The difference between Strategy and Management - Research Paper Example

The paper tells that there are some core functions of management, which are planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. These functions completely explain the concept of management. Management starts from planning. Plan is made according to the goals. Plan provides manager with a way to achieve the goal within the required time and resources. The time and cost schedules are prepared in accordance with the plan prepared. After the plan is made, the manager accumulates the resources required to accomplish the goal.

This occurs in the stage of organizing. Either in-house resources are utilized or the resources are outsourced depending upon which of the two proves more convenient in terms of cost and accessibility. Staffing is basically linked to the stage of organizing. The difference between the two stages is that in organizing, non-human resources are accumulated whereas in staffing, human resources are accumulated. This is the stage in which the manager advertises the jobs and recruits. The manager chooses the process of recruitment from among a myriad of options that include but are not limited to face-to-face interviewing, telephone interviewing and tests.

Once the employees have been recruited, the manager needs to lead them. Leadership and management are to much an extent, the same concepts. Every leader is a manager but every manager may not necessarily be the leader. A leader is somebody who makes independent decisions and makes sure that the needs of followers are met which is basically management. Even the lowest employee in the organization structure is a manager as he/she is supposed to manage his/her work, but he/she might not have anybody under him to lead.

However, managers usually are leaders as well. In the stage of leading, the manager makes decisions and provides the followers with the necessary resources to make it practicable for them to follow his/her decision. The manager also develops a hierarchical system wherein every employee is assigned a specific level. The last stage of management is of controlling. Controlling is a process of evaluation of the existing systems with an intention to identify the loopholes so that they can be eradicated and the efficiency of system can be improved as a whole.

New plans are made and implemented for continual improvement of the system. Strategy is basically the efficiency of a manager and his/her capability to display optimal performance in each of the aforementioned functions of management. Strategic thinking can be defined as “. . . using analogies and qualitative similarities to develop creative new ideas . . . (and) designing actions on the basis of new learning” (Stacey, 1992). Mintzberg (1994) defines strategic thinking as a specific way of thinking that has well defined and clear characteristics.

The strategy aligns a manager’s efforts with the goals and enables him/her to work in such a way that maximizes the chances of success and minimizes the threats. If properly developed and employed, the strategy enables a manager to not only minimize the risks, but also convert those left into opportunities. While management has always been there, strategy has gained more emphasis in successful management in the contemporary age as the competition in market has increased and newer and innovative ways of business are surfacing.

Over the decades, people have become more conscious about the health and safety of all living beings and the protection of the environment. Media has played a very important role in raising such concerns and creating such awareness. This has led managers to be more cautious in the selection of their plans to achieve their goals. Critics evaluate the actions of managers according to their negative