MGT 3200 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Vertical Integration, Plasma Display, Clam Chowder
Document Summary
Strategic planning is an organization"s way of maintaining a positive relationship with its external environment. Specifically, it focuses on an organization"s long-term relationship to its environment. Strategic planning, according to richard daft, is probably the single most important responsibility of top managers. Top management is primarily responsible for developing a strategic plan, or grand strategy that serves to define the organization"s character, mission, and direction. In other words, it defines the major objectives of the organization and defines the ways or means that an organization will use to achieve those objectives. A well thought out strategy deals with four basic areas of concern: scope, resource deployment, distinctive competence, and synergy. Scope of the strategy specifies the range of markets in which the organization will compete. For example, hershey has limited scope because it has restricted itself to the confectionery business whereas mars has a much broader scope. Mars competes in the pet-food industry, the electronics industry, etc.
