Strategic Management and Information Systems

Strategic Management and Information SystemsNow this is the time of modern technology which is the establish on Information System it should be use in strategic whollyy.Strategic management is a level of managerial activity under setting goals and everywhere 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 guggle about strategic align men amid the organization and its environment or strategic consistency. According to Arieu (2007), there is strategic consistency when the sues of an organization be consistent with the expectations of management, and these in turn atomic number 18 with the foodstuff 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 i.e. regularly to determine how it has been go fored 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.Marketing action planPlacement and execution of required resources are financial, manpower, operational support, time, technology supportOperating with a change in methods or with alteration in structureDistributing 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 picket 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 create the process, training documentation, process testing, and immolation with (and/or conversion from) difficult processes.As and when the strategy implementation processes, there have been so many problems arising such as homo 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 signalling this fact to its competitors.3 In normal terms, there are two main approaches, which are opposite but complement each other in to a greater extent or less ways, to strategic managementThe Industrial Organizational Approachbased on economic possibleness deals with issues like competitive rivalry, resource allocation, economies of scaleassumptions rationality, self work behaviour, profit maximizationThe Sociological Approachdeals primarily with forgiving interactionsIn formation- and technology-driven strategyPeter Drucker had theorized the rise of the knowledge worker back in the 1950s. He set forth how fewer workers would be doing physical labour, and more would be applying their minds. In 1984, John Nesbitt theorized that the future would be driven largely by education companies that managed information tumefy could obtain an value, however the profitability of what he calls the information float (information that the company had and others desired) would all but disappear as inexpensive computers made information more accessible. Daniel Bell (1985) examined the sociological consequences of information technology, while Gloria Schuck and Shoshana Zuboff looked at psychological factors. Zuboff, in her five year study of eight pioneering corporations made the important distinction surrounded by automating technologies and info mating technologies. She studied the effect that both had on individual workers, managers, and organizational struc tures. She largely confirmed Peter Druckers predictions three decades earlier, about the importance of supple decentralized structure, work teams, knowledge sharing, and the central role of the knowledge worker. Zuboff also detected a new basis for managerial authority, based not on position or hierarchy, but on knowledge (also predicted by Drucker) which she called participative management. In 1990, Peter Senge, who had collaborated with Arie de Geus at Dutch Shell, borrowed de Geus notion of the learning organization, expanded it, and popularized it. The underlying theory is that a companys ability to gather, analyze, and use information is a necessary requirement for business success in the information age. (See organizational learning.) In order to do this, Senge claimed that an organization would need to be structured such that75People can continuously expand their capacity to learn and be productive,New patterns of thinking are nurtured,Collective aspirations are encouraged, andPeople are encouraged to see the whole picture together.Senge identified five disciplines of a learning organization. They arePersonal responsibility, self reliance, and mastery We accept that we are the masters of our own destiny. We make decisions and live with the consequences of them. When a problem needs to be fixed, or an opportunity exploited, we outcome the possibility to learn the required skills to get it done.Mental models We need to explore our personal mental models to understand the subtle effect they have on our behaviour.Shared mountain The vision of where we want to be in the future is discussed and communicated to all. It provides guidance and energy for the journey ahead.Team learning We learn together in teams. This involves a transmutation from a spirit of advocacy to a spirit of enquiry.Systems thinking We look at the whole rather than the parts. This is what Senge calls the Fifth discipline. It is the glue that integrates the other four into a coh erent strategy. For an alternative approach to the learning organization, see Garratt, B. (1987).Thomas A. Stewart, for example, uses the term intellectual capital to describe the investment an organization makes in knowledge. It is composed of human capital (the knowledge inside the heads of employees), customer capital (the knowledge inside the heads of customers that decide to buy from you), and structural capital (the knowledge that resides in the company itself). Manuel Castells, describes a network society characterized by globalization, organizations structured as a network, instability of employment, and a social divide between those with access to information technology and those without. Geoffrey Moore (1991) and R. rough and P. Cook85 also detected a shift in the nature of competition. In industries with mettle rough technology content, technical standards become established and this gives the dominant firm a near monopoly. The same is unbowed of networked industries in which interoperability requires compatibility between users. An example is word processor documents. Once a product has gained market dominance, other products, even out-of-the-way(prenominal) superior products, cannot compete. Moore showed how firms could attain this enviable position by using E.M. Rogers five stage adoption process and focusing on one group of customers at a time, using each group as a base for marketing to the next group. The most difficult step is making the transition between visionaries and pragmatists (See Crossing the Chasm). If successful a firm can create a bandwagon effect in which the momentum builds and your product becomes a de facto standard. Evans and Wurster describe how industries with a high information component are being transformed.86 They cite Encartas demolition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (whose sales have plummeted 80% since their peak of $650 million in 1990). Encartas reign was speculated to be short-lived, eclipsed by collaborat ive encyclopedias like Wikipedia that can operate at very low marginal costs. Encartas service was subsequently turned into an on-line service and dropped at the end of 2009. Evans also mentions the music industry which is desperately looking for a new business model. The upstart information savvy firms, unburdened by gawky physical assets, are changing the competitive landscape, redefining market segments, and disintermediating some channels. One manifestation of this is personalized marketing. Information technology allows marketers to treat each individual as its own market, a market of one. Traditional ideas of market segments will no longer be relevant if personalized marketing is successful. The technology sector has provided some strategies directly. For example, from the software development industry agile software development provides a model for shared development processes. Access to information systems have allowed older managers to take a much more comprehensive vie w of strategic management than ever before. The most notable of the comprehensive systems is the equilibrize scorecard approach essential in the early 1990s by Drs. Robert S. Kaplan (Harvard Business School) and David Norton (Kaplan, R. and Norton, D. 1992). It measures several factors financial, marketing, production, organizational development, and new product development in order to achieve a balanced perspective.Knowledge-driven strategyMost current approaches to business strategy focus on the mechanics of management e.g., Druckers operational strategies and as such are not true business strategy. In a post-industrial world these operationally foc utilize business strategies hinge on conventional sources of advantage have essentially been eliminatedScale used to be very important. But now, with access to capital and a global marketplace, scale is achievable by multiple organizations simultaneously. In many cases, it can literally be rented.Process improvement or best practic es were once a favored source of advantage, but they were at best temporary, as they could be copied and fitting by competitors.Owning the customer had always been thought of as an important form of competitive advantage. Now, however, customer loyalty is far less important and difficult to keep abreast as new brands and products emerge all the time.In such a world, differentiation, as elicudated by Michael Porter, Botten and McManus is the only way to maintain economic or market superiority (i.e., comparative advantage) over competitors. A company must OWN the thing that differentiates it from competitors. Without IP ownership and protection, any product, process or scale advantage can be compromised or entirely lost. Competitors can copy them without fear of economic or legal consequences, thereby eliminating the advantage. (For an explanation and elucidation of the post-industrial worldview, see George Ritzer and Daniel Bell.)The psychology of strategic managementSeveral psyc hologists have conducted studies to determine the psychological patterns involved in strategic management. Typically senior managers have been asked how they go about making strategic decisions. A 1938 treatise by Chester Barnard, that was based on his own experience as a business executive, sees the process as informal, intuitive, non-routinized, and involving primarily oral, 2-way communications. Bernard says The process is the perception of the organization as a whole and the total situation relevant to it. It transcends the capacity of merely intellectual methods, and the techniques of discriminating the factors of the situation. The terms pertinent to it are feeling, judgement, sense, proportion, balance, appropriateness. It is a matter of art rather than science. In 1973, Henry Mintzberg found that senior managers typically deal with unpredictable situations so they strategize in ad hoc, flexible, dynamic, and implicit ways. . He says, The job breeds adaptive information-man ipulators who prefer the live concrete situation. The manager works in an environment of stimulous-response, and he develops in his work a clear gustatory modality for live action.88 In 1982, John Kotter studied the daily activities of 15 executives and concluded that they spent most of their time developing and working a network of relationships from which they gained general insights and specific details to be used in making strategic decisions. They tended to use mental road maps rather than systematic planning techniques.89 Daniel Isenbergs 1984 study of senior managers found that their decisions were highly intuitive. Executives often sensed what they were going to do before they could explain why.90 He claimed in 1986 that one of the reasons for this is the complexity of strategic decisions and the resultant information uncertainty.91 Shoshana Zuboff (1988) claims that information technology is widening the divide between senior managers (who typically make strategic decis ions) and operational level managers (who typically make system decisions). She claims that earlier to the widespread use of computer systems, managers, even at the most senior level, engaged in both strategic decisions and routine administration, but as computers facilitated (She called it deskilled) routine processes, these activities were moved further down the hierarchy, leaving senior management free for strategic decions making. In 1977, Abraham Zaleznik identified a difference between leaders and managers. He describes leadershipleaders as visionaries who inspire. They care about substance. Whereas managers are claimed to care about process, plans, and form.92 He also claimed in 1989 that the rise of the manager was the main factor that caused the decline of American business in the 1970s and 80s.The main difference between leader and manager is that, leader has followers and manager has subordinates. In capitalistic society leaders make decisions and manager usually follo w or execute.93 Lack of leadership is most damaging at the level of strategic management where it can inactivate an entire organization.94 According to Corner, Kinichi, and Keats,95 strategic decision making in organizations occurs at two levels individual and aggregate. They have developed a model of parallel strategic decision making. The model identifies two parallel processes both of which involve getting attention, encoding information, storage and retrieval of information, strategic choice, strategic outcome, and feedback. The individual and organizational processes are not independent however. They interact at each stage of the process.ReferencesDavid, F Strategic Management, ColumbusMerrill Publishing Company, 1989Lamb, Robert, Boyden Competitive strategic management, Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, 1984Sweet, Franklyn H. Strategic prep A Conceptual Study, Bureau of Business Research, The University of Texas, 1964Chandler, Alfred Strategy and Structure Chapters in the history of industrial enterprise, Doubleday, New York, 1962.