Corporate Strategies - The good and the Bad - Assignment Example

The paper analyzes current corporate strategies implemented by corporations and the successes and failures of their efforts.  This is done by comparing prominent corporations and their strategies and evaluating the results achieved in order to determine the actual success of the relevant Corporate Strategies.

Corporate Strategies

Historical Overview of Strategy

            When looking at strategy as an academic field, it becomes clear that it is a relatively new academic discipline. Yet the concept of strategy has an important and high-level background arising from the decisions and actions used by military organizations. Historically a countries military decision-makers were well equipped to design battlefield strategies in order to gain the upper hand in a battle. This they did by exploiting the weaknesses of the enemies and the opportunities that offer themselves during a battle in order to give an army a competitive edge that could ensure a victory.

The earliest academic basis for strategy was provided by the fields of economics and organizational theory with relation to the management function. Economic theory emphasizing rationality, predictability, and similarity did not fit well with the principles of strategic management, but it did provide an avenue for the beginning in the exploration of the role of management choices and decisions, which was seen as a strategic function. Academics such as Fredrick Taylor (scientific management), Max Weber (Bureaucratic Organizations), and Chester Barnard (administrative functions and the organization as an open system) provided important knowledge about efficient and effective organizations and the role managers played (Coulter. M. 2002. p15).

The late ’50s and ’60s were a time of questioning the traditional methods of customs and practices, even in management practices. The old ideas of set management principles were gradually being replaced by more contemporary ideas, based on the principle that every organization was different in its functioning, performance, and available resources. Although the strategy was not yet a separate area of study, a definite framework started emerging that could be used for further exploration and development of organizational strategies. Three books written in the ’60s helped to establish organizational strategies as a separate academic field. These were Alfred Chandler’s Strategy and Structure (1962); Igor Ansoff’s Corporate Strategy (1965): and the Harvard textbook Business Policy: Text and Case (1965) by E.P Learned, C.R. Christensen, K.R Andrews, and W.D. Guth (Coulter. M. 2002. p15).

            The organizational strategy became an excepted academic field in the ’70s and ’80s, as scholars studied organizations, managers, and their relevant strategies. During this time a dichotomy developed between academics trying to understand how strategies were formed and implemented (process researchers), and those seeking to understand the relationship between strategic choices and performance (content researchers). What became a well-accepted fact was that companies with well-formulated corporate strategies aligned throughout the business and implemented with vigor and purpose could ensure a huge competitive advantage.