Management Strategy
By:
Trevor Farquharson
100074094
A report submitted to:
Dr. Conor Vibert
Rhodes Hall - 314
Acadia University
As part of the BUSI 4953
Business Strategy Course
November 17, 2006
The article, Are You Sure You Have a Strategy? By Hambrick and Fredrickson explains that many "strategies" these days are no more than statements that involve a part of strategy but are no more a strategy than is a vague statement like, "We're pursuing a global strategy." According to the article, a strategy is a central, integrated, externally oriented concept of how the business will achieve its objectives. When upper levels of management have a faulty, incomplete, or poorly articulated strategy, the result is commonly a huge waste of time and resources on activities that are not unified, going in slightly opposing directions. Also, having a proper strategy does not mean that any company is all set to go. Properly articulated objectives and a company mission are involved with the strategy but are also completely removed from it in that they are a guide to the strategy. There are five key elements to a good strategy: arenas, vehicles, differentiators, staging, and economic logic. The first three of these essential elements of strategy might be considered the overall plan of a strategy, whereas the last two are more factors that are just as important, but really stem from the first three (Hambrick & Fredrickson, 2001).
The arenas have a different meaning for different types of businesses which I will illustrate shortly, however, the basic question to answer for this element of strategy is, where will we (the company) be active? / What business will we be in? When answering the questi ...