Business Policy and Principals of Management - Essay Example

The concept of strategic management is an extended and new version of strategy. In a nutshell, it deals with “… a pattern in a stream of decisions or actions” (Mintzberg, 1978. pp. 934-948). This helps an organization to have effective long-term as well as short-term plans to achieve its goals. It is thus dynamic so that the organization earns above-average returns (Hitt, Ireland, and Hoskisson, 2001, p. 6). Strategic management is a broad canvas, which includes strategic analysis, strategic implementation, and control. It encompasses all functional areas within an organization.

This paper aims to address these issues in the context of finance and marketing. For evolving appropriate corporate policies, it is imperative to do a competitive analysis. This will be done by using the SWOT and Porter's five forces. SWOT analysis helps to understand the internal environment of the company in terms of its relative strengths and weaknesses, and also external factors in terms of opportunities and threats. Further, as the company intends to enter into emerging markets, its global competitiveness will be examined by using the model suggested by Porter (1985), which includes five competitive forces, which determine the competitiveness of a product in a market. These forces are industry competitions, potential entrants, substitutes, buyers, and suppliers. Further, strategies for entering into emerging markets will be discussed keeping in view the analysis based on the aforementioned models.

PRINCIPALS OF MANAGEMENT
Running a business more efficiently to achieve its objectives successfully requires the application of various management principles. Of various managerial functions, a typical manager spends a considerable amount of time planning, organizing, leading, staffing, and controlling. Planning is defined as “the process of determining how the organization can get where it wants to go and what will do to accomplish its objectives” (Certo, 2002, p. 124). Once organizational objectives are defined, then management begins with planning. Planning provides a framework as to what the organization could do to achieve its predetermined objectives.

Organizing is yet another important function of a manager. According to Robbins and Coulter, “Organizing involves the process of determining what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to be grouped, who reports to whom and what decisions are to be made” (Robbins and Coulter, 2002, p. 8). Thus, it is an organizing element of management that helps to put the plans into action. An important area concerning management is attracting and retaining talented people, that is, staffing. This requires that the right persons have been recruited for the right job.

The managerial role also involves leading, which is defined as “Leading involves motivating subordinates, influencing individuals or teams as they work, selecting the most effective communication channels or dealing any way with employee behavioral issues” (Robbins and Colter, 2002, p. 8). There is a tremendous amount of leadership quality required for fulfilling the task of leading. Perhaps, the most important task in management is controlling. Controlling is a “Systematic effort by business management to compare performance to predetermined standards, plans or objectives to determine whether performance is in line with those standards” (Moekler, 1970, p. 14). It follows that control provides an opportunity to take remedial action so that the organizational resources including people are used so effectively to accomplish the stated objectives.

Of these functions, staffing and managing human resources become vital. This paper aims to explore issues involved in managing people. In particular, the paper will address issues related to designing training and development activities, effective communication channels and mechanisms to resolve conflicts.