized by Carpenter and Sanders's textbook [1]. This work builds on that of Brown and
Eisenhart as well as Christensen and portrays firm strategy, both business and corporate, as
necessarily embracing ongoing strategic change, and the seamless integration of strategy
formulation and implementation. Such change and implementation are usually built into the
strategy through the staging and pacing facets.

ategic formulation is a combination of three main processes which are as follows:

• Performing a situation analysis, self-evaluation and competitor analysis: both internal and
external; both micro-environmental and macro-environmental.
• Concurrent with this assessment, objectives are set. These objectives should be parallel to
a time-line; some are in the short-term and others on the long-term. This involves crafting
 vision statements (long term view of a possible future), mission statements (the role that
the organization gives itself in society), overall corporate objectives (both financial and
strategic), strategic business unit objectives (both financial and strategic), and tactical
objectives.
• These objectives should, in the light of the situation analysis, suggest a strategic plan.
The plan provides the details of how to achieve these objectives.

Marketing action plan

• Placement and execution of required resources are financial, manpower, operational

support, time, technology support
• Operating with a change in methods or with alteration in structure
• Distributing the specific tasks with responsibility or moulding specific jobs to individuals
or teams.
• The process should be managed by a responsible team. This is to keep direct watch on
result,comparison for betterment and best practices, cultivating the effectiveness of
processes, calibrating and reducing the variations and setting the process as required.
• Introducing certain programs involves acquiring the requisition of resources: a necessity
for developing the process, training documentation,process testing, and imalgation with
(and/or conversion from) difficult processes.

As and when the strategy implementation processes, there have been so many problems arising
such as human relations, the employee-communication. Such a time , marketing strategy is the
biggest implementation problem usually involves , with emphasis on the appropriate timing of
new products. An organization, with an effective management, should try to implement its plans
without signaling this fact to its competitors.[3]

In order for a policy to work, there must be a level of consistency from every person in an
organization, specially management. This is what needs to occur on both the tactical and
strategic levels of management.