Strategic Management - Strategic Control and Operational Control - Essay Example

Strategic control has more to do with the vision of the company and the direction it takes based on the strategies, plans, and opportunities available to it (Welch, 2005). For example, the strategy of a company may be a broad vision such as moving the company's products into a new market and the element of strategic control would be selecting the market, understanding the best methodology for entering the new market, and then strategically marking and exploiting the opportunities presented in the market. Operational control is guided by the strategy used by the company and in the example given above, the operations of the company would need to set up the right kind of offices, get the required HR for the various functions of the business in the new market and then manage the day to day running of the business. In essence, while strategy is set to guide the company, operations are set to manage and run a business.

Question 2

While it may be possible and even politically correct to say that a company could work with the idea of bringing continual improvements to itself and thus remove any requirements for operational controls, the reality of the situation may be quite different. Operational controls are required to give the company some guidance in terms of how things are supposed to be done and how they are to be optimized (Welch, 2005).

Simply searching for continual improvements may lead the company to be guided in several different directions in terms of operations as each department or even each individual may seek to bring improvements that may only apply to them on a personal basis. Similarly, it would be difficult to say that strategic controls could replace operational controls and the simple reason for that is they both have different realms of operation.

Question 3

Quality may have different implications for different customers since it is essentially an ethereal concept where the measure of quality for one customer may not be the same for another. For example, in the automobile industry, there are certain brands that are known for their quality and their repute as luxury brands. On the other hand, there are companies that work across the spectrum in the automobile market and produce economy as well as luxury cars. However, the perceived quality of the brand which is a luxury brand would likely be higher than one which is a value brand.