CORPORATE STRATEGY: FORMULATION AND IMPLEMENTATION
Corporate strategy is concerned with broad decisions about an organization's scope and direction. It is defined as "the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals its objectives, purposes, or goals, produces the principle policies and plans for achieving those goals, and defines the range of business the company is to pursue, the kind of economic and human organization it is or intends to be, and the nature of the economic and non-economic contribution it intends to make to its shareholders, employees, customers, and communities" (Ghoshal, Lampel, Mintzberg, & Quinn, 2004, pp. 72). This paper will discuss formulating strategy. It will also discuss implementation and its importance.
Formulation
Corporate strategy has two components; formulation and implementation. Formulation produces a clear set of recommendations that help revise the mission and objectives of an organization, and supplies the strategies for accomplishing them (Mitchell, Retrieved January 18, 2005). It helps develop a firm's goals and sets a specific strategic plan.
In, The Strategy Process, the author argues that when a company formulates strategy it should determine its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This can be done by performing a SWOT Analysis. A SWOT Analysis is a simple framework for generating strategic alternatives from a situational analysis. It can serve as an interpretive filter to reduce the information to a manageable quantity of key issues. By understanding the four aspects, of a SWOT Analysis, a firm can better leverage its strengths, correct its weaknesses, capitalize on opport ...