Strategic Management, Challenges, and Revising Policy

Name: Strategic Management, Challenges, and Revising Policy
Author: Joseph Raynus

Discover the challenges you may encounter in strategic management and how to handle them

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Course: On-Demand

(bright music) In these lessons, you'll learn what strategic management is and understand the key questions addressed by strategic management. You'll also learn that strategic management and business policies are dynamic and should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis. The best first step in the strategic management process is leading up to its development where you examine the company objectives. Some objectives of strategic management include creating a new market opportunity, which will put the business into a competitive position and make the organization more proactive in the quest for market share. Attracting new customers and keeping current ones. Responding to stakeholder and shareholder demands. Providing guidance for critical decisions regarding products, markets, research, investments, and organizational structure. And providing continuous analysis of opportunities and threats in the external environment and converting threats into opportunities. Once the objectives are set, you can begin the four core steps of the strategic management process, which are environmental scanning, strategy formulation, strategy implementation, and strategy evaluation. With environmental scanning, the organization collects and analyzes information related to the general business environment and external factors that could affect the company's market position and competitive advantage. One of the most popular frameworks for organizing external factors is P-E-S-T-E-L, or PESTEL. PESTEL is the acronym for six factors, political, economic, social, technological, environmental, and legal. Together, they represent the industry's behavior and how a company functions within that industry. The purpose of a PESTEL analysis is to discover external factors threatening or benefiting the company, or to exploit the opportunity before your competition. The P in PESTEL represents political factors such as government and state tax policies, alterations and trade regulations and tariffs, or changes in stability of the government and how the government influences your business. The first E stands for economic factors such as inflation and interest rates, unemployment rates, and the level of disposable income. It covers most everything that might affect the purchasing power of the consumer. A change in a consumer's purchasing power affects the prices of products and services. Social factors are represented by the S, and often vary greatly between regions. These include items like demographics, population growth or decline, income distribution, age and cultural barriers. This information is helpful for a marketing organization to attract a new customer base. T is technological factors such as new product research and development, technology trends and innovations. Technological factors can help you make decisions as to whether to enter certain industries or launch certain products. Knowing these factors can help a company save money. The second E stands for environmental factors, which includes things like climate change and pollution, which could affect farming, agriculture, tourism and insurance. Lastly, the L represents legal factors, like employment and discrimination laws, employee safety regulations, intellectual property, copyright and patent laws and antitrust laws. The PESTEL analysis is useful for aiding executives in looking at the business environment and to assess the potential of entering a new market or adjusting existing strategy to stay competitive.

Advanced Provider : Joseph Raynus 6 Lessons · 17m in Arabic, German, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Urdu, Chinese

Course Description

It’s quite challenging to survive an increasingly global competition. Because of this, it’s becoming progressively more important for management to learn and understand the business environment that surrounds their organization. One of the most important factors for management to understand is the atmosphere surrounding the resources they get from outside of the company—their business environment.

The business environment also comes with various opportunities and threats. If organizations are continuously monitoring external events, they can give themselves the chance to improve and overcome the potential risk to their market performance. If strategically managed, companies can let their environment influence their decisions and goals for fruitful outcomes and position the company to succeed.

In this Strategic Management, Challenges, and Revising Policy course, you will learn about the business environment and the various challenges that come with it. You’ll explore different ways these hardships may affect your strategic plan and then discover how to overcome them. Once you do, you’ll see how you can use these challenges to your advantage and better your organization.

What You'll Learn

Discuss the stages of strategic planning and management
Execute an external environmental scan of the business environment
Explain the components of strategy formulation
Define the challenges to strategic decision making
Adapt strategy and revise policy in response to challenges and change
Use environmental challenges to your organization's advantage

Key Takeaways

Surviving increasingly global competition makes it important for management to understand the business environment surrounding their organization.
The business environment brings various opportunities and threats to an organization.
Continuously monitoring external events gives organizations the chance to improve and overcome potential risks to their market performance.
When strategically managed, companies can let their environment influence their decisions and goals to position the company to succeed.
Challenges to a strategic plan can be overcome and even turned into advantages that better the organization.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does this course cover?

The course covers the business environment and the various challenges that come with it, exploring how those challenges may affect your strategic plan and how to overcome them, and how to use them to your organization's advantage.

What will I learn about strategic management?

You will learn to discuss the stages of strategic planning and management, execute an external environmental scan, explain strategy formulation components, and define challenges to strategic decision making.

What lessons are included in this course?

Lessons include Stages of Strategic Management Pt. 1 and Pt. 2, Challenges to Strategic Management, Challenges, Change, and Strategic Decision-Making, Adapting Strategy and Revising Policy, and a Test Your Knowledge assessment.

Why is understanding the business environment important?

Because of increasingly global competition, it is important for management to understand the business environment surrounding their organization, including the resources they get from outside the company and the opportunities and threats that environment presents.

Professional Certifications and Continuing Education Units (CEUs)

Project Management Institute (PMI®)

Professional Development Units (PDUs): 0.5

Certification Program Categories:

Ways of WorkingPower SkillsBusiness Acumen

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