ASSIGNMENT WEEK 2

STRATEGY

Strategy is an organization's direction and scope, long termed in nature that is capable of achieving advantages in varying environment with the help of configuration of resources and competences in order to satisfy the stakeholders and meet their expectations. It is concerned with long term direction of a firm. It can either be viewed as a design or an experience or even as an idea. (Mauborgne, September 2009)

Strategy has to be made in each and every level and there are 3 levels of strategies:

1. Corporate level strategy: It emphasizes at the main purpose and scope of the firm. The main concern is    how to add value to different parts or different business units in a firm.
2. Business level strategy: It emphasizes in the strategies to compete successfully in the target market.
3. Operational level strategy: It focuses on the areas and ways that gives answers to how the component parts of an organisation delivers the business and corporate level strategies effectively and efficiently in terms of resources, processes and people.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

“In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645)

Japanese Samurai and Strategist

 ‘...The determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resource necessary for carrying out these goals’

Alfred Chandler 

‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’

Michael Porter 

 ‘..a pattern in a stream of decisions’ 

Henry Mintzberg 

 ‘..the long-term direction of an organisation’

Johnson, Whittington and Scholes

Strategic Management: The process of understanding the strategic position making strategic choices for future and turning those strategies into action is strategic management. It focuses on the complexity that occurs due to vague and varying situations arising within the whole organization rather than only in operational specific areas. (Strategic Management Society, February 2013)

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN BUSINESS AND MILITARY STRATEGIES

1. They both need leaders, analyst and executors.
2. Both types use knowledge to bring about positive changes that leads to development.
3. Here, both business and military strategies is based on intution and research that comes from extensive experience.
4. Both has to consider ability to focus on key objectives important.
5. The managing perception is critical.
6. Both strategies are based on team work and continual development of competencies.
7. Both need to analyse the core competencies, improve them and utilize them to make progress strategies.
8. The strategic alliances are critical.

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN BUSINESS AND MILITARY STRATEGIES

Purpose – Stakeholder Value  vs. Security

Military strategies are focused in fighting and winning the nation's wars and keeping their people safe whereas, the main purpose of the business strategy is to promote the interests of their stakeholders by creating value and increasing their wealth.

Organization – Command & Control vs. Collaborative/Matrix Model

The military has a vertical structure with exact rules, consistency, defined roles and homogenous culture whereas in Business world it is more of collaboration, not fixed roles and positions always, some can even be project based and the culture vary greatly.

 Career Progression – The Ladder vs. Self Managed

One final, but important difference is career progression. It can be a bit scary at first for ex-military to realize that so much of the future career is in our own hands. That’s because in the world of business, unlike the military, there is no clearly defined career progression.

The point is that career paths in business are not fixed and the progression is not structured. You need to manage your own careers in business compared to structured ladder in the military. 

(Pappas, 2010)

STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

It is the process of analyzing the situation and the recent and future position of the business firm. This is high level and long termed analysis about the organization as it analyses what is happening to the organization at present and what will happen in the future as well as the impacts they have in the business firm. It helps to assess the internal and external environment of the business, its impacts and possible outcomes. 

it encompasses the environment, resources, objectives, expectations and behaviors. 

STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT

The process of analyzing various internal and external environment that includes stakeholders, shareholders, owners, employees and every single person of interest, in order to know the current position and develop strategies that best suits for accomplishing the long term objectives and goals. This process is a systematic way through which strategies develop in various organisations and helps the firm become strategically successful. The process that involves 3 conceptual ways - differentiation, cost leadership and response in order to make a plan to achieve the business mission for what the organization exists is strategic development. (Newcorn, 1999-2014)

 STRATEGIC IMPLEMENTATION

Strategy implementation is the process of translating the chosen strategy into the course of firm's actions to achieve strategic goals and objectives. (Business Dictionary, n.d.)

 It can also be defined as the proper way in which an organisation should be developed, utilized, on how the organisation system should be amalgamate and so many things regarding the control system, culture, etc. that helps to gain certain amount of competitive advantage and have perform better.   (Berg, Friday, January 20, 2012)

My experience with the case study- I would consider this experience as an opportunity to learn something new and challenging. My Lecturer has helped me and the class with enough information regarding this case study. Although it was a bit difficult to understand at first but with the help of my classmates and lecturer, i was able to understand this well enough to answer all the questions.

THE ANSWERS I GAVE ARE:

                                CASE STUDY

Texas in the shires - Some parts of England are not afraid of development Sep 29th 2012 | MILTON KEYNES, PETERBOROUGH AND SWINDON | from the print edition.

“THE city wants growth: we want to thrive and prosper,” exclaims Marco Cereste, the perma-tanned Conservative leader of Peterborough council, thumping the red velvet covered table in his office to emphasise the point. And that, insists Mr Cereste, means building more houses. Peterborough, once a 

sleepy cathedral city near Cambridge, has seen its population grow by 17% over the past decade, to 183,000. Since being designated a “new town” in 1967, it has doubled in size. Peterborough is one of a select group of cities and towns in south-east England that are happily sprawling outward, like small 

versions of Fort Worth or Houston. Swindon, a Victorian railway town in Wiltshire, and Milton Keynes, a chunk of American suburbia in the middle of Buckinghamshire, are growing just as fast.

The English may think of themselves as a pastoral people, and most are broadly NIMBYish, preferring development to take place elsewhere. But along the motorways and railway lines there is another England of concrete and glass, of shopping malls and new semi-detached houses, each with two cars in the drive. Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Swindon were chosen as locations for expansion in the 1950s and 1960s, when the government was looking for places to put Londoners displaced from demolished slums. They are all on motorways connected to London and have decent train links. Milton Keynes, the best performing of the three, is almost exactly half way between London and Birmingham. Swindon is between London and Bristol, and benefits from the vitality of nearby Oxford, just as Peterborough does from Cambridge.

But they are also designed to grow, in a way few British cities are. As Mark Clapson, a historian of Milton Keynes, points out, in the 1980s both that city and Peterborough ran national TV advertising campaigns intended to attract families and businesses. The campaigns are now gone, as are the quasi-private development corporations founded to develop the cities. But the pro-growth corporate mindset remains. Peterborough’s council pitches for business abroad with an outfit named “Opportunity Peterborough”. “Forward Swindon” does the same job for that town. (In Milton Keynes they feel that the city name is brand enough.)

This expansionist attitude is reflected in policy. Whereas similarly well-placed cities in the south-east such as Oxford or Guildford are restrained by green belts and Byzantine planning processes, these places embrace developers. In Milton Keynes plots of land wait ready to be built on with roads and other infrastructure already in place, like missing teeth in the blocks of the American-style city grid. In Swindon the edge of the city is marked by building sites and brand-new houses. Mr Cereste reckons that the job of Peterborough’s planning department is to “get stuff coming out of the ground”. His administration wants to build 14,200 more houses over the next decade, increasing the total supply by a fifth. Milton Keynes anticipates building close to 17,500 over the same period and Swindon a similar number. All three have local plans which assume lots of growth, with a commensurate amount of land set aside.

As a result, housing and commercial property costs much less than in nearby spots. Cheap land near the motorways attracts businesses like Amazon, which has set up a distribution centre in Peterborough, and Network Rail, which has its headquarters in Milton Keynes. Affordable housing helps them retain workers. In Peterborough the average semidetached family home costs £131,000 ($212,000), less than a third of the price of a similar-sized house in London. 

Milton Keynes and Swindon are almost as cheap. Can the three keep it up? Much of their growth now comes from immigrants. In Milton Keynes, on the edge of the enormous modernist mall full of bright chain stores, there is a flea market with stalls selling Afro-Caribbean and Asian foods. In Peterborough, Polish mothers drag their bilingual children away from McDonald’s. Some long-standing residents are uneasy about their increasing numbers, which may check expansion. And not everyone loves the smell of concrete. Peterborough’s Conservative MP, Stewart Jackson, fiercely objects to the council’s plans for growth, which he says are “mad”.In all three towns businesses complain that attracting highly skilled staff, especially those with degrees, is hard. Young people who do well tend to leave. The towns lack decent bars and restaurants in the centre, and so are deserted after workers drive home at six o’clock. They all want to build universities over the next decade (Peterborough and Milton Keynes already have offshoots of nearby universities). Students, local leaders hope, will bring a little “vibrancy” (an unavoidable buzzword) to quiet town centres. This strategy seems a bit dubious—after all, the success of these places is built on their homely, suburban feel. The fake lawn on sale in Milton Keynes’s mall and Peterborough’s many cultural festivals are unlikely to attract students. But it shows how far these once-tiny towns have come: with universities, they will become real cities. If only a few other English towns would follow their path.

Source: The Economist September 29th 2012 from the print edition | BritainMedia directory

ANSWERS

Q.1

I think these cities are growing rapidly because of the following reasons:

1. because of the national TV advertising campaigns.
2. due to various universities around that area.
3. because of the immigrants.
4. due to the business abroad with an outfit named "Opportunity Peterborough" and "Forward Swindon".

Q.2

According to Steward Jackson the growth strategy might be mad because some residents are uneasy about increasing the numbers that might check expansion and it is obvious that not everyone like what is going on. 

According to me, those cities are growing good and are attracting good but the main thing that considers this strategy mad is due to the feeling these towns are supposed to have. They are successful because of their homely and suburban feeling rather than a modernized and expensive town lifestyle. the more they expand, the more they get difficult to manage and the more they go expensive. So, the basic theme of people living here will change. 

Q.3

In my personal view, the town can have some more universities, restaurants, bars and stop overdoing. As i said earlier, the more they tend to modernize or expand, the more difficult it might get. So, the best way is to expand a bit more and stop. The towns should rather be focusing to keep their youths in town to make certain level of positive development for the town itself. 

Q.4

Yes, i would not mind living in these cities because they have cheaper living expenses, affordable houses that are comfortable. They have good universities and also that London is fairly accessible due to proper motorways and railway lines. These cities are well planned that gives more opportunities to grow as they are still growing and expanding. 


REFERENCES

Berg, R., Friday, January 20, 2012. BERG Consulting. [Online] Available at: http://bergconsulting.com.au/Berg_Consulting_Blog/5-essential-steps-to-successful-strategy-implementation [Accessed 8 March 2013].

Business Dictionary, n.d. WebFinance, Inc. [Online] Available at: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/strategic-implementation.html [Accessed 7 march 2013].

Mauborgne, W.C.K.a.R., September 2009. Harvard Business Review. [Online] Available at: http://hbr.org/2009/09/how-strategy-shapes-structure/ar/1 [Accessed March 2013].

Newcorn, C., 1999-2014. Demand Media, Inc. [Online] Available at: http://www.ehow.com/how_4423250_define-strategy-development.html [Accessed March 2013].

Pappas, T., 2010. MilitarytoBusinessMentor.com. [Online] Available at: http://militarytobusinessmentor.com/3-differences-between-military-and-business/ [Accessed March 2013].

Strategic Management Society, February 2013. Strategic Management. In A.G.C.H.W.M. Richard A. Bettis, ed. Strategic Management Journal. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. p.131–255.