Humbeorg Chapter 3 (Book)

Mission

is a statement of its “fundamental, unique purpose that sets a business apart from other firms of its type and identifies the scope of the business’s operations in product and market terms.

Strategic Goals

are set by and for an organization’s top management. They focus on broad, general issues.

Tactical goals

are set by and for middle managers. Their focus is on how to operationalize actions necessary to achieve the strategic goals.

Operational goals

are set by and for lower-level managers. Their concern is with shorter-term issues associated with the tactical goals

Strategic Plans

strategic plan is a general plan outlining decisions about resource allocation, priorities, and action steps necessary to reach strategic goals.

Tactical Plans

aimed at achieving tactical goals, is developed to implement specific parts of a strategic plan. This is typically involve upper and middle management and, compared with strategic plans, have a somewhat shorter time horizon and a more specific and concrete focus

Operational Plans

focuses on carrying out tactical plans to achieve operational goals. Developed by middle- and lower-level managers, operational plans have a short-term focus and are relatively narrow in scope.

Strategy

is a comprehensive plan for accomplishing an organization’s goals.

Strategic Management

in turn, is a way of approaching business opportunities and challenges—it is a comprehensive and ongoing management process aimed at formulating and implementing effective strategies

Effective Strategies

are those that promote a superior alignment between the organization and its environment and the achievement of strategic goals.

Distinctive Competence

is something the organization does exceptionally well.

Scope

strategy specifies the range of markets in which an organization will compete.

Resource Deployment

how it will distribute its resources across the areas in which it competes.

Business-level strategy

is the set of strategic alternatives from which an organization chooses as it conducts business in a particular industry or market. Such alternatives help the organization focus its competitive efforts for each industry or market in a targeted and focused manner.

Corporate-level strategy

is the set of strategic alternatives from which an organization chooses as it manages its operations simultaneously across several industries and several markets.

Strategy formulation

is the set of processes involved in creating or determining the organization’s strategies

Strategy Implementation

is the methods by which those strategies are operationalized or executed.

Organizational strengths

are skills and capabilities that enable an organization to create and implement its strategies.

Organizational weaknesses

are skills and capabilities that do not enable an organization to choose and implement strategies that support its mission. An organization has essentially two ways of addressing weaknesses. First, it may need to make investments to obtain the strengths required to implement strategies that support its mission. Second, it may need to modify its mission so that it can be accomplished with the skills and capabilities that the organization already possesses.

Organizational opportunities

are areas that may generate higher performance.

Organizational Threats

are areas that increase the difficulty of an organization performing at a high level

Differentiation Strategy

seeks to distinguish itself from competitors through the quality (broadly defined) of its products or services.

Overall cost leadership Strategy

attempts to gain a competitive advantage by reducing its costs below the costs of competing firms

Focus Strategy

concentrates on a specific regional market, product line, or group of buyers.

Product life cycle

is a model that shows how sales volume changes over the life of products. Understanding the four stages in the product life cycle helps managers recognize that strategies need to evolve over time

Diversification

describes the number of different businesses that an organization is engaged in and the extent to which these businesses are related to one another.

Single-product Strategy

manufactures just one product or service and sells it in a single geographic market

related diversification

If the businesses are somehow linked, that organization is implementing a strategy of _

Unrelated diversification

operate multiple businesses that are not logically associated with one another.

Portfolio Management Techniques

are methods that diversified organizations use to determine in which businesses to engage and how to manage these businesses to maximize corporate performance.