FREE online courses on Introduction to Strategic Management - Path to Strategic Management - Phase IV  Strategic Management

 

Strategic planning and management are joined together in a single process known as Phase IV.  Only a few companies are clearly managed strategically, and all of them are multinational, diversified manufacturing corporations.  The challenge of planning for the needs of hundreds of different and rapidly evolving businesses, serving thousands of product/ markets in dozens of distinct national environments, has pushed them to generate sophisticated, uniquely effective planning techniques.  However, it is not so much planning technique that sets these companies apart, but rather the thoroughness with which management links strategic planning to operational decision-making.

 

Increasing change and complexity in the company's external environment most likely causes the evolution from Phase I to Phase IV. Change from primarily an inward-looking orientation in the first phase to primarily an outward-looking orientation in the third phase, and to a more integrative orientation in the final strategic management phase, with equal emphasis on both the external and internal environments, comes into picture.