Mm2021 How Does Good Strategic Management Process Helps Organization in Tackling Problems?

Student name: Poon Koon Yin

Student ID: 16075721d

Subject: Management & Organisation (MM2021)

Individual assignment

Topic: How does good strategic management process helps organization in tackling problems?

Introduction

Strategic management is the management of an organization’s resources to achieve its goals and objectives(Kenton, 2018). It involves identifying the organization’s objectives, making a SWOT analysis, choosing a suitable strategy and evaluating the outcomes of the performed strategies. Strategic management plays an important role in the organizations and it requires a top manager with a high standard of conceptual skills to design the plan. Good strategic management will bring a great considerable amount of benefits to the organization and enhance the overall performance of the firm. It is why strategic management is one of the cores among the different types of management methods. In this article, the entire strategic management process will be introduced. In addition, Huawei technologies company limited has been chosen as an example to illustrate the importance and application of the strategic management process in the real-life business world.

Body paragraph

Huawei Technologies Company Limited (HUAWEI) is a Chinese company which manufactures a great variety of electronic products. They are also a leading global provider of telecommunications equipment and smart devices. In fact, Huawei has become one of the biggest technology companies in the world. According to the Guardian (2018), Huawei has overtaken Apple to become the second largest smartphone seller in the world, only behind Samsung. It is the first time that any contender has managed to split the top two in the smartphone market. Moreover, Huawei has obtained an annual revenue with more than 100 billion US dollars in 2018. It also reflects that Huawei has a high potential for making profits.

Although Huawei has made a good performance in the recent year, they are facing several difficulties. One of the most severe issues is that Huawei has been frozen out of the US market. America’s attorney-general charged Huawei with 23 crimes, which includes stealing corporate secrets, obstructing justice and sanctions-busting. The US government also view Huawei as a threat to its national security. Although Huawei said that all the allegations are a smear, Huawei’s customers may lose their confidence.

Under the unfavourable environment, Huawei’s top managers have implemented a strategic management process to address the problem. The management process shows how it helps in boosting the business’s performance and tackling problems.

Jurevicius (2013) claims that the strategic management process is a method by which managers conceive of and implement a strategy that can lead to a sustainable competitive advantage. There are several versions of the strategic management process in the world. They have different components of the process. However, usually, the process can be separated into five steps. Rouse (2018) said that the process typically involves setting goals, analyzing internal and external strengths and weaknesses, formulating action plans, implementing actions plans and evaluating the plans. To have a deeper explanation, in the first step, managers will identify the current mission and goals for the organization. Top managers should visualize the company’s future so that the company will know what to do and where to go.

In the second step, managers need to analyze the internal and external factors of the company. In this step, SWOT analysis can be adopted. The SWOT analysis is a very famous method among the world, it helps managers to identify their company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. In fact, the analysis can bring several advantages to the manager. The first advantage is simplicity. The SWOT framework do not require any special training and technical skills. When an individual or a team has knowledge about the issue, they can adopt SWOT analysis. It is relatively easy to use and easy to understand. Apart from simplicity, SWOT analysis is also a problem domain. The analysis can be applied to an organization, a team and even an individual person. Although SWOT analysis has a number of advantages, it may bring drawbacks to the organization as well. This first disadvantage is that SWOT analysis is a subjective analysis. The data collection of SWOT is a subjective process, so the results may not be objective. For example, a manager believes that their company manufactures high-quality products and they are the leader in the market, so he put this factor into the strengths part of the matrix. However, his thought may be wrong, and the results will not be accurate finally. A good business decision is based on reliable, relevant and objective data. Therefore, any subjective matter should be avoided from the decision-making process. The second disadvantage is that there are no weighing factors in the SWOT analysis. Although SWOT analysis lists out all the important part of an organization, some factors may be relatively important. As there are no weighing factors, those important points will be considered as a normal point. It may also lead to an inaccurate result.

In the third step, managers will develop and evaluate strategic alternatives. Managers will select the best strategies that provide a relative advantage over the other choices. The selection may depend on a company’s objective or the results of situation analysis such as SWOT.

In the fourth step, managers will implement the chosen strategies. The market will react to the new strategies immediately. After the implementation, the manager will record the performance of the strategies in order to prepare for the last step of the strategic management process.

In the last step, managers will monitor the entire strategy. Due to the constantly changing external and internal conditions, the strategies may not obtain an anticipant result. Therefore, managers need to design whether to adjust the strategy. For example, if the external conditions have been changed, managers need to take corrective actions immediately.

As mentioned in the early paragraph, Huawei is facing several difficulties. One of the most important problems is that Huawei has been banned from the America government. Therefore, Huawei needs to adopt strategic management to tackle the issue.

To start with, in the first step, Huawei needs to identify the organization’s mission and goals. Huawei is a leading technology company in the world, so they may want to maintain the current market share or overtake Samsung to become the largest company in the smartphone market. In addition, Huawei invests heavily in basic research and innovative products, they want to deploy their products and services in more countries. However, Huawei has been excluded from the American’s telecom on national security fears. US government also claimed that Huawei’s equipment may contain backdoor systems. The action of the US government is an obstacle for Huawei’s future development and needed to be tackled. Therefore, the current mission of Huawei in strategic management is to repair its image.