Enlist the areas of CSF method in internal environment analysis.

Areas of CSF method

The areas of Critical Success Factors method in internal environment analysis of any organization are shortly gleaned below –

What are the techniques of assessing internal environment?

Process / Framework / Techniques of assessment of internal environment:

Every type of assessment needs to be performed undertaking some step by step actions. For these assessments there might be a lot of techniques or procedures available. The assessment of internal environment also includes some procedures or techniques to be performed. The framework of the assessment of internal environment are gleaned below –

Enlist the different forms of strategy.

There are four different forms of strategy that can be taken by a strategic manager of any organization. They are -

What are the dimensions of Strategic decisions?

Dimensions of strategic decisions:

The strategic decisions consist of some dimensions. The dimensions of the strategic decisions are given below –

Identify the importance of Strategic Management.

Importance of Strategic Management:

There are a lot of advantages that can be facilitated by strategic management. Some of these advantages have been enlisted below in order to show the importance of strategic management. They are-

What is Strategic Group Mapping?

Strategic Group Mapping

The strategic group mapping is a technique for displaying the different competitive positions that rival firms occupy in the industry.
The strategic group mapping is graphically presented below:-

From this graphical presentation strategic group mapping can be easily understood.

What are the factors that lead to strategic groups?

Factors lead to strategic groups

The factors that lead to the formation of strategic groups are enlisted below -

• Homogenious size,
• Comparable breadth of market,
• Comparable product or service quality,
• Geographical distribution is similar,
• Identical technological approaches,
• Same level of vertical integration,
• Using same distribution channels, etc.

Define the strategic groups within the industry.

Strategic groups within the industry

Strategic alliance or groups are conceptually defined cluster of competitors that share similar strategies. It consists of those rival firms with similar competitive approaches and positions in the market.

Identify the driving forces for change in the industry.

Driving forces for change in the industry are enlisted below -

• Internet and the e-commerce opportunities and threats,
• Increasing globalization of the industry,
• Changes in buyers and their way of buying,
• Thechnological change,
• Defussion of technical know how accross more companies and countries,
• Change in cost and efficiency,
• Changing societal concerns, attitudes and lifestyles,
• Change in regulations, 
• Reduction in uncertainty and business risks.

The above mentioned factors are considered to be the driving forces for change in the industry.

What are is driving force for change in industry?

Driving forces for change:

The strategists has to understand the macro environment of the industry that initiates or may initiate change. Industry and competitive conditions may change because sudden forces are in motion. They create incentives and pressure for change. These are known as driving forces for change in industry.

What factors lead rivalry among the firms?

Rivalry among existing firms

The competition among firms is a free economy syndrome it may be highly competitive or may be rival in nature. Following factors may have lead to high competition or rivalry among firms.

• Equally balanced competitors,
• Product capacity,
• Size of the firm
• Slow industry growth, that is demand growth is slow,
• High fixed cost,
• Lack of differentiated products and low or no switching cost,
• High strategic stacks,
• Large increase in manufacturing capacity,
• High exit barriers,
• Economic strategy and emotion,
• Diversity of competitors intensified competition,
• Merger or holding company has already been done in the industry.

So the above mentioned factors may lead the firms to form a rivalry among themselves.

Under what conditions the bargaining power of suppliers increase?

Suppliers or sellers in an industry may affect profit potentials, cost structure, and competitive position of a firm. Bargaining power of suppliers increases under the following conditions -

• Dominance by a few suppliers and lack of substitute product in the market,
• Greater concentration among suppliers than among buyers,
• Relative lack of importance of the buyers to the seller group,
• Importance of suppliers product to the buyer,
• High differentiation by the suppliers and high switching cost for the buyer,
• Credible threat of forward integration by suppliers.

 

The aforementioned conditions may lead the suppliers or the sellers to increase their bargaining power.

Identify the differences between the strategic management and other types of management.

There are a lot of differences that are found between the strategic management and other types of management in any organization. The differences between the strategic management and other managments are simply given in a table below -

Strategic management	Other types of management
Strategic management integrates are a functional management into a whole.	Other management deals with functional arena only.
It is oriented toward achieving organization wide goals.	It is oriented to achieving a local goal only.
It considers a broad range of stakeholders.	It tends to focus on serving individual stakeholders.
It entails multiply time horizons.	It tends to focus on short term issues alone.
It is concerned with both efficiency and effectiveness.	It is concerned with efficiency only.
The goals of strategic management are usually debatable.	The goals of operational management are validated through extensive past experiences.
Issues of strategic management are abstract deferrable and may be unfamiliar.	Issues of functional management are immediate, concrete and familiar.
Evidence of the merit of strategies is often available only after several years.	Evidence of merit of functional management gets promptly.
Strategic managers need a corporate point of view oriented to the environment.	Functional managers need procedural orientation to functions.

So from the above table we can easily find out the differences between these managements.

Analyze the feasibility of a project.

In a project analysis there are six broad phases that prevail the feasibility study of that project lies among the first four phases of capital budgeting such as planning, analysis, selection or evaluation and financing and the market, technical financial, economic and ecological analyses are also involved in this feasibility study. Below is the schematic diagram of the feasibility study of a project is given -

My Pick...

What areas of internal environment are to be analysed?

Areas of internal environment to be analyzed
The areas of the internal environment that are to be considered in the analysis procedure are enlisted below-

• Financial position

The financial position analysis includes utilization of different kinds of ratio analysis and other financial calculations to be done to identify what is the company's financial position.

• Product or service position and quality

Whether the product or service's quality of the company is being kept up to a standard or not should also be analyzed.

• Marketing capability

The marketing capability of any organization refers to its capacity to advertise its products or services in comparison to the substitute products or services available in the market.

• Research and Development capability

The research and development capacity analysis of any organization show how much the company can spend for the development and for the research purposes of the product or services.

• Organization structure

If the organization structure is small in size then that company should not involve in the competition with the giant leading companies in the market. Therefore to know the organization structure's impact the internal environment should be analyzed.

• Human Resource

Whether sufficient human resource is available or not it should also be analyzed because without manpower no task can be accopmlished within the organization.

• Facilities and equipment conditions

The facilities and the modern equipments for the ease of production of any product or service are available or not in the organization should also be analyzed.

• Past and current objectives and strategies

The past and the present plans, missions, visions etc. how much of these strategies have been accomplished and what are the next ambitions of the company should also be taken on account.

What is Internal Environment Analysis? Discuss.

Internal Environment Analysis

Internal Environment refers to the organizational resources over which organization has control. Below are the definitions of internal environment analysis given:-

• "Internal Environment Analysis provides means of identifying and strenghts to build on and weakness to overcome in formulating strategies."

- Miller and Dess

This analysis provides complete information on how well a firm can set and execute strategies, it is necessary to determine the capabilities of the firm to faces environmental facts and to avail opportunities. These capabilities are strengths with strategic significance with which company will go forward with its objectives. It is also necessary to determine areas of vulnerability.

What criteria to be considered in classifying an SBU?

The criteria that are to be considered in classifying an organizational unit as a Strategic Business Unit are:-

• An SBU would serve an external market rather than an internal market,
• It should have a clear set of external competitors which it is trying to equal or by-pass,
• It should have control over its own destiny,
• Its performance must be measurable in terms of profit and loss that is it should be a true profit center.

What is Strategic Business Unit?

Strategic Business Unit (SBU):

Here is the simplest definition of strategic business unit given below:

"Strategic Business Unit refers to a business unit which is an operating unit in an organization that sales a distinct set of products or services to an identifiable group of customers in competition with a well defined set of competitions."

State the process of formulating a mission statement.

Formulation of a mission statement:

The formulation of a mission statement of any business or non-business organization can be done in the following procedure.

• Belief that the product or service can provide benefits at least equal to its price,
• Belief that the product or service can satisfy customer needs currently not met adequately,
• Belief that, the technology to be used in production will provide a product that is cost and quality effective and competitive,
• Belief that, the management philosophy of the business will result in favorable public image,
• Belief that, with hand work and the support of others, the business can do better to survive, grow and be profitable,
• Belief that, the company is unique and distinct in its character from others.

Therefore, all the formulation tactics of mission statement are shown above.

What are the pitfalls of Strategic Management?

Pitfalls of Strategic Management

The pitfalls of strategic management are shortly given below :-

1. Strategic management does not work effectively in the real world situations, as conditions change so fast that managers can not do any planning specially for the long term.
2. Strategic objectives and goals are often needed to be vague and general. Therefore, it causes misunderstanding and confusion, among people that thwart,
3. Cognitive biases of the strategic decision makers often lead to severe and systematic errors in the strategic decision making process lest we forget that the rationality of the human decision makers is bounded by their own cognitive capabilities,
4. Strategic management is heavily influenced by “groupthink” that makes strategic decisions poor,
5. The test strategy formulation and implementation is seldom accomplished in planned and systematic fusion in isolation from everything else. Therefore strategic management can not have distinct qualitative attributes.

Draw a diagram of Strategic Management Process.

Diagram of Strategic Management Process:

The strategic management process has been shown in a graphical view below-

  

Figure: Strategic Management Process.

What is Strategic Management?

Definition of Strategic Management:

• “Strategic management is a process by which top management determines the long term direction and purpose of the organizer by ensuring that, careful formulation effective implementation and continuous evaluation of the strategy takes place.”

- Lloyd L Byarr

Leslie W. R

Shaker A. Zahra (1996)

• “Strategic management refers to the managerial process of forming a strategic vision, setting objectives, crafting a strategy, implementing and executing the strategy and evaluating performance and initiating corrective adjustments in the visions, objectives and strategies.”

- Aurther A. Thompson

A. J. Strickland 

What are the characteristics of Strategy?

# Mention the characteristics of Strategy.

The characteristics of strategy are written shortly below -

• Strategy is a unified, comprehensive and integrated plan,
• Strategy is a short-term and long-term plan,
• Strategy gives the direction to the people,
• Strategy is a game plan to sustain in the competitive environment,
• Strategy is related to both macro and micro aspects of the organization, corporate and functional areas of operations of an organization.