Strategic Planning Practice on a Micro Activities Level - Essay Example

Butler (2001) pointed that a perceptual mapping process to achieve strategic and organizational goals is nothing new in the micro-level firm’s own operational environment. Thus the current dichotomy between strategic competitive environment and strategic operational environment is based on the organizational outcomes. The micro-level activities of the firm are subject to a greater amount of competitive pressure than those firms which exclusively produce in order to sell in the domestic market or export physically.

Thus the competitor orientation strategy of the micro-level firm is determined by the level of internal and external competition. How best to meet this competitive pressure depends on the micro-level firm’s ability to absorb excess demand through capacity and value creation. The internal value chain management process of the firm decisively places some limitations on its ability to meet this extra demand. Therefore it’s the pricing policy, HRM, and internal management culture that ultimately enable the firm to meet this demand successfully.

If the attendant VRIO (value, rarity, inimitability, and organization) framework is sound enough to enable the management of the company to withstand pressure and devise alternate strategic plans to compete against rivals then there is the possibility of success.

According to Barney & Hesterly (2007) if the VRIO framework is relatively weaker so that competitors are able to copy the firm’s resources then the strategic advantage disappears. In other words, by substituting ISO 9001 2008 Standard into the VRIO equation it’s easier to obtain a performance-based picture of the micro-level activities of the firm. However, it’s obvious that the firm’s resource and quality management processes have to meet the above Standard in order to successfully close the gaps left behind by falling quality standards in the micro-level activities of the firm. At the individual firm level, a sectoral bias towards at least some of the key processes enshrined in ISO 9001 2008 Standard is essential. This is none so well apparent than in the existing gaps in the quality management, resource management, service management, operations management, design and development management, continual improvement, and product management processes of the micro-level firms.